Agenda - Council - 12/20/1983 - Laserfiche WebLink

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I I I I I I I I I I Page -7- As set out in detail in Section II,D of this Memorandum, there are a number of indications of the legislative "purposes" behind Minnesota Statutes Chapter #77A which come from sources directly involved in the legislative process itself and which were enunciated prior to and apart from this adversary proceeding. That is, there is no "clean slate" in this case which would indicate that the parties are free to speculate on the legislature's purposes in promulgating this statute. Accordingly~ a substantial issue of fact between the parties which remains unresolved and for which the court must hear conflicting evidence is the issue of identifying the "legislative purposes" of this act. D. The Purpose For Local Government Aid. Chapter 342, Article 5, Section 14, Laws of 1953 (Minnesota Statutes Section ~77A.017) does provide that the purpose of the local government aid statute is to "provide property tax relief to local units of government". Plaintiffs also contend that the legislative scheme has several other important purposes. Those purposes are~ m To eliminate reliance on outdated population estimates. To relate state aid distribution more strongly to a community's "fiscal capacity", as measured by tax base wealth. To eliminate inequities due to the county by county distribution system. To eliminate any "reward" for cities which increase their tax and to eliminate any "penalty" for communities which cut their spending. To adopt maximum limitations on the amount of increase in state aid any one jurisdiction can receive annually. To relate state aid allocations to a community's need for local revenue to finance basic municipal services, as measured by each community's levy limit base. To treat cities and towns under 2500 population separately in order to ~implify aid formula calculations for smaller munici- palities ar.d to eliminate problems with data inaccuracies and inadequacies for small jurisdictions.