Through Smart Investments^SM in Minnesota’s Students, Growth & Justice is calling on legislators, educators, and the public to rethink how we invest new education dollars for better results. A proposal based on cost-effective, research-based initiatives that are shown to work, Smart Investments in Minnesota’s Students offers a way to increase by 50 percent the number of Minnesotans with some type of post-secondary education by the year 2020.

The project is generating a buzz at both the Capitol and within education circles. Growth & Justice President Dane Smith and Research & Policy Director Angie Eilers have met with key legislative leaders, and Angie has spoken to hundreds of members and leaders of education groups.

Presentations about the project have been scheduled into 2009. In light of the $5 billion budget deficit it is more important than ever to promote the Smart Investments in Minnesota’s Students investment proposal and to recommend that other education investment proposals be put to the cost-effectiveness test. To learn more about Smart Investments in Minnesota’s Students click here to read the report, check out the press coverage at the end of the e-news, or contact Angie at 651-251-0684

Pertinent facts about Minnesota’s budget forecast

As we face a multi-billion dollar budget deficit, it’s important to wade through the anecdotes, selective statistics, and calls for more cuts in state spending and remember the three fundamental facts below, which were outlined in a Star Tribune op-ed Dec. 4 (see link in “Growth & Justice in the News”).

Growth & Justice believes these statistics make a strong case against another tax-free budget-balancing strategy, or employing only cuts and shifts and regressive fee increases. Along with many other communities in Minnesota, we think the budget needs to be balanced in part by raising taxes and raising them more fairly, and using those funds to reinvest in the foundation of public investment that has always helped create broad prosperity. 

The budgets of state and local governments and schools already have been significantly downsized and they are not “the problem.”

• The most comprehensive, bottom-line measure of government size and scope is Minnesota’s Price of Government (POG).  The POG shows that total state-local revenues as a percent of income stood at about 16 percent in 2008. That’s a full percentage point lower than the typical POG that prevailed for much of the last three decades and all through the 1990s.

• One percentage point difference amounts to more than $2 billion per year, which would account for much of the projected latest shortfall of $4 to $6 billion over two years.   

• Minnesota is no longer distinguished as a high-end investor in good schools, infrastructure, public health, environmental safeguards, and economic security. From a typical ranking among the top 15 states in revenues as a percent of income, Minnesota has fallen to about 30^th place in the most recent ranking based on Census Bureau statistics. We reached that lower standard in part through large and permanent income tax cuts in the late 1990s, followed by the hard-line no-new-taxes approach to balancing budgets that debuted in 2003-04 - the last time we faced such a dire forecast.

The top got more and paid less in the last decade and can pay at least a modest increase to address this crisis.

• While national studies show that the top 1 percent now holds a greater share of income and wealth than they have had since the Great Depression, Minnesota’s Department of Revenue’s 2007 Tax Incidence Study shows that those in the top 1 percent of incomes (households earning more than about $350,000) pay about 9.6 percent in state and local taxes. Those in the top 5 percent of incomes (households earning roughly $150,000 or more) pay about 10.5 percent of their income in state-local taxes. Most everybody else pays about 12 percent of their income in taxes.

• In 1990 those at the top also paid a smaller percentage of their incomes in state and local taxes, but the spread between them and the rest of the state’s taxpayers was less than a point. In subsequent years the gap widened to as much as 4 points.

• The Tax Incidence Study documents the resulting unfairness. The no-new-taxes policy really turned out to be no-new-income taxes on high-income folks, because sales taxes and property taxes have risen to partially offset the 2003-04 cuts. 

The economy is underperforming in our new status as an average-tax state.

• Our economy is losing ground. Tax cuts and small government were sold to Minnesota as a job-producing proposition. Instead, on indicators from income growth to unemployment, we have become more like other states in their lackluster economic performance.  

• Since 2002, Minnesota's employment growth and per capita personal income has fallen relative to other states, while our unemployment rate has risen.

• Nobody should assume that higher taxes alone will restore our prosperity or our slumping quality of life. Neither should we buy the line that we can do it by neglecting education, transportation, public health and the environment. If taxes are used for smart, cost-effective investment in human capital and infrastructure, we will thrive.

Minnesota has survived budget crises and will do so again. The real peril comes if we lose the memory of what made this a great state and the vision required of a smart investor.


“Minnesota’s Progressive Republican Tradition” to premiere on TPT Dec. 20

You may have heard it on Minnesota Public Radio, or read about it in the Capitol Hill newspaper Roll Call. Now you have a chance to see for yourself the symposium that was sponsored by Growth & Justice during the Republican National Convention: “Minnesota’s Progressive Republican Tradition: A History of Investing for Real Prosperity.”

