John Croman over at KARE 11 News writes:
Governor Tim Pawlenty’s weekly radio show gives him a chance to tell a statewide audience why he’ll never back an income tax hike for the wealthiest Minnesotans.
Friday’s show was no different, except that his listeners heard the opposing message as well. Labor groups decided to target the very same listeners with the counter punch Friday, by buying air time on Pawlenty’s "Good Morning Minnesota" show.
"We need the wealthy to pay their fair share," the announcer in the ad opined, "It’s the only way we can invest in a better future."
That spot was sponsored by the Coalition of Working Families, a consortium of government employees unions and the AFL-CIO, which also launched TV ads and a www.maketaxesfair.org website at the same time.
"Cutting services hurts Minnesotans, hurts the fabric of our life in our communities," Diane O’Brien of Minnesota AFL-CIO told KARE, "And there is another way to address our budget crisis."
The coalition plans to call attention to threatened government services, as well as to how the state’s tax load is distributed. The group cites the Minnesota Department of Revenue’s most recent Tax Incidence Study, which shows when all tax bills are combined those in Minnesota’s upper two income tiers pay lower effective tax rates than those in the middle.
http://www.taxes.state.mn.us/legal_policy/research_reports/content/incidence.shtml
"People who make a quarter of a million dollars a year pay a smaller percentage of their income for taxes than people who make $50,000 per year," O’Brien explained.
During the same radio show the Alliance for Better Minnesota, made up of other labor groups, ran a different ad also pushing for tax fairness.
"I don’t don’t have a radio show like he does," Tim Koester or Eagan says in the ad, "But I do have a question for him, why do I pay more than the richest Minnesotans in taxes?"
