Meet Your New Partner in Transportation

Minneapolis Mayor RT Rybak gave his state of the city speech yesterday, restraining himself to mentioning "partners" only five separate times. There was also an additional, unstated partnership sought:

I will continue to work hard with Mayor Coleman to make sure that the Central Corridor becomes the next leg of a light rail system that needs to expand throughout the region. Even with all of this, we lag behind regions like Denver, which is building four light rail lines at once. It's time for bold action. We need to pass a multi-county sales tax to fund the transit we need to get out of our growing gridlock.

And you people in the suburbs thought you were paying enough taxes already.

A brand new "multi-county" sales tax, you say? One can only guess as to the vast geographical expanse Mayor Rybak would like to tap in order to fund the $840 million necessary to create a 11-mile train track between downtown Minneapolis and downtown St. Paul.

But it will be far beyond Hennepin county, I assure you. Perhaps Rybak realizes the tax payers there are, at least for the moment, at the limits of their tax increase tolerance. Yes, those poor souls are already being drafted to provide $353 million in additional sales taxes to fund a baseball stadium in RT Rbyak's downtown Minneapolis.

A part of that baseball funding scheme is the waiving of a state law mandating that such a tax increase would require public approval via referendum. And I'm sure Rybak's multi-county train track funding plan won't call for a public referendum either.

When it comes to taking over a BILLION dollars in new taxes for things like baseball stadiums and train tracks in Minneapolis, it's best to have a silent partner.

UDPATE: Craig Westover has an excellent column exploring the "public good", or lack there of, represented by these spending priorities.

BTW, now that conservative opinion columnists are down to a population of one at the Pioneer Press, maybe it's time to get Captain Fishsticks protection by putting him on the endangered species list. Although being a $75 hobby columnist may make him the safest animal currently in the cost conscious jungle over there.