Please ... no special session!

Pawlenty 'willing to listen' to special session pleas

Opinion: Please do not call the legislator back in session!

Read the full Star Tribune article for the complete context but here are things I'm glad did not happen:

1. Tax breaks for the Mall of American for expansion
   
2. Tax break for Thomson West for building expansions
   
3. $39 million financial guarantee promised to planners of the 2008 Republican National Convention.
   
   

Comments:

1. The Mall of America is big enough, traffic near it is terrible enough, and the owners are businessmen! They don't need my tax dollar to help them! Thomson West can fund their own expansion without help from the state! Let these two proposals die!
   
2. I'm a registered Republican so I would have a natural bias, I suppose, to have the state unwrite loans for the 2008 Republican National Convention. But I don't see that the state should underwrite this. Let this one die too!
   

The final complaint as reported in the Star Tribune is this:

"Unlike most spending areas of the state budget, the state can head into a new fiscal year without passing a new tax law. Old tax policies continue until changed. The lack of a bill means aid checks to city, county and township governments will remain static, wiping out $93 million in additional funding approved by the Legislature" (Emphasis mine!)

Comment: In typical Star Tribune fashion, this sentence is so obviously one-sided to make one gag! "funding was wiped out"! Sounds like that money is just sitting around by a bonfire awaiting destruction. The reality is that taxes would have to be raised to make this happen. Balanced reporting would say this! The Star Tribune did not.

So please Gov. Pawlenty, don't call the legislature back into session! Let sleeping dogs lie!