The Hundreds of Millions in Pork in the 2018 Capital Investment Omnibus

All this spending eventually passed when rolled into a $1.5 billion dollar omnibus bill. Plus more:  The List: Hundreds of Millions of Pork in the $1.5 Billion 2018 Final Spending Bill only 7 Republicans Voted No

It was nearly 4pm yesterday when tax payers who subscribe to the Senate Capital Investment Committee got notified on what was in the Capital Investment omnibus bill. We are all notified that we can submit a short two minute testimony for AFTER session today.  

Why Thank you Minnesota legislators for the convoluted system where citizens can know what you're doing after you've made your back room deals for the last few months to get the monster omnibus bill where it is today. Like there's any hope something will get removed 11 days before session ends. No wonder tax and spending is so out of hand.  This omnibus has 85 pages of spending and over 3/4 of it is so horrible it would never pass if there was a floor vote and short discussion on every project. Here's my testimony I submitted with less than 24 hours to write where I picked out the most "what the hell are you thinking?" spending items: 

How wonderful to finally find out what's in this "Capital Investment" omnibus bill 11 days before session ends and get two minutes to testify after it looks like there is no hope to get any pork removed without risking it not passing for the 1/4 that is good (ie: spending for veterans and infrastructure). Last year (non-bonding year) you passed a billion dollar bonding bill. This 2018 CIP bill is no different. $1.18 billion in spending with most of it as debt. It's ridiculous the amount of insane projects are thrown into this free for all bill. Projects that local tax payers, not State tax payers should be funding if they are so desperately needed. That's the check and balance to unneeded spending. That, and the MN constitution that states to have one bill, one vote. No unconstitutional multi-subject bills like this.

It's appalling that so called fiscal conservative republican legislators would join the democrats on the smash and grab by adding and approving pet projects to this unsustainable reckless omnibus. It's one of many just like it with different titles to total over $40 billion dollars every two years. It's no wonder MN is the 2nd least tax friendly state.

Please read through what I consider the worst of the spending in your Capital Investment bill. You could start by axing the $25 million blank check you write to the un-elected Met Council... That's not including the over $200 million the transportation omnibus is accustomed to paying so they can back door fund light rail and other failed Mass transit corridors. Let cities plan their own sewers, parks, and transit... and let them pay for it too!

• scs4013a-1 (PDF)
• SF4013 Spreadsheet (PDF)

The List: 

-UofM $95.4 million yet tuition remains high and students are stuck with $1,000+ a month payments 

-$6.5 million to put solar panels on the University of Mankato and some renovations 

-Tens of million in trails locals should pay for. Just a few for example: 

          -$200k for a blufflands trail by the Iowa border

          -$2.5 for a Chester woods trail outside Rochester

          -$1.3 million for rec area in Babbitt (population 1,500)

          -$2.5 million for part three of trail in middle of nowhere La Crescent (population 4,800)

-$3,000,000 for the Minnesota Zoo Garden!

-$1 million for Amateur sports center in Blaine... seriously? that's a core function of Gov?

-$2.5 million dollar bus garage in Rochester

-$2 million dollar pedestrian/Bike bridge in the city of Rogers (pop. 11,000)

-$10 million to the unelected Met Council to build parks and trails as they want

-$2.5 to build facilities for park on Lake Waconia

-$2 million for swimming pool in New Hope

-$3 million Nature Sanctuary Visitor Center

-$4.4 million White Bear Lake trail around the lake an area with more millionaires concentrated around the lake than any other area in the County... but the State has to pay for it? 

-$8,800,000 for Sex offenders in St. Peter to pay for the second of unknown number of phases to renovate the campus, put in brand new air conditioning, new windows, remodeling, etc... how about let them stay in tents outside like military men and women have to abroad? 

-$18,000,000 for Brooklyn Park to build a food shelf (what a precedent, so every city getting one?)

