County Saves Money; Board Spends It

Last week, the Hennepin County Board (sitting as the Hennepin County Regional Railroad Authority) voted 5 – 1 to authorize $34 million from “contingency funds” to buy 16 additional rail cars for the Central Corridor light rail line (CCLRT) between Minneapolis and St. Paul.  I voted “no” (Gail Dorfman was absent).

The CCLRT is estimated to cost just under $1 billion to build.  Part of that budget includes $144 million for contingencies – cost overruns, change orders, unforeseen construction problems that frequently arise in huge capital projects.

Because of a favorable bidding environment, bids for parts of the CCLRT project to date have come in $34 million under project estimates.

Good news, right?  Finally, a government project that actually comes in under budget and costs the taxpayers just a little bit less than originally planned (even if that project itself is a boondoggle that couldn’t survive any rational person’s cost-benefit analysis).

So what do we do?  Return the $34 million to the original funding entities, including Hennepin County, to provide some small relief to the taxpayers?

Nope.  Instead we use the opportunity to buy more light rail cars, which according to the original proposal and ridership estimates, we will not need unless ridership is higher than anticipated.

Jay Kohls from KSTP stopped by for a visit yesterday to talk about HennCo’s $25.8 million purchase of the office tower next door.  Here’s his story:

I gave this purchase the Golden Hydrant a few months ago.  Read that post here.

R.I.P. SPARKY JOHNSON (2000 Ford Explorer – 193,248 miles) – I returned home today from the Ames presidential debate in a rental car.

Sparky is dead.

She was practically deaf and blind in her last years (only 2 working doors, no air or locks, broken gas gauge and all warning lights on at all times), but she fought to the end. I was hoping to bury her in my back yard – preferably next year when used car prices wouldn’t be higher than any time in history – but she will instead spend eternity at a salvage yard in Ankeny, Iowa.

Rest in peace, old girl, I will miss you.

Yesterday, the Board heard a resolution for a new “Wheelage Tax” on all county taxpayers, consisting of a $5 annual fee on every automobile in the county.  We postponed a vote on the proposal until next Tuesday’s board meeting.

I stated yesterday at our meeting that I am enthusiastically opposed to this proposal.  The argument for the new tax is that it will bring in an extra $4 million per year, which we need in order to keep our county roads and bridges in decent repair.  Hennepin County has an annual budget of $1.56 BILLION.  If the upkeep of our roads and bridges has become such a low priority that we cannot even find enough in a $1.56 billion budget to keep them in decent condition, then we need to sit down and reprioritize our spending because something is royally messed up.

I don’t know what the debate or vote will reveal next week.  Stay tuned…

Focus Turns Heavily To Everything but Roads

Last week, the County Board passed the 2030 Transportation Systems Plan (“the Plan”) for Hennepin County which will guide our transportation investment and direction for the next twenty years.  The Plan is a long, sweeping and very consequential document, and it represents a dramatic change in policy and transportation vision for the state’s largest county – a change I believe is negative and very damaging to most of the residents of Hennepin County.

The Plan passed on a 5 – 1 vote.  I voted no.  (Randy Johnson was absent).

No one is proposing a spending cut

How is it that the debate over the Minnesota budget has become so blatantly dishonest over the past couple months?

All I hear and read is that our choices are between an “all cuts” budget from the Republican legislature that slashes spending and cuts to the bone versus a “balanced approach” from Governor Dayton that combines deep spending cuts with increases in taxes on the wealthy.

The analysis is simply false…It’s a lie.

In reality, both the Republican proposal and the Governor’s proposal would increase the budget in the coming biennium over the past biennium, it’s just that Dayton’s proposal would increase the budget exponentially more than the Republicans.

Golden Hydrant Goes to Purchase of New Downtown Office Building

The county board voted 6 – 1 today to purchase the “701 Building” across the street from the Hennepin County Government Center for $25.8 million.  The Star Tribune yesterday gave an accurate description of the then-expected decision:

Seeking to consolidate the county’s downtown Minneapolis office rentals, the Hennepin County Board Tuesday is expected to buy a pink-and-blue glass office tower that’s across the street from the Government Center.

