reprinted from

August 9, 2006

DFL state auditor candidate says incumbent has politicized office, especially when it comes to taxes

By Dana Yost - Independent Editor

MARSHALL — The current state auditor has been too partisan in operating the office, and the results have hurt state taxpayers, the DFL challenger said Tuesday in a campaign stop in Marshall.

Former state legislator Rebecca Otto of Hugo is challenging the incumbent state auditor, Republican Pat Anderson.

Otto tied Anderson to Gov. Tim Pawlenty’s policies, especially the pledge the governor made when he ran for office not to raise taxes.

“We’re paying plenty in new taxes,” Otto said.

While income taxes may not have gone up, she said, taxes and fees have risen rapidly in many other areas as local governments have tried to compensate for state funding cuts.

She said that rather than helping local governments respond constructively to the cuts, Anderson was complicit in allowing them to happen.

Otto pointed to four specific examples of how taxes or fees have risen since Pawlenty took office”

• Property taxes are up $2.1 billion

• There have been nearly $1.2 billion in new fees, which Otto says are the same as taxes

• School property taxes have nearly doubled since 2002.

• And tuition paid by state college students has climbed 55 percent or $1.15 billion. She said the tuition increases amount to a tax on students and their families.

So what do those issues have to do with the auditor’s office?

Otto said that traditionally, the office has been a non-partisan office that emphasized good government. She said Anderson has politicized it, and especially so in the tax area. She said Anderson’s office overstated cities’ financial status when Pawlenty took office four years ago, and that paved the way for steep cuts in local government aid — often the core of small cities’ budgets.

She said Anderson deliberately distorted information from a one-time “snapshot” of finances and used it to tell the governor’s office cities could absorb up to 43 percent cuts and it “would be no problem.” Instead, the cuts didn’t even reach that level and yet they have produced hardships for many small-city budgets.

If elected, Otto said she would do more to protect cities and local governments’ financial interests. She said she realizes a large part of the auditor’s job is to ensure local governments’ finances are in compliance with laws and regulations, but part of it also should be to ensure they can function properly and offer sufficient public services.

She said too many cities have had to cut back on essential services because of LGA cuts.

“My plan is to work on strengthening communities, not weakening them,” Otto said.

She said the increasing use of property taxes to keep local governments and schools afloat has been harder on residents and businesses in rural communities that don’t have the deep tax bases to absorb the tax hikes.

She also accused the auditor’s office of being too cavalier in its response to a variety of auditing and state security issues, including a $12 million error in the state Department of Education fiscal report and the editor’s own report on county finances issues last March.

She said Anderson shrugged off inside thefts of state-owned computers with sensitive data on them, saying that after the first theft happened, the auditor’s office should have ensured computer code encryption and other security measures were in place. That didn’t happen and more computers were stolen, she said.