LOWER TAXES

It used to be an empty promise by politicians that they'll "lower taxes" or "no new taxes," but now, more on the left are not even pretending to advocate for lower taxes and instead tout HIGHER taxes because they have equated high taxes with helpful programs. I don't think it's a one or the other situation, so I want to outline some of my ideas of how we can freeze or lower taxes while maintaining our most helpful services from the state.

1) GET RID OF USE OR LOSE

Every government agency has this policy at the end of their fiscal year where they have to use or lose their supply funding. So they run around buying stuff they don't need on September 30 out of fear that they WILL need the full budget next year. This leads every agency at every level of government to spend 5% of their budget on things they don't actually need. Sounds like an easy 5% spending cut to me. Or if not the full 5%, start rewarding agencies for being underbudget and allow them to carry over a percent of the savings to next year. Incentivizing government savings is an easy solution.

2) EFFICIENT CONSOLIDATION

I listened to a great TedTalk titled What Americans Agree on When It Comes to Health. You should watch it, but basically it's that true long term preventative health comes from 1) your home and 2) your food. And yet the Minnesota Department of Health is spends HALF its workforce and dollars on back end staffing like nurses and administrative support, rather than focusing on health educators, health planners, or preventative work. Then within prevention, we could combine roles and dollars with HUD, or SNAP, or other programs that truly impact health in our day to day and save money by making them work across agencies rather than siloing each in their own department.

3) CUT ADMIN STAFF BY 5% During the great recession, I was working for the Bureau of Indian Education (check out the website, I totally learned HTML in 2 days and made it myself!....and apparently no one has updated it since lol). But anyways, my first two years, we were on a pay freeze where we didn't get any COLA increase and our travel was incredibly limited. But we maintained a strong program. Then, my role as Program Support Assistant was cut from the budget all together, and I left. I was sad to lose the people and the program I had come to love working in, but leaving the safety of federal work helped me spread my wings into contracting and I've learned and grown more back in the civilian sector than I ever would have there. Cuts hurt, and they are scary, *I* was scared facing the end of my easy salaried job, but they are necessary, and in spite of feeling like you can't go on without it, people are resilient and we always find a way. Nothing is promised day 1. I'm a proponent of "see one, do one, teach one" method of leadership and operation, aka "left seat right seat" in military terms. Year 1 in the Legislature, I just want to sit and learn, "see" whatever I can to understand things. I'd advise a tax FREEZE, not a blind cut until we know where we're cutting. Year 2 is "doing" action and trying something new. Year 3 is assessing and adjusting as needed. Year 4 is reporting results and "teaching" the way into a new process. Reassess and repeat as we go (only up to 8 years because I also believe in term limits, but that's for a different post :) ), maybe we add some stuff back, maybe we find more places to cut. Who knows how the word will be then! That's my plan, anyways. I haven't heard a better one from other candidates, but then I enjoy thinking of this all in writing and running it past my people when I can!