-$5 million for Duluth trails 

-$12 million for Minneapolis to redevelop a Harbor Terminal for the public

-$4.4 million community center in Perham (pop. 3,000)

-$3 million for a food shelf in Crookston (pop. 7,900)

-$5 million St. Paul River Centre parking lot

-$5.5 million Southeast Asian Language Job Training Facility 

-$8.1 million for Wabasha to expand the Eagle Center (sounds like a city investment)

-$5 million dollar open air stage in Waite Park

-$18 million to renovate one visitor building (#18) in Fort Snelling

-$26 million for airports (yes, because millionaire airplane owners need assistance)

-$18 million to expand remote trails at some rural state parks

-$750,000 pedestrian bridge in Grand rapids 

-$6 million St. Paul MN museum of American Art

There's dozens and dozens of other projects... those are just a sample of what stood out to me.

Gubernatorial Hopeful, Mayor Stephens Tries to Defend Tax and Spend Record While Facing Accusations of Trying to Curb Public Data Requests

Mary Giuliani Stephe

The Woodbury Mayor Mary Giuliani  Stephens hopes to secure the Republican endorsement for the Governor's race. However, to do this she needs the public to be unaware of her tax and spend record as mayor. If there's a single vote from her against a tax, spending, or debt increase in Woodbury we've yet to find it; likewise so was she unable to directly say she has voted against any specific tax and spending measure when I asked. Under Mary Stephens over ten years in elected office for the city, the rate of city spending has increased over four times faster than the population (83% vs 20%). 

Spending increase votes by Mary Stephens

It was difficult information to find because Woodbury only posts 3 years of financial reports for the public. All the cities we looked into in Washington County post their approved budgets and financial reports as far back as 20 years. Others go over 40 years back, like Cottage Grove goes back to 1976 and Stillwater to 1972! 

The Woodbury Bulletin broke the news that the city is lobbying the legislature to narrow free and open access to government data.

Stephens and the city council want to charge residents for data and be able to publicly display their name and what data they requested. Coincidentally this correlates with the timing of the mayor's announcement to run for Governor. Clearly this looks to be a political maneuver to prevent opposition research rather than her claim it's to prevent abuses that we are told are occurring. 

we asked Mayor Mary Stephens if she had a response to this allegation and if she could defend her tax and spend record. 

Stephens response was "There is no attempt to “curb research” into any work product of the city. " Going on to say, "we are taking pro-active steps to ensure those requesting government data can get that information as timely as possible. To that end, I have instructed our city to meet with Mr. Don Gemberling to learn from him how we can make this process even easier while saving taxpayer dollars." She didn't explain how charging citizens to get data on their government and publishing their names was making "this process even easier." or how it saves the tax payers money for this non-issue. 

The questions were led with the fact between the year 2015 and 2017 the city only had 68 requests for data, most of them being from the Woodbury Bulletin. None of the requests appeared to be "fishing expeditions" as she described. The full response from the Mayor can be found at the end of this article. Credit for finding the data on the insignificant number of requests for data goes to the non-partisan Minnesota Coalition on Government Information (MNCOGI).

Charging citizens to look at data is no small fee as citizens are at the mercy of the whatever the Government wants to charge. In 2015 I investigated why the County needed to spend $20 million on a public works building so I requested to review specific parts of the plans. They responded it'd cost me $1,313 for staff time and material despite the fact I didn't want to see every single piece of paper on it. But they wanted to scare me off with a big quote. Or in the least, swamp me with a table full of thousands of pages of data, which they did. They claimed providing the specific parts of the plans to review would cost me more money in staff time looking for the data than if they just brought all of it in. The same thing happened when I investigated how the County lost a law suit of $165,000 for a road construction mistake. They again wanted to charge me hundreds of dollars to see all the court files when I only requested to see the 7 pages on the court ruling. This is why this issue is so important. Not to mention the fact we have other volunteers for our page who request data on sex offender cases and publish articles and posts... if Mary Stephens had her way, these watchdogs would have their names publicly listed.

