Wow, with the ND House passing the most irresponsible budget in ND history that’s saying something:

To cite one biennium’s economic success as a reason to recklessly cut or abolish taxes altogether is fiscally irresponsible and backward-looking. Instead, the management of budget surpluses should be based on thoughtful analysis and forecasts of North Dakota’s economic potential to assure that the state’s economic gains remain steadfast.

I don’t know this Mark Owens who’s serving his first term in the House out of Grand Forks.  On the other hand I think he’s a fine one to be talking about fiscal responsibility.  Does he forget that the North Dakota House (and Senate with the Governor’s full support) raised spending by 24% in the last session.  Come on Mr. Owens that was less than one year ago.  How could you have forgotten.

Was it responsible to increase spending four times faster than inflation (ND has a two year budget) due to one bienniums economic success?  The hubris of the North Dakota self selected elites is beyond belief.  We get overtaxed by hundreds of millions of dollars and they think that it’s their money to spend.

I don’t recall the letter Mr. Owens is referring to.  Apparently he wants to eliminate property taxes.  I suppose that would be ok provided that you forbade the greedy locals from levying any further taxes.  I don’t think that’s the best way, but it would be a legitimate option.  I think what would be best would be to eliminate the state income tax.

I found this passage in the oped to be very interesting:

Schreiner also fails to mention that state aid to cities/counties in 2007 was increased by an additional $90 million or that county social services were taken over by the state at an additional savings to counties statewide of $6.8 million. All of this should have allowed cities and counties to limit increases this year or even hold the line.

Wait a minute.  The state increased spending on public education by a huge percentage to lower property taxes.  Whose taxes went down?  [Update] Mr. Owen’s taxes went up 7.3% so he really has no excuse for trying to claim his program helped the local taxpayers.

The state increased spending by an even larger percentage to secondary higher education.  Did tuition go down?  It even went up at UND.

Now we find that the legistlature knows how to run the cities and counties and gave them almost another one-hundred million dollars.  Who’s property tax bill went down.

What happened to the money Mr. Owens.  I can tell you.  When you give money to a group that’s proven irresponsible with it they’re going to be more irresponsible. 

Who does the state legislature represent, the public or the public employees?

Mr. Owens continues:

We all hope that the state’s economy continues to grow at its current unprecedented rate, and we believe we will be able to further cut taxes during the next session.

Really Mr. Owens.  In the last session the legislature (that’s you) increased spending by a four to one ratio over your flawed tax relief plan.  Why in the world would anyone think that cutting taxes is very high on your agenda.  From reading your entire oped I get the idea that if we don’t get a surplus as large as the last one we can expect no property tax relief at all.  I’m sure you’ll find a way to jack up spending another huge percentage.

Mr. Owens makes a big deal about how the letter writer is in error a number of ways and using false projections.  Because of that I found this paragraph, copied in its entirety very amusing.

The bill will cut every property taxpayer’s bill by 10 percent.

Maybe you should know what you vote on. The bill will not cut every property taxpayer’s bill by 10%.  If the property tax payer happens to live out of state they get stuck.  (Nice incentive to invest in our great state, you get stuck paying more than your share of taxes.) Also if your tax bill(s) are more than 10,000 you max out at $1000.  Nice way to stick the farmers in addition to providing a disincentive to doing business in the state.

To summarize we’ve been greatly let down by our governor and congressional representatives.  They’re more interested in spending money than giving it back to the taxpayers.