Twin Cities Public Television (TPT) will broadcast its premiere of a documentary featuring the event Saturday, Dec. 20 at 8 p.m. on TPT-Channel 17 on broadcast television, satellite and most cable stations (channel 13 on the Comcast Cable system in Minneapolis). TPT has renamed the show “Minnesota’s Progressive Republicans.”

We’ve worked closely with TPT to tell the story during this Sesquicentennial year, marked also by the first major national political convention in Minnesota since 1892, about the importance of the progressive Republican contribution,” said Growth & Justice President Dane Smith. “Govs. Quie and Carlson and Congressman Ramstad played an important role in shaping this recent history, and we are pleased to have the opportunity to share the important comments they made at our event with a wider audience.

The documentary will air additional times. Please check Growth & Justice’s on-line calendar for more information.


Edina Mayor Jim Hovland added to list of esteemed Growth & Justice advisers

Edina Mayor Jim Hovland has been named to the Growth & Justice Board of Advisers. Hovland brings vast experience in both local government and regional transportation issues to the organization.

First appointed to serve on the Edina City Council in 1997, Hovland was elected to the Council in 1998, as mayor in 2004 and re-elected this November to another four-year term.

In addition to serving his city, Hovland is very involved in regional and state matters. Hovland: co-chairs the Regional Council of Mayors; has served on the I-494 Corridor Commission since 1998 (including four years as chair); is a member of the Transportation Advisory Board (TAB) to the Met Council and has served as co-chair of the programming committee since 2002; is part of the Center for Transportation Studies at the University of Minnesota and is on the executive committee; is a member of the GEARS Board of Counties Transit Improvement Board; and serves on the Highway 169 Coalition Steering Committee.

Since 1996, Hovland has been involved with the Edina Community Foundation and serves as its chair, and is a board member of the Family Housing Fund. An active member of the Edina Morningside Rotary Club, Hovland has twice participated in medical mission trips to Central and South America.

Hovland has received awards for his work, including the Minnesota Transportation Alliance Public Advocate of the Year Award for 2007 for his efforts to improve the transportation infrastructure system of the State of Minnesota and the Edina Chamber of Commerce’s Business Person of the Year in 2004

Hovland’s experience will be very valuable to Growth & Justice as it moves forward with Smart Investments^SM in Transportation for Minnesota. The second in Growth & Justice’s Smart Investments^SM series, this project will identify smart public-sector investments that advance growth and prosperity. The project will assess the potential of different public policy paths for addressing a range of important transportation challenges, including the transport of goods and workers, transportation delays and congestion, the need for transportation choices and transit options, the conditions of the existing transportation infrastructure, a growing demand for travel, access for low-income people and others with limited means of transportation, and land use patterns that affect transportation, greenhouse gases and the environment.


Growth & Justice in the news

December

Remember three points about Minnesota’s budget plight, by Dane Smith, MinnPost, Dec. 5

Local effects of the deficit, by Brandon Stahl, John Myers and Steve Kuchera,Duluth News Tribune, Dec. 5

Dane Smith: Three fundamental facts for Minnesota, by Dane SmithStar Tribune, Dec. 4


Is education at a tipping point?, by Cynthia Boyd, MinnPost, Dec. 2


Smith: Miracle on Easy Street: Those in the top-tier tax bracket accepted Obama’s message on taxes, by Dane Smith, St. Paul Legal Ledger/Capitol Report, Dec. 1


November


A bold step forward for education, by John Fitzgerald, Minnesota 2020, TC Daily Planet, Nov. 25

Fairness and reform – two new ideas for improving Minnesota’s education system, by Steve Kelley, St. Paul Legal Ledger/Capitol Report, Nov. 24

Narrowing the ‘attainment gap,’ by Charley Shaw, St. Paul Legal Ledger/Capitol Report, Nov. 24

Editorial: More college grads and a stronger state, Star Tribune, Nov. 21

Add another billion for Minnesota schools, group says, by Norman Draper, Star Tribune, Nov. 20

Groups lining up to push for more education funding, by Tom Weber, MPR, Nov. 19

Will tax breaks from green investment bring green jobs?, by Charlie Quimby, MinnPost, Nov. 17


Quimby: When will clean energy start feeding families?, by Charlie Quimby, St. Paul Legal Ledger/Capitol Report, Nov. 14

Smith: Minnesota still a purplish state, by Dane Smith, St. Paul Legal Ledger/Capitol Report, Nov. 5

No more dumb tax attack ads, by Dane Smith, St. Paul Legal Ledger/Capitol Report, Nov. 3