General Mills had just pulled up roots from downtown Minneapolis and gone to Golden Valley for their new corporate headquarters and 3M was moving out of downtown St. Paul east to Maplewood. Also in the wind were other moves by national corporate headquarters in the area. This new law pooled the tax base and then distributed back to local units by a complicated formula, the principle elements being population, the total market value of real property in the local unit, and their relationship to the total population and property value in the metropolitan area . The law provides for a sharing of the tax base, with local units themselves levying the tax. The law works entirely within local government.
Orderly development is the real backbone of the bill.
It allows land use decisions to be made on a basis of something other than the need for tax base. Also, it provides some continuity of income on an area-wide basis. This is much like providing an annuity for the aging local governments, and a subsidy for the struggling, young local government. I could hardly believe what was happening. The Fiscal Disparities bill had passed the House and was up for a last minute vote on the Senate floor.