The Truth-in-Taxation hearings are over. Just in time for Christmas, the Rochester City Council, the Olmsted County Board and the Rochester School Board left a hefty tax increase package under the taxpayers' "holiday tree".
Sympathy for the plight of taxpayers on fixed incomes and small business owners in the face of yet another round of obscene tax increases was notably absent from elected officials during those hearings. I wonder if they would even hold them if they were not mandated to do so by state law.
With the notable exceptions of City Coucilman Pat Carr and School Board Member Fred Daly, all other local governent officials decided to thumb their noses at the taxpayer and went ahead with their tax-gouging.
In their latest orchestrated letter writing campaign, the Olmsted County DFL has flooded the Post Bulletin with letters that decried taxpayer protests as "lacking in civility". Liberals would have the taxpayer absorb their increasingly insatiable levels of taxation with lamb-like silence, submission and gratitude.
Those whom DFLers unfairly accuse of being rude at the Truth-in-Taxation hearings were actually outraged and became defiant in the face of local government abuse, insensitivity and arrogance. They also demanded acountability in the face of irresponsible runaway government spending. Rochester businesses, most of which are small businesses, are not "claiming" to have a large tax impact. They are gradually being taxed out of the marketplace.
The rudest comment by far I heard during the school board Truth-in-Taxation hearing came from a wide-eyed, foaming-at-the-mouth DFLer who implored the school board to levy the full 32% tax increase they originally proposed. He also disparaged those on fixed incomes who say they can't pay the obscenely unfair taxes the school board keeps dumping on them.
It's time to push back. Let's start by voting out of office anyone who voted for the current tax increases at the local level. Think about it as returning their destructive "Christmas gift". I hope the irony that the local government Grinches stuck us with their tax increases the week before Christmas hasn't been lost on anyone.
No spending restraint, no "decorum". If liberals feel local government is not getting enough money, they should feel free to part with some or all of their own in order to feed the beast.
Again, taxpayers will push back. They will no longer suffer the wasteful ways of our local government. Tax-and-spenders will no longer be allowed to hide behind our children, law enforcement and ESSENTIAL services in order to justify abusive levels of taxation.
Most of all, the taxpayer will refuse to be intimidated into the twisted liberl version of "civility".
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