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.

Taxpayer Victory: No New Auto Tax

On a 2-5 vote, the County Board yesterday defeated a proposal to assess a $5 tax onto every automobile in Hennepin County.  Commissioners Callison, Johnson, Opat and Stenglein joined me in voting “no”.

The rationale given for the new tax: It would benefit property tax payers in the county by shifting $4 million per year off the property tax role and onto automobile owners – an appropriate user fee for those who use the roads.

To argue that creating a new tax on our constituents somehow benefits them is … curious.  In reality, I think there were probably two more important motives behind this proposal:

1. More Money.  Government at every level is always looking for new sources of revenue.  While the amount this new tax would have yielded was small in the grand scheme of a $1.56 billion budget, it was new money nonetheless.  And “naive” would be a mild descriptor for anyone who believed we would actually make any long-term cut in property taxes to offset the new tax.

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).