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A St Paul Moment

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I believe that I am due a few vacation daze in the summer, especially when I’ve had a long, bad day.  Here is a piece on my city from 2010, in part to commemorate National Night Out.

I came home from a meeting with a client and there they were.  A whole team of guys with buzzing and growling equipment filling Irvine Park with motion and clouds of dirt.  It wasn’t an unusual scene, since the Parks Department does their share to mow regularly – but these guys were different.  It was some private company out trimming and mowing and generally making our li’l park look better than it has in a long time.

What makes this a Saint Paul Moment wasn’t clear until I asked one of them what happened.  Did the city contract out the maintenance?  No.  “The owner of our company’s son is getting married here this weekend, and he wanted it to look nice.”  So he just set his crew loose on our public park and made it look great. That is a Saint Paul Moment.  You just do it. Continue reading →

The Good Fight Wins

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Two years ago, nearly to the day, a curtain of gloom hung over progressives in Minnesota.  A constitutional amendment was passed and sent on to the voters to enshrine in the state constitution that marriage was “between one man and one woman”.  It was largely a cynical play to demonize homosexuals and get people out to the polls to vote Republican.  The left was shocked and demoralized.

Today, Governor Dayton signed the bill which creates Marriage Equity in Minnesota, or legalizes gay marriage if you insist.  It’s a remarkable achievement for this state, the 12th in the US to do so, but the two year path from despair to elation is a fantastic story too intricate to tell here.  But one thing can certainly be said of this story:

It was one of the biggest political goofs in history – and if we learn from it this could be a turning point.

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Streamin’

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When in doubt, you can always talk about the weather in polite Minnesota conversation. Days like today, when we are expected to have yet another big winter storm and the potential for Olympic Ice Dancing on the roads, it’s a topic you can count on.  It’s not controversial but it provides a nearly endless supply of entertainment much like driving a flaming bus through a wall of televisions, at least in the sense that it’s likely to be lethal.

Many of us learn to be fascinated by the weather in ways that seek awkward and geeky to people in other parts of the nation. That’s a shame because a hard study of weather is a form of meditation that can clear your mind like no other form.  Plus, it’s on teevee.  Here in the middle of a vast continent we are at the mercy of whatever blows our way.  It’s something that everyone can talk about – even if no one does anything about it.

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A Cold Humility

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(The Sage) knows he makes no fine display,
and wears rough clothes, not finery.
It is not in his expectancy of men
that they should understand his ways,
for he carries his jade within his heart.
– Tao Te Ching 70 (Rosenthal)

The short, hunched figure marched with purpose.  The weather bent us both down, compelled our gaze towards cautious feet and the treacherous lack of grip underneath them.  It was only a casual glance that saw the short red coat and hood approaching as I wondered who else might be out making their own time down the sidewalk.  A child? A friend?  Anyone I knew?

When the figure was close I could see it was an older woman.  It wasn’t until she was close that I could make out anything at all about her even as we both concentrated on our chilling task, the path from here to there.  I smiled a quick “Hello!” and she said as much back as we passed, still a stranger if also a comrade in purpose. But we were both anonymous in our shields against the cold that might catch up if we had stopped for any more than a word.   The weather itself had rendered us equal, distant, and humble.

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Where does Minnesota’s Money Go?

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Heading into the new Legislative session at the start of the new year, we can expect that things are going to be different.  The DFL is in control of the House, Senate, and Governor’s office for the first time since 1990 – and comes in with a lot of pent-up demand from their own interest groups.  Attention tends to focus on social issues such as universal marriage, but we predict here that most of the time will be focused on the budget.

As discussed here, there is a structural imbalance of $1B per year obscured by a 2002 law that restricts how the forecasters are allowed to figure the state’s budget (though this is not without controversy – see the comments).  We can predict that this will be plugged primarily by flattening out tax rates and making the highest earners pay a similar rate to most of the state, 12.1%-12.3% of defined, taxable income.  And we have determined that, on balance, Minnesota is a remarkably average state in terms of its total size (represented by combined state plus local income) and net tax burden.

But what about expenditures?  How does Minnesota compare with the rest of the nation?

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