Editor's Column
by
Tim Benjamin
March was sure a strange month — snow
one day, sun the next. And everyone kept saying they’d had
enough of winter, which in itself isn’t odd, but it really
seemed to be that for everyone it has been a long winter. It sure
makes you wonder about global warming when a winter they say was “normal” seemed
so much harder and colder than recent ones. I wonder what we will
be talking about in the September paper? Probably something about
the fact that global warming really is affecting everything. Right
now, though, I think I’ll be happy if I get to say, “It’s
been the hottest summer ever!”
As you know, the wrangling is going on at the Minnesota State Capitol.
We have a massive deficit ($935 million shortfall) and we need to
solve this continuing problem. I do not think that fighting over
which side of the aisle you’re on is productive; and I wish
more of our politicians felt that way. I believe that in-fighting
between the two parties is a big part of how we got into this deficit-cycle
problem. Also, when our political leaders talk about cutting the
fat out of the budget, it seems to me that social services (“$298
million from a fund created to pay for MinnesotaCare, a health insurance
program for low-income people”) is less fat than a new enclosure
at the zoo. Maybe a new park at one of the most northern locations
of Minnesota should be considered a little more fatty. (OK, the new
enclosure at the zoo and the new park wouldn’t come close to
making up for the $298 million the governor plans on cutting out
of the health and human services budget but geez, I wish we could
get our priorities straight.)
I do agree with the House and Senate that we don’t want the
governor to just do his own thing on line-item cuts, again. We’ve
seen the results of his unallotment slashing before and it hasn’t
been pretty. Some lawmakers suggest that they should send budget
bills to the governor that they know he won’t sign—just
to force him to do his own allotments cuts.
As we go to press, it’s pretty obvious how bad a strategy
this has been. The governor just used his line-item veto to slash
funding for the Central Corridor rapid transit and many other items.
Have you ever been to Washington, DC, Atlanta, San Francisco, or
another city with plentiful, accessible rapid transit? Then you know
why we’ve just lost a great opportunity. Maybe we should all
get SUVs and move to the suburbs. Wonder why we haven’t thought
of that before?
I will likely be talking about the budget cuts next month; the constitutional
deadline is May 19 and if the last several legislative sessions tell
us anything, it’s that our politicians aren’t able to
make decisions until the eleventh hour. Margaret Anderson Kelliher,
DFL, Speaker of the House, and Assistant Senate Majority Leader Tarryl
Clark, DFL, are reported to have said, “they’d like the
session to end earlier but refrained from predicting that lawmakers
would go home before they have to.” Uh, sure.
We received some nice letters
this month from readers but the real topper was the success of Sherry
Gray’s work in publicizing
the need for the hair salons to be more accessible. See the article,
A more comfortable
shampoo, to see her follow-up and how again accessible
features are not only helpful to people with disabilities but also
to the general population — or in this case, to the beautician
doing a service for the community. If there are other things out
there that we can help with by publicizing, we sure would like to
be part of your success. Write us.
Finally, our own Pete Feigal
sent us a very nice letter thanking
us and reminding us that it’s
ten years this month that he has been writing for Access Press. I
know from all the letters and calls we get that Pete is well-loved
in our community. I know I always look forward to Pete’s articles.
So I will speak for you, the readers of Access Press, and say a heartfelt
thanks to our good friend, Pete, for sharing his stories and insight
with all of us. Congratulations, Pete, on ten years of writing moving
and meaningful — and often
very funny — stories with us. I hope you’ll be sharing
your thoughts and excellent writing with us for many more decades. ![]()
