Former finance commissioners spread their message for a fiscally healthier state
Former Minnesota finance commissioners John Gunyou and Jay Kiedrowski have swung through Rochester to continue their three-point mission.
One, the pair wants to restore integrity to state financial forecasts. They allege that by, for example, not counting inflation's impact on state spending results in a fudge factor that lawmakers tend to lose track of in spending decisions.
Two, the former commissioners call for dramatically higher spending on education. Three, they want all lawmakers to reject the no-new-tax philosophy.
They acknowledge that some of the state's accounting methods they question were also done in their day, but not all and not to the degree currently practiced. This point is simple. The state finance director has a responsibility to produce honest forecasts for both lawmakers and citizens.
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Spending more on education is an easy position, but it has to be balanced against taxes. In Rochester, state support for schools has increased. However, the increase coincided with a planned reduction in local contributions. It was a Jesse Ventura era plan. The details on whether financial support for Rochester schools has truly fallen behind is still an open debate.
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; Part of Patriot Act is un-American
It is becoming more clear that Congress acted in undue haste in approving the USA Patriot Act following the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. The act, which President Bush is urging Congress to extend, gives government authorities unwarranted powers to snoop in the private lives and records of ordinary citizens.
Now, for the second time this year, a federal judge has ruled that a section of the Patriot Act violates the Constitution. At question in this case was a provision that allows the FBI to gather phone and Internet records on private citizens while barring their service providers from ever disclosing that a search took place.
Clearly, such a provision is not only unconstitutional, but also un-American -- which should have been obvious to members of Congress before they hastily approved the Patriot Act. Just as clearly, there is no reason to expand or renew the USA Patriot Act as it now exists.
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; Jail upgrades are well spent
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The Olmsted County Board of Comissioners made a sound decision to invest in county jail upgrades. The move was in response to a riot that resulted in just over $300,000 in damages.
The money spent comes from lessons learned. The changes should result in better facility control. It is money well spent.
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; Making mockery of tax system
Ordinary wage earners in the United States are required to report every penny they earn to the IRS. But the nation's 275 largest corporations were allowed from 2001 through 2003 to report less than half their earnings to the IRS.
Those findings, in a report released last week by Citizens for Tax Justice, make a mockery of the American sense of fair play. The study found that nearly a third of the major companies were able to avoid paying any federal income taxes for at least one year from 2001 to 2003 -- even before the generous corporate tax breaks enacted by Congress fully took effect. From 2001 to 2003, the number of companies that paid no taxes increased by 40 percent.
As a result, corporate taxes, as a share of the national economy, are now at the lowest level -- only 1 percent of GDP -- since World War II. And this is at a time that the war on terrorism and a struggling economy are causing the nation to run up record deficits.
The United States may be at war, but corporate citizens are being allowed to sit this one out.
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; IBMRochester is No. 1
Congratulations to IBM Rochester for pushing its supercomputer to world-record speed. The move to No. 1 makes the IBM machine a marked target.
Other developers will shoot to take over the honor. For now, though, bragging rights for the fastest computer in the world rest right here in Rochester.
