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On Nov. 4, Minnesotans will be encouraged to vote for a state constitutional amendment that will increase the sales tax by three-eights percent and dedicate the money raised by the added revenue to funding protection of habitat, cleaning up our lakes and rivers, maintaining and developing parks and trails, encouraging the arts and preserving our cultural heritage.
A coalition of conservation and environmental organizations, called “Vote Yes Minnesota,” has promised a marketing campaign to promote voter approval of the proposed amendment.
It won’t be long before we’ll be viewing television “spots,” hearing commercials on the radio, seeing billboards and receiving phone calls encouraging us to vote in favor of what has been called the Clean Water, Land and Legacy Amendment as a way of guaranteeing that these programs receive more than $270 million of state money for each of the next 25 years.
Thirty-three percent of this amount would fund water quality improvement, 33 percent for wildlife habitat, 19.75 percent for arts and cultural resources, and 14.25 percent for parks and trails.
For the record, my wife, Kay, and I are members of some of the conservation and environmental groups behind Vote Yes Minnesota. I have fished my entire life. We are avid birders and enjoy observing other wildlife. I acknowledge that the Upper Midwest’s supply of clean, fresh water is one of its most important assets.
I enjoy hiking in the woods, the flood plain forests and along the bluff tops. I am fascinated by Minnesota’s cultural heritage. I appreciate all of the arts. Opportunities to hear live classical music and experience a variety of dramatic performances on stage are among the reasons why we continue to live in Winona in retirement.
So I have no quarrel with the goals of the proposal, nor even with the concept of dedicated funding. But I am opposed to the method — mandating in the state constitution a tax dedicated for a specific purpose and in an amount tied to the level of consumer spending. This means of obtaining funding is not justified by the ends.
I am concerned about other human needs that state taxes are used to support. They include the quality of education that our children are receiving in our public
K-12 schools, opportunities for students to be educated for life and their careers in our public colleges and universities, the maintenance and development of our transportation and communication infrastructures to enable us to remain competitive with other states and foreign countries. Also the quality of care we provide our elderly and disabled neighbors who are not able to care for themselves.
The people we entrust with the care of the elderly are among the lowest-paid workers. Over 5,000 Minnesota families with adult handicapped sons and daughters await state funding for placement in adult foster care homes. If we are going to write dedicated funding of natural resources and arts and culture projects into Minnesota’s constitution, shouldn’t we also constitutionally commit ourselves to paying for these other worthy areas that are supported by state tax revenues?
Vote Yes Minnesota argues that we need a constitutional amendment to support conservation and environmental programs because they are chronically underfunded and are among the first to receive reductions when state revenues drop. Proponents believe funding would be more stable and reliable if it were mandated by the state constitution.
Constitutional amendments require approval of both houses of the legislature to submit them to a vote of the people, and then a “Yes” vote of a majority of the people participating in the election at which they are voted upon. Just as amendments to the Minnesota constitution are not easily approved, so they are difficult to repeal.
Chronic underfunding and vulnerability to cuts may be true of natural resource, arts and culture programs, but it also plagues other areas of state responsibility. In 2008, human services were the chief target of reductions aimed at balancing the
budget.
During the last decade or so, funding of K-12 and higher education as a percentage of total state expenditures has decreased significantly. The effectiveness of our judicial system has been impaired by budget shortfalls.
It’s a matter of priorities.
It is also an issue of responsibility. Our government is a representative democracy. Every two or four years we elect legislators and expect them to examine all of the state’s funding needs and decide for us how to use available dollars to meet the several needs in the best way possible.
The levels of need in the various state-funded areas vary from year to year. We all know something that we didn’t know a year ago, namely, that we need to spend more money maintaining bridges than we thought we needed to do. A constitutional amendment would fix the amount of funding for natural resources before our legislature considered the levels of need in other areas.
Vote Yes Minnesota argues that conservation, environmental, arts and cultural projects paid for by a three-eighths of one percent increase in the sales tax won’t compete with programs financed by the general fund.
Technically, they are correct since dedicated income does not go into the general fund. But there is a limit to how much total taxation Minnesotans will accept, whether it is constitutionally dedicated or legislatively approved. We are collectively willing to give government only so much money, regardless of which fund it is put into.
Dedicating funding for specific areas of governmental responsibility in the state constitution is a bad idea, which should be rejected by the voters in November.
Stewart Shaw is a former Winona State University registrar who is getting a second education in retirement. He also volunteers for several local organizations.
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