The Taxpayers League of Minnesota released their annual legislative scorecard, with lower than average scores going to the Republican-led House. Ted Lillie, a former State Senator and current President of the Taxpayers League explains that this is from “out of control spending”, saying, “They’re spending too much money, and this legislative session we had hopes as citizens of Minnesota, because we had Republican control of the House, that we would limit the growth of government. Well that really hasn’t happened, government continues to grow much faster than your family income does, and that’s really the problem that our scorecard this year tries to talk about.”
The highest scores in the Senate went to Roger Chamberlain, Dan Hall, Dave Osmek, and Dave Thompson, with the lowest score of zero going to Senator Ron Latz.
In the House the highest scores went to Eric Lucero, Jim Nash, Jim Newberger, Pat Garofalo, Jerry Hertaus, and Cindy Pugh, with the lowest scores going to Joe Atkins, Raymond Dehn, and Jason Isaacson.
Lillie says they’re looking to the future, scoring a previously proposed amendment for a gas tax increase that could come back next session, explaining, “Representative McNamara put an amendment with the Governor’s gas tax increase on it, and 100%, every single representative in the House voted against it. So that tells you that there is not broad support for this gas tax, even the Democrats voted against it. But we felt it was important to bring that up because the gas tax is something we feel will come up again in the next session.”
Lillie says their scorecard does have an impact on voters, and hopes to reach more people than previous years. Subscribe to Alpha News to see all of our videos on legislative scorecards in Minnesota.
Special thanks to Margaret Martin and Ted Lillie of The Taxpayers League of MN for arranging the interview.