The T Word: How the DFL tax bill came together

When HF885, the surprise legislative tax package, came before the House yesterday for a vote on forming a conference committee, Rep. Pat Garofalo (R-Farmington) was one of the loudest GOP voices to cry foul. Garofalo sneered to his fellow House members that "you are voting to ride shotgun on the Pogiemobile," and his implication was that the late-stage maneuver had surely been cooked up by Senate Majority Leader and perennial GOP lightning rod Larry Pogemiller (DFL-Minneapolis). He was hardly the only Republican to think as much.

Wrong. DFL sources from both chambers confirm that the compromise tax omnibus was the brainchild of House Taxes Committee chair Ann Lenczewski (DFL-Bloomington) (pictured). It was her idea to put together a $1 billion package of tax increases and pose them as a dollar-for-dollar alternative to Gov. Tim Pawlenty’s proposal to raise the same sum by selling bonds to be paid off with future state revenues over a 20-year span. The House likewise conceived the strategy of appropriating the funds raised by those tax increases into the same piece of legislation. (One House staffer points out that DFLers there used the same strategy in passing a measures that included both new upper-bracket income tax provisions and associated property tax reductions in the same bill.) House and Senate leaders then met on Wednesday evening to finalize the plan.

All the same, you probably shouldn’t expect Garofalo and Pogemiller to kiss and make up anytime soon. Garofalo also made an appearance at last night’s gathering of the Legislative Commission on Planning and Fiscal Policy, where he had more harsh words for Pogemiller–leading the chair, House Speaker Margaret Anderson Kelliher, to admonish him for his remarks twice.

The bill will reach the House floor this afternoon.