Even for Mayor Carter, a new tax hike to fund childcare is one too many, and it is

According to the Pioneer Press,

St. Paul Mayor Melvin Carter on Thursday vetoed a city council measure to put funding of early childhood initiatives on the 2024 ballot.

One really interesting point to note about the Mayor’s letter is his fifth reason for the veto — primacy. In the letter, Mayor Carter explains:

Every day, our more than 300,000 residents require support to face critical needs that fall under the purview of existing city departments and programs. Each of these needs is growing fast and will require escalating resources to keep pace with our growing population.

….

Necessity demands a focus on better resourcing these critical life, health, and safety functions before creating a large, new program that lies so far beyond our existing scope.

We touched on this at American Experiment when we previously said back in March that

given that St. Paul does not even have money for its roads despite its recent double-digit property tax hike, offering free Pre-k by raising property taxes even further would be especially unwise.

Since then, the Minnesota Legislature has raised the sales tax in the metro by 1 percent. The legislature also gave the St. Paul City Council permission to ask residents to approve a new 1 percent sales tax for the city to fund roads. So even without the proposal for a property tax hike, St. Paul is looking at potentially two new sales tax hikes — one already in effect.

Suffice it to say, any reasonable person would think twice about adding to that growing list of tax hikes.