According to the Oxford Dictionary of Proverbs, the oldest written version of the saying “what you don’t know can’t hurt you” comes from 1576, in Petit Palace by George Pettie, an English writer of romances: “So long as I know it not, it hurteth mee not.”
I would suggest the opposite to be true, particularly when it comes to decisions being made by local county officials; with whom, by the way, there most certainly exists little enchantment.
While staying in the dark–remaining ignorant or uninformed about something–will allow you to fend off that sense of responsibility that often accompanies knowing, be aware: “What you don’t know can hurt you.”
Most of us would rather undergo a root canal than drill down on the spending habits of local officials; acknowledging that both involve an element of numbing (depriving one of feeling or responsiveness).
As a former commissioner, having been involved in wrangling four previous county budgets, I am certainly aware there are a number of factors that contribute to increasing financial obligations, including unfunded mandates imposed on counties by state or federal governments.
While unfunded mandates to counties and their taxpayers are nothing new, they are increasing; especially in the area of Public Health & Human Services. An unfunded mandate, for those of you who may not know, is a statute or regulation that requires a local government to perform certain actions, with no money provided for fulfilling the requirements. Something akin to asking someone out to dine and then handing them the tab.
Julie Ring, executive director of the Association of Minnesota Counties, addressed this conundrum in a 2017 Star Tribune editorial: “One-time money to the tune of $350 million a year is propping up health care spending in 2018-19, draining the health care access fund by 2021. When it’s gone, a bigger cost shift to counties could ensue.”
Speaking of physical and mental well-being, rationale for much of our county’s additional spending is touted as humanitarian efforts to stem the tide of “sure to come” increased costs for social service programs for those in need (need: a term used to evoke an emotionally compassionate response–requiring less conscious attention–which in effect disables reason and kicks in the inevitable involuntary-reflex spending).
Here are a few examples: $130,000 in “discretionary” dollars has been reinvented as “mandatory” by sliding them into the Public Health & Human Services Budget; also, concerted efforts to justify the expansion of the Veteran Service Officer position from part-time to full-time while our aging veteran population continues to decline by double-digit percentages. A decision that would increase that department’s budget by 123.3 percent!
Last week’s column, “Dubious Distinction,” (November 17 issue) noted that tax levies for the years 2016, 2017 and 2018 represented the highest combined three successive years of Cook County levies over the last three decades. What I didn’t disclose was how those levies compared with the average for the state’s combined 87 counties:
Year StateAvg* CC Actual
2016 3.7% 8.5%
2017 3.9% 11.22%
2018 4.7% 17.46%
To further put this in perspective, in 2018, Washington County–the fifth-most populous county in Minnesota– hammered away at its largest property tax levy increase in several years at 6.9 percent. And just next door, to the west, Ramsey County commissioners were fretting about pushback from property owners in the county’s lower-income areas as residents saw how rising property values and the county’s proposed 4.3 percent levy increase would combine to hit them with double-digit boosts.*Figures from the MN Department of Revenue website
In other words, these “servants of the people” were uncomfortable with where their levy was headed.
Unfortunately (that word “numb” is surfacing once again), it’s become the norm for Cook County taxpayers, under this present local administration, to rank at the top–or among the top counties within the state–when it comes to setting the highest tax levy . . . another dubious distinction.
So here’s where “what you don’t know can hurt you”: It’s a known fact that excessive local property taxes fall disproportionately on low-income and elderly people.
If local officials are genuinely concerned about stemming the tide of increasing social services costs, they might want to consider the effect their tax policies are having on the significant percentage of Cook County residents that are low-income and elderly; a demographic group that is becoming a greater percentage of the county’s overall population.
We have, however, some commissioners who question why the county would ever set a tax levy below 19 percent when there are government programs to help these people? You can boil that down to: “let’s create a taxing policy that will help accelerate the ‘shove’ to get people to use our social service programs.”
Who was it that said, “You can’t make this stuff up”?
As Timothy Williams noted in a 2014 New York Times article, “While demographers have long-projected a significantly older country later this century, declines in fertility and mortality rates are hastening the shift, leading to what are expected to be profound changes for issues ranging from Social Security and health care to education.”
Cook County’s median age is 51.8, considerably above the state average of 37.9. Within the next 15 years, the 65 plus age group is expected to eclipse the under 18 population for the first time in our state’s history.
Couple this with the fact that many within this age group are on fixed incomes; incomes that fall below the poverty level. According to City-Data.com, 17.7 percent of Grand Marais residents subsist on incomes below the poverty level. Compare this to the state’s poverty level at 13.7 percent.
The Editorial Board for the Star Tribune summed it up pretty well: “For a half-century, a hallmark of Minnesota tax policy has been the use of state income and sales taxes to counter excessive local property taxes, which fall disproportionately on low-income and elderly people. That was the right choice 50 years ago, as the state’s ensuing prosperity attests. With the state’s population now rapidly aging, it remains the right choice, and it’s one that state and county officials should collaborate to make.”
Former Cook County Commissioner Garry Gamble is writing this ongoing column about the various ways government works, as well as other topics.
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