Mayor Stephens was elected in 2007 to the Woodbury City Council, in 2010 she was elected Mayor. Aside from 2012, city taxes have gone up every year and the

Woodbury yearly tax increases

only no vote on the yearly tax increases has been council member Chris Burns. The mayor has supported the new city lodging tax, the excessive $22 million dollar Bielenberg Sports Center, the nightmare Gateway corridor/Gold line that does not have State support for funding and the Feds have announced their pulling funding for it too. Yet her support for the corridor on the death spiral continues no matter the cost shift to local tax payers in Woodbury. Washington County DOUBLED the transit sales tax in June of 2017 to pay for the added costs.  She even used misinformation to energize support of the corridor after Representative Runbeck (R) proposed oversight to the Met Council who are unelected and yet allocating tens of millions of dollars for these corridors every year. Still today she maintains support of the Gold Line stating that it's $420 million dollar price tag as a bus line was cheaper than the billion dollar light rail option. This is despite the fact Metro Transit has a $9 million dollar express bus upgrade that would outperform the Gold Line for hundreds of millions less:  Gateway Corridor vs Metro Transit: How State's $9 million Route Upgrade Could Replace the Gateway Corridor

So we asked her, do you have a response to those of us who can't find one proposal or vote from you to shrink the taxes and spending in Woodbury? Her response was that she is proud of her record. She dodged the question by going on about how the city is growing and how the city council is cutting some spending in 2018 that we found she supported instituting in the first place. Things like cutting the $88,000 a year assistant to the city administrator who himself makes $160,000 a year and cutting a $93,000 a year community liaison... In the real world, adding dozens of government programs, positions, taxes, and other spending increases for over ten years in office then cutting some for the political spotlight is not an example of a principled fiscal conservative. Besides, the 2018 budget and spending is still higher than 2017.

They even admit the public doesn't want these tax increases even if they get more services! In the 2018 adopted budget (with a 3.8% tax increase) the city reports "the percentage that would support a tax increase to maintain service levels remains below 50 percent." Yet they increased the tax anyway with Councilor Chris Burns as the sole no vote.

Another example of waste supported by Stephens is the golf course. The City has owned the 255 acre, 18 hole, Eagle Valley Golf Course since 1998. Most of it's history it's lost tax payers hundreds of thousands of dollars a year. They had the chance to sell it in 2012, but Mayor Stephen and the city council turned the offer down. Instead they spent nearly $900,000 to buy out the golf course debt so it could claim it was making a profit over it's $1.2 million year/ dollar operating cost (p.34). But as any government run business, they operate outside reality. Because if they actually paid for all the expenses of running a golf course they'd still be in debt. Because they don't pay for large expense items like new equipment and machinery. For now, such realities are a future goal according to the 2018 budget p. 201 "Long-term objectives as it relates to the [Golf course] budget will include maintaining reserves for the renewal and replacement of equipment or capital items" Profit or not, should the government be in the Golf Course industry competing against the privately owned golf course in Woodbury? A true republican would say that is not a core function of government.

Other areas of tax and spending with Mayor Stephens supports is:

In 2007, when she was first elected to city council, there were 44 city parks and 112 miles of paved trails (p.212), in a city of 36 square miles that's more than a park every mile! But it wasn't enough, the city is up to 3,400 acres of park space across 55 parks, 140 miles of trails, three fishing piers and a swimming beach (p.36).  When is it enough? They're nice, but cost millions a year to maintain. Just putting in trail map signs in the parks is going to cost $156,000 (p.46).  Parks have 
become 19.6% of the city budget (p.65)! Costing tax payers $6,695,800 a year to maintain (p.68).

