By Christopher Truscott
mnpACT
We're rightfully proud of our outdoors and our arts community in Minnesota and we should be since each is among the best in the nation and both lure thousands of tourists - and, most importantly, their cash and credit cards - here each year.
But when it comes to creating a stream of constitutionally dedicated funding, we have to make a choice. Should we guarantee sales tax revenue to the arts and public radio or to protecting rivers, lakes, forests and wetlands?
That's the choice before the Legislature again this year. Most proposals would ask voters to dedicate a fraction of the sales tax to the outdoors and/or the arts. Some plans would raise the sales tax to do it and others would simply divert a portion of tax revenue to one or both of these causes.
As good as their intentions are, lawmakers cannot afford to ask voters to amend the Constitution to fund the arts and the environment. Even though the price tag doesn't change, the public perception does as the scope of the request grows. The illusion of a Legislature eager to spread money around like a modern artist splashes paint on a canvas - pun intended - is a sure fire way to ensure electoral defeat.
The arts community can be helped through the biennial state bonding bill, by private donations, corporate sponsorships, local governments and from time to time general fund expenditures. We have the luxury to choose when to help update a museum or pump additional taxpayer dollars into public radio and television. After a few lean years, we can refill their coffers and limit long-term damage to these important resources.
That's not an option available to us when it comes to protecting the environment. Each acre of forest lost, or lake polluted or wetland compromised only creates that much more work. And while we're restoring degraded areas, we still have to defend other endangered treasures.
The environment is a resource on which we all depend, whether we hunt or watch football during the fall; or fish or go to the Metrodome during the spring and summer. Everyone, from the outdoorsman to the couch potato, needs clean water and a healthy ecosystem.
The arts community, on the other hand, generally tends to benefit a smaller segment of the population - primarily parts of Minneapolis and St. Paul. True, there's a spillover effect into other sectors of the economy and additional communities, but it's quite minimal in comparison to the shared interest we have in our natural resources.
By passing legislation, which was signed into law Thursday by Gov. Tim Pawlenty, that will require 25 percent of the state's energy to come from renewable resources by 2025, we've already taken a strong stand on behalf of the environment this year. But there's more work to be done. We simply cannot let another legislative session go by in which we fail to pass a constitutional amendment to dedicate funding to environmental protection.
"There are no passengers on spaceship earth," said the noted scholar Marshall McLuhan. "We are all crew."
To that end, it's time to make tough choices and get to work.
Christopher Truscott can be reached at chris.truscott@gmail.com. He gives Minnesota Public Radio money each month from his checking account. He'd prefer not to give it more money from the sales tax he pays almost every day.
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