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Rob Kailey is a working schmuck with no ties or affiliations to any governmental or political organizations, save those of sympathy.
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Mon Oct 08, 2007 at 14:41:03 PM MST
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So I've been following this tax dispute a bit from the outside and scratching my head for a few reasons:
- Why are the Republicans attacking the Governor for cutting taxes?
- What exactly is the legislative staff accusing the Governor's office of doing improperly?
- Are legislative auditors treating Governor Schweitzer differently than they treated other (Republican) Governors?
- What is going to happen here long term?
And the answer to all of these is, um, I don't know.
Just to be clear, because there have been questions -- I didn't write or even promote really anything to do with this dispute other than a political cartoon that I could make heads and tails of.
Still, I've had some enlightening conversation lately -- and I wanted to throw out my take on what is happening here:
- The Governor's office opted for a tax cut friendly intepretation of language in Rep. Sonju's bill. What was the motive? Who knows -- maybe they decided to read the bill in a similar way to other triggers; perhaps they thought cutting taxes more would be the path of least resistance; maybe they substantively prefer the bigger tax cut.
- Something about this interpretation, which is apparently similar to the way the trigger for school spending is hit, is at odds with how LFD perceives standard accounting principles. I have yet to grasp exactly what the complaint is here.
- Looking for something to make hay out of, Republicans grabbed on an audit and have pushed it into newspapers. Unfortunately for them, they picked a complicated issue where substantively their position -- smaller tax cuts -- is at odds with their standard rhetoric.
- Some people are now claiming that the fiscal division is in cahoots the state GOP to orchestrate this whole thing.
I'm less inclined to run in pulling fingers. My guess is that the Schweitzer Administration thought moving for more tax cuts was a good idea, with large expected revenues for the biennium. My guess is that the Legislative Fiscal Division's criticism, even if misplaced, is well-intentioned.
My other thought is that the Republican Party could look a lot better through this whole thing if they were explaining what the problem is in a way that was even mildly understandable.
Even reading the original LFD memo, it seems to me that the complaint is two-fold: that the Department of Administration sent a corrected number to the Budget Director instead of the number crunched right when the books closed (wouldn't a corrected number be better) and the second complaint that the Schweitzer Administration used a number that includes "transfers, proceeds of fixed asset disposition, and inception of lease amounts." Now, that's all fascinating, but I don't really know what it means.
Anyone care to explain? |
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