District 14 Legislators Klein, Nelson and Weisz are telling us they provided $600 million in income tax relief, $2.5 billion in property tax relief and $50 million to town and county township roads, with NO Tax Rate Increases? Really?

HERE’S THE REST OF THE STORY:

Government only has money it FIRST takes from us. The truth is the money our Legislators tell us they are PROVIDING in tax relief was ours in the first place. Over the last 10 years your legislators budgeted and spent almost $64 BILLION. Almost tripling what they spent 10 years ago.

Over the same period Rep. Weisz, as Chairman of the Human Services Committee, has overseen and pushed to increase Human Services (welfare) spending from $400 million to $1.4 billion.

Wiesz, Klein and Nelson voted to spend $1.4 billion of your tax dollars to subsidize the college education of 14,000 non-resident students over the same period. YES! your taxes gave $1.4 billion in tuition relief to non-resident families who pay NO taxes in North Dakota.

These three voted in the last session to spend $573,734 of your tax dollars to subsidize the state horse racing commission. Supporting gambling at your expense.

As for property tax relief we didn’t get a dime in property tax relief. The state gave OUR money back to local government and called it tax relief. In other words they took it from us in sales and income taxes then gave it to the counties and called it property tax relief.

As for State Sales Taxes – they are still at 5 percent. However, your legislators authorized LOCAL OPTION SALES TAXES to be imposed. So for most of us sales taxes are NOT 5 percent but 7 to 7 1/2%.

An honest person would say this is an increase of 40-50 percent (a biennium increase of $1.147 billion to $1.434 billion). THIS IS A TAX RATE INCREASE ON EVERYONE IN NORTH DAKOTA. Your legislators falsely claim there have been no tax rate increases.

The list goes on and on. If you want more and higher taxes – and more double talk keep your current Legislators. If you want it to stop, replace them.

Glen Baltrusch

Candidate for Dist. 14 Senate

Harvey