Grand Forks Herald: North Dakotan’s Don’t Want a Tax Cut

The Grand Forks Herald has an editorial out today preceding Governor John Hoeven’s address to the legislature tomorrow. After spending the last several months campaigning against the ballot measure tax cut because it would hamper efforts to enact “property tax reform” the Herald has dropped that meme down the memory hole.
Now they’re out there saying that rather than give us the property tax relief promised by Governor Hoeven, the public employees mafia and many legislators running for reelection we should spend the money on things they think are important.
New lawmakers in North Dakota were sworn in Monday, and Gov. John Hoeven gives his budget address Wednesday. Here’s a theme we’d like to see in Hoeven’s address and throughout the upcoming session: Caution, especially when it comes to increasing the baseline or “recurring spending” portion of the state budget.
North Dakota has lots of infrastructure needs, given that state government scrimped on maintenance and improvements during our own state’s lean years. Now, there’s money in the surplus to pay for those improvements.
Lawmakers shouldn’t be shy about using the money for this purpose, especially given the election results. Voters had the chance to cut their own income taxes as well as to sock future surpluses away in a trust fund. They said no to both initiatives. Furthermore, they reelected Hoeven in a landslide.
These results suggest North Dakotans neither feel overtaxed nor begrudge the state its surplus nor want to see it all of the money saved for a rainy day.
In other words, there’s an appetite for one-time spending around the state. North Dakotans have been waiting a long time and seem to want to put the surplus to good use.
Where in the world do they get that from? The entire campaign season the Governor and his allies were saying they were in favor of lowering our property tax. What they didn’t say was that they were only in favor of a one time cut in property taxes. After that they are planning on allowing the school districts to work their taxes right back up to the outrageous levels that they’ve set them today.
It appears that contrary to the Herald’s perfidy the Governor at least plans to introduce his faux tax relief to the legislature tomorrow.
The opportunity here is for the legislature to to fix the governor’s plan by the simple expedient of limiting future tax increases by the local school boards. The governor wants to throw an additional $400 million dollars into the school systems. If the school districts want a 53% increase in state funding they should expect some strings to be attached.
Governor Hoeven and his cronies in the teachers union association are going to fight this tooth and nail. You know why don’t you? It’s because they were conning us all along when they said they were interested in “property tax relief.” All they’re concerned about is to take more money out of the private sector and give it to people who are already making more money than the average worker in the state. (Often a lot more).
Why are we spending more and more on education while the number of students benefiting is falling precipitously? Simple the true beneficiaries of the public school system are the faculty, administration and staff.