There's dozens more examples of waste started or ramped up under her watch with her vote, more than I have time to list in this already long article. So please do not be fooled by Mary Giuliani Stephens on the campaign trail as she claims to be a fiscal conservative claiming that she's against wasteful state spending like in the Met Council as she states on her campaign page:  "For too long the Metropolitan Council has overemphasized light rail transit, spending billions on rail lines that can only move a tiny fraction of people and not goods and services." If she believed her own words she'd shut the Gold Line down while she still can; because it too, even with it's own ridership prediction, will move less than 

5% of traffic off of the I-94 freeway. See more here:  The Gateway Corridor, Big Promises, Little Evidence

2018 Spending: $84,128,680 (p.55)
2017 Spending: $81,495, 686  (p.55) 

2016 Spending: $77,975,717  (p.45)

2015 Spending $63,201,759  (p.187)

2014 Spending $64,699,849 (p.177)

2013 Spending $64,590,398  (p.177)

2012 Spending $48,602,500  (p.177)

2011 Spending $49,363,551  (p.177)

2010 Spending $46,953,044 (p.152)

2009 Spending $46,808,081  (p.152)

2017 tax rate  35.1% (p.233)

2016 tax rate 32.4% (p.200)

2015 tax rate 31.1% (p.200)

2014  tax rate 35.4% (p.200)

2013 tax rate 36.6%  (p.200)

2012 tax rate 33.1%  (p.200)

2011 tax rate 32.2%  (p.200)

2010 tax rate 29.1%  (p.200)

2009 tax rate 27.4%  (p.200)

2008 tax rate 26.8%  (p.200)

2007 tax rate 26.7%  (p.200)

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Sent: Monday, February 19, 2018
To: Stephens, Mary
Subject: Mayor Stephens. Comment on your tax and spend record and DPA fees?

Doing a post on your support of having citizens pay to obtain government data and have their names published to discourage requesting data.

You've been a Woodbury City councilor or Mayor for over ten years but only a month after announcing run for Governor you've decided that data requests to the city are costly and abusing staff resources. Yet from 2015 to 2017 the city only had 68 request for data, most of them being from the woodbury bulletin for soft ball news on police reports. None of the requests appeared to be "fishing expeditions" as you describe.

1.) Do you have comment about how this appears to be an attempt to curb research into your tax and spend record?

2.) Do you have a response to those of us who can't find one proposal or vote from you to shrink the taxes and spending in Woodbury?

3.) What tax decrease, spending decrease, or decrease in the size of government can you claim as something you championed for the residents of Woodbury?

Lastly, on your website you say:

"For too long the Metropolitan Council has overemphasized light rail transit, spending billions on rail lines that can only move a tiny fraction of people and not goods and services."

So do you no longer support the the nightmare Gateway corridor/Gold line that has not had State support for funding since 2011 and the Feds have announced their pulling funding for it too. Yet do you still support this corridor on the death spiral?  The cost is shifting more and more to local tax payers. Washington County DOUBLED the transit sales tax in June of 2017 to pay for the added costs.  

4.) Do you still support the Gateway Corridor?

Thanks for responses. They will be unedited full quotes if you decide to respond.

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note: inaccuracy in her response is the Legislature funded the corridor in 2014... they didn't, it was back door funded through the Met Council who received a lump sum to fund corridors like the Gateway Corridor. 

From: Stephens, Mary 
Date: Wed, Feb 21, 2018 
Subject: Re: Mayor Stephens. Comment on your tax and spend record and DPA fees?

Despite the obvious bias, tone and one-sided nature your questions clearly indicate, I am pleased to respond to your inquiries.

  

There is no attempt to “curb research” into any work product of the city. The Minnesota Data Practices Act is very clear that information of this nature is public. Please see Minnesota Statutes 13.01 – 13.90. https://www.revisor.mn.gov/statutes/?id=13.  Every action taken by the City of Woodbury is in compliance with this law, and we are taking pro-active steps to ensure those requesting government data can get that information as timely as possible. To that end, I have instructed our city to meet with Mr. Don Gemberling to learn from him how we can make this process even easier while saving taxpayer dollars. Mr.Gemberling is the former Department of Administration official who oversaw state compliance with the Data Practices Act. He is a recognized expert in the field of transparency and governmental accountability.

