Dismantling the Minnesota Miracle, Vol. III: McElroy's "Shifts"
I've written before about the sea change happening now that nice, affable Tim Pawlenty is our governor. Why not make it a regular feature? Here's the latest installment.
Though it was reported last week, no one really gave much pause to reflect on the latest budget woes facing the state. I'm talking about the announcement from the state's budget czar, Dan "The Human Spreadsheet" McElroy, that Governor HockeyPuck's budget has some leaks in it, and McElroy was settin' out to fix 'em.
Nice summary from the Pioneer Press here, but I want to note these two points. The "shifts" (really, why not just call them "cuts"?) will include:
*Changing the rules for an income tax check-off so that taxpayers who
want to contribute $5 to election campaigns would have to pay that much
more in taxes, rather than having it paid by the state.
*Reducing another state-paid election contribution from $50 to $25 for
eligible campaign contributors.
What this means, apparently, is the end of yet another era under Pawlenty's brief reign of terror. Elections experts and officials around the country have long admired Minnesota's "matching funds" mechanisms, where citizens could check off a little box on their tax returns, and the state would hold that money out of the tax coffers and "shift" it to the election coffers. Additionally, the state would pony up some cash in another state-money mechanism. The collected cash would be distributed among major-party candidates.
Both systems were nonpartisan, cheap and good for fair rules of democracy, allowing some money-strapped candidates (like Jesse Ventura) to float campaigns that might have been still-born otherwise.
More than that, one could argue that it encouraged citizen participation outside of an election season, and generally made people feel that the campaigns in Minnesota were perhaps a little less cynical than in other parts of the country. In short, it was a nifty little system, good for democracy. And now, apparently, it's gone.
12:18:15 PM 
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