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Monday, July 26, 2010

A modest proposal for governmental reform, arguably aimed at greater accountability to and power for the sovereign people and their voting.

There has been public complaint that Metropolitan Council members are appointed and not elected.

The Metropolitan Council has the power to tax.

It is a local unit of government and not a statewide administrative agency such as DNR, MnDOT, or DEED. DEED is allowed to tax, as part of its administering the State's unemployment insurance pool, just as DNR can issue hunting and fishing licenses, or as motor vehicle licensing taxes are collected by agency administration.

My modest proposal; amend State Constitution, Article XII, Section 3, first sentence as follows existing text of the Section being unaltered, italics being new inserted language:

Sec. 3. Local government; legislation affecting. The legislature may provide by law for the creation, organization, administration, consolidation, division and dissolution of local government units and their functions, for the change of boundaries thereof, for their elective and appointive officers including qualifications for office and for the transfer of county seats; except that no unit of local government may have taxing power without being governed by a board or council elected by the people with each seat being on the ballot every even numbered year and with such board or council having full, total jurisdiction over staff. A county boundary may not be changed or county seat transferred until approved in each county affected by a majority of the voters voting on the question.

Killing two birds with one stone seems a sufficient idea to have become an old saying. Here we have three birds, the question of city manager vs. city administrator is resolved constitutionally; unlike present City of Ramsey government we could vote the entire pack of rascals out every two years; and Met. Council could either be stripped of its taxing powers or the individual council eeat holders would have to be answerable to the electorate every two years, while election by district or at large would be left to the discretion of the legislature, although I favor district accountability.

Ramsey at large candidate Gary Greb has suggested the two year situation for Ramsey in an email to me, and I cannot see it as wrong or inapplicable in other situations. Ms. Steffen's use of her multi-term Metropolitan Council seat has been the genesis of my thinking those seat holders might function differently if collectively accountable every two years to the electorate. They might even weed out crabgrass from our garden towns and counties, instead of loving and nurturing it as has been the case in recent Met Council history.

________UPDATE_________
My recollection of grade school civics lessons, some old farts a few hundred years ago were raising trouble with slogans such as to imply "taxation without representation" was a bad thing.

I suspect such people these days would be called "troublemakers" by some segments of Anoka County's people, within their whispering campaigns.

My recollection of the civics classes is that the "troublemakers" were given a kinder view in retrospect, "patriots" and other terms being substituted, but then they won the war. The winner always gets to write the history books.

_________FURTHER UPDATE____________
Notice that I left the question of local government term limits out of the proposal. That was to keep it modest, to not get into more hotly disputed notions. Bob Ramsey is a diligent office holder, but would it be a healthy thing if he were in office as long as earlier City of Ramsey mayors or should the field of civic opportunity be plowed frequently? I expect having everyone on two year reelection cycles would counter tendencies toward entrenchment in office, and given how it's a pain to drive rebar for signs, tightening the election cycling might discourage the situation where it seems the candidates with the most, biggest, and most prominently sited signs have an edge in down-ticket races.

Anything lessening the sign proliferation or tending in that direction would be reform - but we as a nation value free speech so sign-proliferation disincentives rather than curbs should be considered. Perhaps a special and steep tax on sign printers might be one answer. They'd squeal, but that would be regulating commerce, not speech. I have often wondered how big a warehouse or rural barn conglomerate arrangement, somewhere, Jim Abeler has to store his signs between elections. The scale of storage must be massive.