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Imagine a Christmas morning. It's a big one this year, Santa has been generous. The kids wake up to marvel at the beauty of all the gifts, "Joy", the presents are all there like usual, but something is amiss—there's no parents to supervise and the tags have all been removed. The kids begin to look left and right, then... Pounce! This is what I thought of as I read this Strib report on what will happen starting Wednesday morning in the House concerning how to divvy up the transit spoils. At a historic meeting in St. Paul on Wednesday morning, metro-area counties will open discussions on how they will wield a new quarter-cent sales tax to create an area-wide transit system for the Twin Cities.
A state transportation bill passed last week by legislators over the veto of Gov. Tim Pawlenty allows the seven metro counties to levy a quarter-cent sales tax for transit. If all of the counties impose the tax, it would raise $100 million a year for new rail lines and busways across the metro area.
Before the tug of war, though counties decide whether they will want to grab the taffy or not: The counties must decide individually whether to pass their own sales taxes; each county's board will make that decision. Those that do would pool their money to create a regional transit system under a joint-powers agreement, said Peter McLaughlin, the Hennepin County commissioner who leads the seven-county Metro Transitways Development Board, which pushed for the sales tax.
"What's in it for me?" seems like fair question. But how about instead asking "Do we even need to do this?" Silly me, I forgot, it's Christmas morning—don't we always open all the gifts? Who cares if we are already burdened and spending beyond our means. "The smaller counties would be concerned about having a sufficient say in how the funding is used, and rightly so," McLaughlin said. "And we [in Hennepin County] have a concern -- we are generating over half the money; we rightly want to have a say in how it's used as well."
Dakota County Commissioner Paul Krause said he is already getting asked, "What's in it for Dakota County?"
Dakota endorsed the sales tax and the larger transportation bill, but before the county levies the tax, commissioners want to see how many counties participate and what share of the pool Dakota would get, Krause said. "We are going to basically have to negotiate, the seven counties. We have to make it so everybody gets something -- their fair share."
Dakota County is planning for a high-speed busway running on Cedar Avenue within two years but would need this sales tax money to make that happen, Krause said. "We have a big funding gap for that."
Tune in to morrow to see which kids gets the Wii and which kids get the lump of coal.
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