I first started at the Bemidji (Minn.) Pioneer as an intern in the summer of 1996. That would begin six years as a news reporter, sports reporter and copy editor for a small, six-day-per-week daily newspaper in northern Minnesota. I wrote a large range of stories from multiple beats, to features to sports, my favorite being the coverage of the Red Lake Reservation High School basketball team named the Warriors. Here is a collection of my stories from my time at the Pioneer.
Jan. 15, 1997
By Devlyn Brooks
Staff Writer
The Property Tax Reform Coalition says Minnesota's commercial-industrial property taxes are too high, and it wants the public's help in doing something about it.
That was the message David Olson, president of the Minnesota Chamber of Commerce, told about 10 area business leaders Tuesday at the Northern Inn.
Olson spoke about the need to reform Minnesota's property tax system so that other property classifications pay a more proportionate share of taxes.
"Most people define the problem as, 'My property taxes are too high,'" he said. "It's property taxes that make Minnesota less competitive than other states."
After each legislative session, he said, the Chamber travels across the state to gather input for which it uses to direct lobbying efforts. And the priority concern after the last legislative session was property tax reform.
"Property taxes just kept coming up," he said.
As a result, the Chamber and more than 60 other statewide organizations joined efforts to become the Property Tax Reform Coalition.
Olson and the Tax Coalition have embarked on an initiative to hold 27 tax reform forums, such as the one held in Bemidji Tuesday, in the hopes of building support for the alternative property tax plan it has proposed to the state Legislature this session.
"Increasing local state aid is not necessarily the answer," he said. "The answer is to restructure the property tax system to make it affordable for all."
The Tax Coalition's plan calls for scrapping the complicated, classification-based property tax plan currently in use for a simple, market value-based system. In a sense, the plan would be a flat tax rate for all property owners.
In the current plan, businesses pay the highest share of property taxes, a rate much higher than other classifications such as homeowners for farmers, Olson said. And businesses are paying a higher share than they should to be able to promote Minnesota as friendly to any size of business.
For instance, he said, businesses are worth 14 percent of Minnesota's total property market value, but they pay 34 percent of the property taxes. However, apartment buildings are worth 3 percent of the total market value, but only pay 5 percent of the property taxes.
"Some people say the Minnesota Chamber wants to shift the tax burden from businesses to homeowners," Olson said. "But from what I've seen all over the state, most businessmen also own a home. I don't think they wan their homes' property tax to skyrocket."
The Tax Reform Coalition's objective is to make property taxes affordable for all by slowing future tax increases, he said, admitting the proposal called for incremental change so no one group of taxpayers was burdened disproportionately.
"There still will be increases in property taxes, but they would be smaller," he said. "To be very honest, there are a lot of (Coalition) members who don't think this (reform) is drastic enough."
Olson said the Coalition's proposal has already been drafted, and there is a bipartisan group of legislators who have agreed to author the bill.
The list of opposition to the reform includes county and city governments and also school districts. And Gov. Arne Carlson is not "overly excited" about it, either. But, Olson said, he believes that if the Coalition negotiates with county governments, they can agree on a plan.
"It's nice to be No. 1. The Gophers want to do it, and the Twins want to do it," Olson said. "But we seem to want to do it with our taxes too."
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