I am proud of my record governing the city of Woodbury in a fiscally responsible manner. As one of the fastest growing cities in Minnesota, our goal has always been to provide needed services (roads, parks, public safety) while keeping government growth to a rate below the combined  population growth and inflation rate. Staff is provided with target based direction so budget and fund requests are restricted and confined up front in the budget process. There are many cuts from our budget. Here are several examples from 2018:

Community Liaison position - $93,000

Local Government Management Fellowship Program - $54,000

Tuition Reimbursement Program - $15,000

Police and Fire overtime - $24,700

Diesel Fuel Purchases - $33,000

All told, we eliminated over $549,000 in additional spending in 2018. I recently received my proposed tax statement from Washington County and the city portion of my tax is going down by 5%

In addition, we continue to keep our staffing level below our historic averages since I was elected in 2010 and our police staffing continues to be below state averages despite our delivering paramedic services as well. Staffing is the largest share of the city budget, and keeping firm control on the growth of staff is one way to keep our tax rates under control. We have worked with our development community to streamline the permitting process and have reduced our storm water fee charges.

Until it was dissolved, CTIB, (Counties Transit Improvement Board, created during the Pawlenty administration),  was collecting sales tax from Washington County residents for transit, with many hundreds of millions dedicated to light rail transit. Using these dollars for roads and bridges was not an option. I did not support light rail for Gateway but supported the bus rapid transit in this corridor because the cost was significantly less, it was flexible and adaptable to advancing technologies, added roads and bridges, and emergency vehicles could use the lane. Given the options, this was the fiscally responsible choice at that time.  

When CTIB was dissolved (which was the right decision as I never supported CTIB’s formation) the county took over collecting the sales tax as required by the agreement. Also, the state legislature did appropriate dollars to Gateway in 2014. Secondly, Washington County – not the city of Woodbury -- raised the wheelage tax.  

Please feel free to get back to me if you have additional questions.

Mary

Mary Giuliani Stephens

Mayor

City of Woodbury

8301 Valley Creek Road

Woodbury, MN 55125-3330

651.714-3576

mary.stephens@woodburymn.gov

twitter @mayorstephens

Mayor Stephens Uses Misinformation to Protect the Gateway Corridor

On May 12th Woodbury Mayor Mary Giuliani Stephens posted this article in the Pioneer Press stating "a bill" in the house passed that  "would eliminate the funding necessary to build any of the new transit service being planned for the East Metro. We would not be able to build the Gold Line that would serve Woodbury." (also known as the Gateway Corridor)

Stephens article doesn't name the bill; however it certainly must reference Representative Linda Runbeck's bill HF899 which is a common sense bill that states: Transit projects like the Gateway Corridor/Gold Line can't be built " unless (1) a law is enacted that specifically identifies and authorizes the project, or (2) state funds are appropriated specifically for the project" 

This means:
1.) No longer can un-elected bodies like the Met Council lead the construction of these transit corridors until the elected legislature first reviews and approves the project.
2.) No longer can these transit corridors obtain state funds by creating ear marks on to the state omnibus bill. They will need to stand on their own merit for approval in the legislature if HF899 passes. 

In our article: 8 local Republican Legislators Explain their Position on Transit Runbeck clarifies the common sense nature of the bill:

"Obligating taxpayers to spend billions for a transit network that at best will serve 4% of commutes is grounds for mandating that the current Met Council/CTIB decision-making process on transit be required to get specific legislative approval before advancing any transit project.  That's what the bill will do." 

What is clear is Mayor Stephens is using scare tactics and mis-information to sway public opinion away from common sense legislation regarding transit. The bill would not prevent any corridor from being built. It would institute much needed integrity to the way transit corridors are built in Minnesota.

More information:

Red Rock Corridor Faces Delays as 7 Facts Become Undeniable
Newport Transit Station, $6.45 million, No Riders, and No Surprise

The Gateway Corridor, Big Promises, Little Evidence

Gateway Corridor Citizen Advisory Committee Chair Speaks Up on the Fundamental Flaws of the Project

At Her Own Crossroads: Will Representative Fenton Lead or Appease