Priorities of politics

The following editorial was printed in the July 24, 3008 issue of the Post Review.

To The Editor:

As soon as the I-35W bridge collapsed last August, the Democrats were busy turning tragedy into taxes for transportation. Rep. Jeremy Kalin (DFL-17B) was in the thick of planning to take much more of our money. Within two weeks of commencing the legislative session, he voted for the largest tax increase in history, the $6.6 billion expenditure for transportation over ten years.

The Democrats, including Kalin, passed this bill hastily on February 21, 2008 before the state economist’s financial report came out on February 28, knowing full well that the deficit was large and projected to be much larger.

The Governor vetoed this high-priced bill on February 22, but the legislature overrode it on February 25, with Kalin voting a second time to take your hard-earned dollars.

Jeremy Kalin actively and calculating conspired with his cohorts to overburden Chisago County’s taxpayers with higher taxes, knowing we were moving into an economic slowdown such that State economist Tom Stinson called it a recession.

This is not the prudent action of a fiscal conservative which Kalin claims he is. This is the misguided action of a spend drift demanding more of your tax dollars while there is a major shortage of tax dollars arriving in the state coffers. Days later on February 28, we learned there was a huge $935 million deficit in the state’s budget. A prudent legislator would have waited for that scheduled forecast before voting for such a massive taxing and spending increase during an economic downturn. It was already hard enough to keep paying the tax load.

What did Kalin do? He put on more of a tax burden that hits all income levels hard in Chisago County.

Kalin made a difficult situation worse for all of us. That’s not putting people before politics.

Brian C. Berg
Taylors Falls

This letter was also published in the Forest Lake Times and the Chisago County Press (not available online).