Secrets of the City

Both Chris Coleman and R.T. “ReTweet” Rybak submitted their budget proposals this week. Here’s Coleman’s: “St. Paul Mayor Chris Coleman is proposing a 6 percent property tax increase and employee layoffs across City Hall to make up for a nearly $12 million loss in state aid.”; Here’s Rybak’s: 6.6 percent property tax increase, scaling back of government jobs.

[via Wired] Earmarks have long been hard to track since they are buried deep in appropriation bills that are hundreds of pages long … Enter WashingtonWatch.com, a website that tracks the costs and savings of federal bills, which is fighting pork with pork. The watchdog service is giving away an Amazon Kindle and an iPod Shuffle to the citizens who identify and upload the most earmarks to its interactive map of Congressional giveaways. Third place gets a fruitcake.

Here’s the link to the list of Minnesota “pork” allotments. (Among them: Keith Ellison (MN-5) requests $3,500,000 for Minnesota Consortium for Miniature Robotics Development.) Your Congress at work!

MinnPost discusses the passage Monday of the funding for the Clean Water, Land and Legacy Amendment, and includes this interesting little tidbit: The $21.65 million first-year appropriation for the Minnesota State Arts Board, combined with about $8.62 million from the general fund, not only triples the board’s annual budget of recent years, but it also could catapult Minnesota to No. 2 in state government arts funding.

Also, my favorite quote from the story: “Other than the fact the [state] budget is destroyed, it’s a happy day,” state Sen. Richard Cohen, DFL-St. Paul, said Tuesday.

Well, it seems like Pawlenty and the Democrats can’t seem to agree on the budget. So what’s to be done? No fear! Pawlenty will just balance the budget all by himself!

Via the PiPress: Minnesota hospitals threatened Wednesday to cut health care services for patients suffering from diabetes, mental illness and other diseases if Gov. Tim Pawlenty and the Legislature approve steep budget reductions this year.

MinnPost reports: “In the week since Rybak offered his mid-year supplemental budget to brace for an estimated $65-million in Local Government Aid cuts over the next two years, the elimination of the city’s Civil Rights Investigations Division has gone from a ‘done deal’ to ’something we’re looking at.’ What’s clear is the future of a vital function of the department hangs by a thread.”

Keeping to his promise to slash the budget, there are a lot of cuts in Pawlenty’s budget proposal. The Strib picks through the budget, having already warned that it is going to hurt. MPR looks at some of the places that may sting the most, and it looks like the poor, among others, are going to get less healthcare.

So what do you do if Tim Pawlenty cuts $13.1 million dollars to your budget? If you’re R.T Rybak, you invite people via the City of Minneapolis Web page and via Twitter to give you suggestions as to what should be cut. What do you suggest cutting back on?