Ha Ha Ha

This just cracks me up:

Russ Bennett, a board member of the Minnesota Chamber of Commerce, rose to speak last week at the local Lions Club meeting about the chamber’s support of the $6.6 billion, 10-year transportation package that was made law over Gov. Tim Pawlenty’s veto.

“I figured I would be bloodied,” said Bennett, a small-businessman from Willmar.

“I got applause, and a lot of it.”

Mike Wigley, the founder of the decade-old Taxpayers League of Minnesota, a vocal anti-tax lobby, this week encouraged like-minded folks to drop their chamber memberships in retaliation for the organization’s helping write legislation that includes a 5-cent-per-gallon gas tax hike by the end of this year and 8.5 cents by 2013.

Chamber CEO David Olson said that he’s aware of two cancellations from the 2,400-member group.

“I expected more,” he said.

No wonder Marty Seifert — GOP Minority Leader and (Rich) Taxpayers League button-man — has been looking so pissed off lately. Minnesota businesses have seen the effects of two decades’ worth of Grover Norquistian “starve the beast” tax slashings on state and local government and infrastructure (collapsing bridges anyone?), and even the members of the normally tax-phobic local Chamber of Commerce realize that they don’t like seeing Minnesota going from first-world to third-world status:

And remember: The gas tax hasn’t been raised in 20 years. Inflation has eroded the current 20-cent-per-gallon tax, as construction costs have climbed. Congestion, bad roads and weak bridges have become a priority for employers who say transporting workers and products wastes too much time and contributes to lost productivity.

The bill also allows the seven-county metro are to impose a quarter-cent sales tax to fund more mass transit to the tune of about $100 million annually. Chamber lobbying kept this to half of what transit proponents wanted. Still, that funding will help take more people out of cars and put them on buses and trains. Mass transit ridership is rising in the Twin Cities area.

Moreover, raising the gas tax slightly will allow Minnesota to tap into millions of federal matching dollars for road improvement and congestion-reduction projects that it has missed in the past.

The chamber also worked in a provision that permits study and review of the Minnesota Department of Transportation’s planning, bidding and construction to ensure that the agency and vendors are delivering value at reasonable cost.

“We did a lot to make this bill better,” said the chamber’s Olson, who took political heat for supporting a veto override of the Republican governor. “The all-or-nothing strategies of the last few years weren’t working.

“Our members told us that the cost of doing nothing was more expensive than doing something.”

No kidding.