HOME  E-DEMOCRACY 98  E-DEBATE WEB MN-FORUM

Jesse Ventura      Response 9

Question 9: Describe briefly what you feel is the greatest challenge facing Minnesota farmers right now. Outside of lobbying the federal government for support, specifically describe three actions, programs, or laws that you would support as governor to meet the farm crisis. If your programs involve new state expenditures, how would you pay for them?

The greatest challenge facing farmers right now is the farm crisis.
Part of our response will be driven by what the federal government
has, or has not been done to aid the farmers. There are several things
we can do to help the farmers. These include revamping our residential
property tax system, reviewing and revising our sales tax system, and
ensuring that our tax breaks are geared towards helping the farmer who
is living and working on the land, rather than the absentee
landowners.

The tax reforms I mentioned in the first answer, will also help the
dairy farmers. In addition, we need to lobby Congress to ensure that
the revisions in the laws affecting the dairy industry are done fairly
and remove the inconsistencies that currently exist, such as those
involving milk pricing.

I would like to totally revamp the property tax system as we currently
know it. The current system was developed in the 1800's and was
essentially an income tax. Since then, the focus of our society has
changed from agrarian to urban. In that transition, property taxes
became regressive in nature. Today, they bear no relationship to the
owner's income or ability to pay. I want to change that.

The value of a property for taxation purposes should be fixed at the
time the owner purchases the property. That is the one time the true
value of the property can be fixed. The current system requires
speculative valuations, and results in people being forced to sell
their land when the "value" increases do to developments on nearby
property. If the tax valuation is fixed at the time of purchase,
individuals will know whether or not they can afford the taxes when
they purchase their property. The only time the property valuation for
tax purposes would be changed is when the property changes hands.