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Why I'm running
I love my state, and I'm concerned about the
approach I'm seeing lately of "lord, get me through the next election,"
instead of "what about the next generation?" I think we are
squandering our opportunity to meet our future challenges with that approach
and we need to do better.
This race is about property taxes and
competence.
I’m fighting to
get property taxes back down and strengthen your home town.
My
opponent has worked to drive them up and to weaken your community.
That’s the difference between us, and
I’ve got the
charts to prove it. If you want lower property taxes and a
stronger community, vote for me. If you want more tax hikes and
service cuts, vote for my opponent.
Plus, there's the series of major errors coming out of the State Auditor’s
office lately. She’s been making
dozens of
accounting errors in her reports, and she’s taken no responsibility for
them. It’s an auditor’s job to catch errors. And
then there’s the
stolen laptops.
Property tax hikes & weakened local community
finances
The current State Auditor was the first to propose deep cuts to local
communities that have driven property taxes up sharply. There’s simply
no question about it -
the
cuts to local government correspond almost dollar for dollar to the $2.1
billion in new property taxes.
I have proposed
property tax reform that will bring property taxes down and strengthen
local community finances by
restoring
property tax relief such as Local Government Aid, which was cut at the
suggestion of the current State Auditor, and school levy buybacks. Our
families cannot afford the ramp up that we are on with property taxes. As
Auditor, I will fight for good policy at the state and federal level that
moves us away from this direction, and I will stand up against bad fiscal
policy that weakens our communities and drives up property taxes and fees..
Errors
The State Auditor’s office has made several serious errors lately, ranging
from accounting
errors in major financial reports, to the theft of three laptops
containing
sensitive personal identity information from the State Auditor’s office.
You could say that’s just bad luck – if the same thing hadn’t happened a
month before. Mistakes are human, and we forgive them. But
we also expect our elected leaders to take responsibility for them, and take
steps to make certain they don't happen again. That hasn't happened,
and it concerns me. |
