Citizens and local governments are being hit hard, the mayors told the governor and lawmakers, with a one-two punch of increased taxes and reduced services.
Almost 100 Minnesota mayors banded together to tell Gov. Tim Walz and state lawmakers that they object to citizens suffering from higher taxes and reduced services—problems they blame on state spending and rampant government program fraud.
The message, conveyed in a two-page letter, can best be summed up by saying, “Clean up your act,” Diane Cash, mayor of Crosby, a small city in north-central Minnesota, told The Epoch Times on Dec. 23, a day after the letter was sent.
The mayors are urging state leaders, “Put the brakes on the spending—and compare the spending to the results that you’re getting for your dollars,” Cash said.
She said it’s significant and unusual for that many mayors to line up and take a stand.
Cash said the movement began with nine mayors “and grew from there.” In all, 98 of the state’s mayors signed the letter—a mayoral coalition representing about 11.5 percent of the state’s 856 cities. The mayors of the state’s two largest cities, Minneapolis and St. Paul, both Democrat strongholds, were absent from the group, who hail from mostly small and mid-size cities across the state.Many mayoral posts in Minnesota are nonpartisan, Cash said, and their concerns should also be bipartisan.
“It’s not Republican or Democrat,” she said.
The mayors’ main concern: Their cities are getting insufficient funds from the state to pay for basic services. Cash said, “We all asked for road money, and we’re just not getting it.”
At the same time, citizens are seeing taxes go up while the state burned through an $18 billion budget surplus—and is now facing a $3 billion deficit. That’s according to the state economic forecast report.
Those figures come amid a federal prosecutor’s estimate that $9 billion may have been lost to fraud in the state’s generous social-services programs since 2018.
“Every taxpayer in Minnesota is paying too much, and too much is disappearing,” Cash said.
In the letter, the mayors wrote that “fraud, unchecked spending and inconsistent fiscal management” at the state level are hitting cities. As a result, the mayors are struggling “to plan responsibly, maintain infrastructure, hire and retain employees, and sustain core services.”
The mayors say the state relied on the one-time surplus to pay for programs that require ongoing funding; now it likely cannot sustain existing programs or invest in new ones.
The Epoch Times sought comment from Walz and received no reply prior to publication time.
By Janice Hisle
