The Star Tribune Editorial Board weighed in today on the results of deep cuts to LGA that Minnesota lawmakers have made over the past years. Across the state, the editorial says, cities are cutting essential public safety and quality-of-life services such as library hours, parks, and safe roads.
Reductions in city services have become so commonplace in Minnesota that they barely attract local mention, let alone notice at the State Capitol. State aid cuts and freezes since 2003 and declining property values since 2008 have wrung things deemed easily expendable out of the budgets of cities all across the map.
But after the 2010 Legislature’s latest $66 million cut and its affirmation of Gov. Tim Pawlenty’s $150 million unallotment of state aid to cities, decisions are being made in Minnesota’s city halls that ought to get state lawmakers’ attention. The services that city leaders typically protect when budgets get tight—police and fire—are on the chopping block now.
Read the full editorial here.