Did R T channel his inner Scott Walker?

BY ED FELIEN

Is R T channeling Scott Walker?

We were outraged when Governor Scott Walker tried to strip public employees of their right to bargain collectively under the guise of saving the taxpayers’ money—after giving corporations tax breaks that added more than $117 million to the Wisconsin deficit. We found out that Walker’s plan had nothing to do with saving money. It was a naked attempt to destroy the unions.

Many neighborhood activists are feeling the same sense of outrage at discovering Mayor R T Rybak’s duplicity. Last December R T and the City Council froze $12.68 million in unused Neighborhood Revitalization Program funds that were unspent. They claimed it was an attempt to soften property tax increases in the city’s 2011 budget. Of course, it had nothing to do with 2011 property taxes. At best, it would affect 2012 property taxes. Then, in April, the City agreed to restore $2.7 million, but it was already too late for most neighborhood organizations. Some folded, others cut back and moved to smaller offices.

By then neighborhood activists had started lobbying legislators at the State Capitol to restore the funding. And even with four full-time professional lobbyists, the City Council and the prestige of the mayor, the City was unable to dent the support of city legislators for restoring NRP funds. The Republicans will support it because they love to cause trouble within the DFL, so there seems little hope that R T can win. The new strategy might be to try to amend SF 953 and HF 1358 on the floor to the point that they are toothless and Dayton could then veto them.

The only member of the City Council that stood up for NRP and the neighborhoods was Cam Gordon: “All we needed to do was keep working on the consolidation plan, use at least $5 million a year to support neighborhood work and leave the already allocated NRP funds alone as we unanimously voted to do, and this current mess could have been avoided. At the time this last minute idea came forward (December 2010) I tried to warn my colleagues (and anyone who would listen) that it was a mistake and needed more thoughtful consideration and involvement of residents and neighborhood association boards and activists. At the time, a move like this from the legislature was easily predictable and while I do not prefer giving the legislature opportunities to intervene in our more local affairs in this way, I understand completely how our neighborhood partners now feel the need to use this path after being so completely cut out and ignored during the all too rushed, too careless and too panicked deliberations last December.”

R T insisted it was necessary to defund NRP so he could save money for the taxpayers, and then he proposed just last week that the City contribute $195 million toward a new Vikings Stadium through a 0.15 percent increase in the city sales tax, an extension of the downtown 3 percent tax on food and liquor to all restaurants citywide and shifting payments to rehab the Target Center onto the increase in sales taxes.

Let’s get this straight!
R T wouldn’t allow the Library Board to increase property taxes to pay for their new building when the State cut back on their Local Government Aid, so the municipal library system, one of the finest reference library systems in the country, had to go into receivership and be taken over by the County where it is rapidly being transformed into a book of the month club pop stand.

R T wanted to eliminate the Board of Estimate and Taxation because he was sick of hearing Carol Becker and others criticize his rule as tax emperor.
It is no longer possible to delude ourselves. R T and the City Council don’t represent us. They don’t represent the taxpayers in Minneapolis. They represent the billionaire real estate developer from New Jersey who owns the Vikings, and they represent the multi-millionaire printing magnate from Mankato who owns the Timberwolves.

All this talk about saving the taxpayers’ money was really just a naked power grab. This last move went too far. Finally, we see the emperor has no clothes.