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Tuesday, May 10th, 2022 –
Last week when the legislature heard the omnibus tax bill, I presented an amendment that would have fixed a problem troubling our Anoka County government for over a year. You may not know this, but when Minneapolis had riots on Lake Street and Downtown after the death of George Floyd and later during the trial of the police officers involved, Anoka County Sheriff James Stuart sent officers and equipment to aid in keeping the peace in Minneapolis. Law Enforcement agencies do this in a program called “mutual aid.” The expectation is that they will send help in an emergency and be reimbursed for their costs. It benefits all communities when help comes without question from surrounding communities, and the bill can be settled later. But Minneapolis is refusing to pay the Anoka Sheriff. There is an outstanding bill of $476, 336.41
 When I brought up this amendment, there were expressions of outrage from the Minneapolis delegation. At first, they tried to argue that it was an inappropriate way to collect the bill. I pointed out that my amendment would simply extract the amount from Minneapolis’ Local Government Aid payment, which was a major part of the tax bill. Next, they tried to argue that somehow the bill had been misdirected, sent to the wrong person, or the wrong address. Again texts to the Anoka city government showed this to be incorrect. Finally, a member from the area where the riots happened said that her constituents were still traumatized by those events. That somehow made it OK that Minneapolis didn’t pay back Anoka County after other jurisdictions were paid.
Minneapolis has a lot of problems, but this is a problem that threatens to upend the whole system of mutual aid in this state. Minneapolis needs to deal with those issues, such as a lack of trust in its police force. But it should not do it by defunding the Anoka Sheriff or making Anoka County taxpayers eat this cost.
You may have heard that the Minnesota Legislature passed, and Governor Walz signed into law a bill that replenishes the Unemployment Insurance Trust Fund (including paying back the federal government) and gives a bonus to frontline workers who worked in public-facing jobs during the pandemic in critical industries.
The new law lowers the amount of unemployment tax and assessments a taxpaying employer will owe in 2022.
The legislation used $2.7 billion to pay off the loan from the federal government and refill the UI trust fund to its necessary balance using mostly federal funds. This spends Minnesota’s remaining federal ARPA funds available for COVID relief, which would have otherwise been made available to Gov. Walz to spend on whatever he wanted after June 1.
Businesses will have their employer UI tax rates for calendar years 2022, and 2023 recalculated to the lower base rate of 0.1%. This avoids payroll tax increases for Minnesota business owners who are just starting the recovery process after the pandemic. Businesses that have already paid the tax can have it refunded or credited. For more information, see the Department of Employment and Economic Development website.
As part of the agreement, $500 million from the surplus will also go to frontline workers who could not work from home during the pandemic. You can find out if you qualify by going to the Department of Labor and Industry website on frontline worker pay.
While the bill isn’t without its flaws, it prevents a tax increase from being placed on Minnesota businesses through no fault of their own. Due to the extra payments paid out during the pandemic, the UI fund was depleted. We borrowed money from the federal government that has to be repaid. This is another example of the government trying to solve one problem by creating others.
Choose Freedom,
 Cal Bahr
State Representative, 31B
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