I have served for three years now on the somewhat obscure Board of Estimate and Taxation. Much of the time has been spent just explaining what the Board of Estimate does. Officially, the Board of Estimate has three functions:
- Set the maximum property tax levy for the City and the independent boards (now just the Park Board)
- Issue debt for the City and the independent board(s)
- Oversee the internal audit function
Unofficially however, the Board does three important things. One major thing this structure does is allow independent boards to be independent. If you want an independent board to truly be independent, they need to have some financial independence. Not total financial independence but enough that they are truly free to make their own policy decisions. If you put the City completely in charge of the purse strings, very soon you will not have an independent board. I can guarantee that. Very quickly there will be quid pro quos of “if you want a tax levy at all, you have to do the following things.” And the big, candid concern is that city elected officials, who receive a large number of campaign donations from developers, will sell off land or otherwise give sweetheart deals to developers on park property.
Conversely, you do not want independent boards to have complete financial independence. There has to be some coordination of the overall amount of taxes collected from citizens. If there wasn’t forced coordination, the Park Board would vote itself substantial tax increases, knowing that most citizens only look at the overall tax burden and not the components.
The Board of Estimate forces some coordination while still leaving substantial policy independence for both the City and the Park Board. If you don’t believe that the Park Board should have this independence, then you should argue that the Board of Estimate should also go. If you believe that the Park Board should have some policy independence, then you should also argue to retain the Board of Estimate.
Second, in the past, the Legislature did not trust Minneapolis and St Paul to make decisions about debt. For Minneapolis, this decision was vested in the Board of Estimate. In St Paul, the Legislature retained this decision for St Paul. This meant that St Paul would have to go begging to the Legislature every time it wanted to borrow money. The Board of Estimate should not be eliminated unless the Legislature vests this authority in the City. It would be very bad if the City had to go begging to the Legislature every time it wanted to borrow money.
Third, we take it for granted that government in Minneapolis is pretty clean. For the most part, we have very little corruption and graft, especially when you compare to other major cities (Chicago, New Orleans, Chicago, New Jersey, New York, Chicago, etc). Part of this is because we have an independent audit function. It is important that as much independence in audit be retained. If the Board of Estimate is eliminated,at minimum, the audit function should report directly to the Council and not to a City Manager.
I appreciate that these are somewhat subtle points but I do believe that they are vital to keeping a strong Park Board and a strong city.