Commissioners will vote on a $25.8 million purchase agreement for the 701 Building, an 18-story structure at 701 4th Av. S. The deal would be one of Hennepin County’s most significant building acquisitions in recent years. Rarely has the county bought an office building so big, expensive and relatively new.

But the 701, county real estate manager Michael Noonan said, “is a good opportunity to own rather than lease.”

The county’s public defenders office already rents there. If the deal closes in early June, the first new batch of county employees — from the Environmental Services building near Target Field — would move in this fall. That building is slated for closing to make room for a new light-rail platform.

Counting the public defenders, the county then would occupy a third of the building’s 287,000 square feet.

I voted “no” on this purchase as it will bring Hennepin County into the downtown commercial leasing business in a significant way for many years.  The assumptions upon which the decision was based include the county leasing out approximately 150,000 square feet of prime downtown office space to commercial tenants immediately upon purchase and continuing to lease at least a portion of that floor space for ten years – and likely much longer.

County Board votes 6 – 1 to ban smoking anywhere on county property – including in your own car.

The Hennepin County Board voted yesterday to ban smoking anywhere on county property (excluding county roads), including in privately-owned automobiles in county parking lots.  This new policy will replace the one we’ve had on the books for several years which prohibits smoking in county buildings and within 45 feet of any building entrance.  I voted against the change.

Before the final vote, I offered an amendment to exclude the automobile provision from the new policy, but that amendment failed on a 3 – 4 vote (with Jan Callison and Mark Stenglein joining me).

Hennepin County has a strong policy already in place, but for whatever reason, we’re not enforcing it.  That lack of enforcement has led to complaints about employees and others having to walk through a gauntlet of smokers just to get inside the Hennepin County Government Center downtown.  I’ve got a novel idea regarding how to solve that problem – ENFORCE THE POLICY WE HAVE IN PLACE.  It would certainly be less time-consuming and expensive than expanding the policy to an extreme level and trying to enforce that instead.

I understand the rationale behind this ban: Smoking is a very poor personal choice that is unhealthy and potentially deadly and we want to do whatever we can to discourage people from making that choice.  There is a point on the continuum, however, when government should stop trying to prevent people from making unhealthy personal decisions.  Different people will put that point in different places, but can’t we all at least agree that the point falls somewhere short of banning people from smoking in their own cars.

We had a choice to make yesterday between a relatively straight-forward, simple solution to a problem (enforcing our current policy) and a much more complex and expensive solution to that problem (over-the-top expansion of our policy).  We chose the latter.  Only in government…

Below is a good story on our vote from Fox9:

Smoking Banned on Hennepin County Property: MyFoxTWINCITIES.com

Mike Opat and I debated the proposed all-out smoking ban on MSNBC’s national news show earlier this week.  It was a short segment, but we were competing with drama in both Libya and Wisconsin:

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Board considers all-out smoking ban on county property (including in your own vehicle)

Last week the County Board heard an update on a plan to institute a total smoking ban on county property (minus county roads).  This would include a ban on smoking in one’s own vehicle if it is on county property.

The county currently has a policy in effect that bans smoking inside of or within 45 feet of any of our many county buildings.  Apparently, some employees and/or visitors are violating that policy and smoking near or even in the doorways of buildings, especially on cold winter days.  I’m told the problem is particularly acute at the downtown Hennepin County Government Center where smokers sometimes crowd a lower level entrance and leave behind cigarette butts and a lasting haze of smoke.

I’m not a smoker (save for an occasional cigar on the golf course).  Frankly, someone who chooses to start smoking knowing what it will eventually do to you is making a pretty stupid choice.

Having said that, I have two problems with this potential policy.

First, barring people from lighting up in their own vehicle is a significant overreach of government.  When I asked at our meeting why we would extend the ban to someone’s car, I was told that if a smoker opens his or her car window a crack, they putting others at risk of second-hand smoke inhalation.  That seems a bit of a stretch, to say the least.