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Beyond ridiculous . . .
The standoff between Republican legislative leaders and DFL Gov. Mark Dayton continues and therefore Minnesota continues to suffer through a painful, expensive and unnecessary government shutdown.
As information becomes more available from the flurry of activity last week, one-time money dominated pre-shutdown negotiations. So much for solving the structural budget imbalance rather than "kicking the can down the road". As a result of the use of short-term budget fixes and the current budget impasse, Minnesota's bond rating has been downgraded. Read more.
On Wednesday the governor offered two new revenue raising options to bridge the $1.4 billion gap between the two sides. The legislative leaders promptly rejected the offers reiterating that they would not accept any tax increases. This article has more info on the offers and the continued battle. Here's a copy of the letter containing the offers from Gov. Dayton. Here's the response letter from the Republican leaders.
As of now, no further meetings are scheduled between Gov. Dayton and the legislative leaders, |
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Dangerous levels of borrowing from our schools?
Tax increases are taken off the table by the Republicans, yet both sides are looking for options to raise revenue. Troubling to education supporters is that both the Republican leaders and Gov. Dayton are looking to our schools to bail out the state once again. Both sides have said that they will continue to borrow $1.4 billion from school revenue in the 70/30 aid payment shift used last year. The education community was not overjoyed with the shift. Yet, preferring a shift over an outright cut, schools districts gritted their teeth and absorbed the cost to borrow money to pay the bills.
Shockingly, offers flew last week between the governor and the Republican legislative leaders that went as far as to increase the shift to 50/50. Wednesday's offer from the governor included a 63/47 shift which would borrow another $700 million from our schools.
Instead of increasing income taxes on Minnesota's top earners, it looks like the state could "borrow" over $2.1 billion from our schools to help erase the $5 billion deficit. How will the state ever pay back this huge debt? Will it just become a permanent cut to school funding? AND when did taking on even more debt that will burden our children's future become a viable option?
For even more and detailed information of the budget battle, check out Brad's Blog. |
