Knot Pining: Don't mess with da Range

He gave it the old college try. But, they say, when you take on the bull, you get the horns. Or, in social media circles, and toned down for a family newspaper: Mess around and find out.

There may be a new old saw: Take on the Iron Range and its taconite money, and you get the tailings.

Alas, Sen. Jason Rarick, Carlton County’s representative in the Minnesota Senate, was awash in all of these sentiments last month when he dared to change the way of life on the Iron Range.

If you recall, Rarick penned a bill this session that would expand the “Taconite Assistance Area” to include school districts in Carlton County should the Talon Metals project at the border with Aitkin County ever get off the ground.

According to an explanation from the capitol in St. Paul, mining companies pay a production tax instead of property tax on their land and operations. They also pay an occupation tax instead of a corporate franchise tax. The money goes to local government services and school districts.

So messing with the “assistance area” is messing with the bottom lines of cities and school districts. It’s a system that’s been in place since the 1940s, when the region got a second wind with what was once considered waste rock, the advent of taconite technology.

Legislators on the Iron Range have been vociferous in the past about any inkling of raiding this pot of gold.

How much so? Well, after word of Rarick’s expansion plan circulated, Rep. Dave Lislegard basically said not on my watch, over my dead body, and take a hike, Rarick.

To quote him, from The Timberjay newspaper in Tower: “I spent my career fighting for the core Iron Range and so it’s who I am and … what I’m going to continue to do while I’m in this seat,” Lislegard said. “As God is my witness, this will not get a hearing.”

Geez. That was the response I got from Rarick in a phone call as the Iron Range protectors chimed in.

“I didn’t expect it to pass this session,” he told me. “We want to be proactive.”

And he’s right. Nothing wrong with listening to constituents. He said the county and school district leaders in Moose Lake, Barnum and Cromwell brought up the idea. “They reached out in wanting to start the process” of expanding the mining aid, Rarick said.

Because expansion has happened before. As in just last year.

Lislegard, who heads the House committee on taxes, put through a measure last year that will add the McGregor school district into the assistance area if Talon ever gets going.

Granted, McGregor is in a county that already has entities in the aid district. Perhaps that’s why McGregor was an easier pill to swallow.

Carlton County as part of the Iron Range? Blasphemy.

Rarick said Lislegard, who has accused the senator of stealing, is misinterpreting his intentions. “He hasn’t even tried to have a conversation.”

“It’s premature, I understand that,” Rarick said. But he was obviously surprised by the reaction to his idea, since the McGregor addition occurred with “little fanfare” last year.

“I knew I needed to go through a process, that this was going to take some time. I wanted to get the conversation started.”

Seems like what our representatives are supposed to do. Kick the tires. Get some feedback. Run it up the flagpole.

There’s little indication that Talon will ever get to processing minerals in the county. Its focus right now, and it’s still as much as three years away, is in Tamarack and Aitkin County.

There is, of course, some politics at play. Rarick is a Republican. Iron Range lawmakers from his party seemed to understand where Rarick was coming from.

Lislegard and Sen. Grant Hauschild from Hermantown, both Democrats, put out a release on Rarick’s bill, calling for “Republicans to retract their proposal to send taconite tax dollars to non-Iron Range communities of Cromwell, Moose Lake, and Willow River. … The result would mean less funding staying on the Iron Range and rather an outsourcing of mining tax dollars outside the Iron Range.”

So, I guess, it’s more about some odd definition of Iron Range than common sense.

Lislegard has been relentless. Perhaps to score political points. He never mentions the addition of McGregor.

“This proposal is a direct threat to our region, and we need every community member, local elected leader, and mining stakeholder to call this out for what it is,” he said. “A robber baron proposal to steal our communities’ money. This proposal will never have a chance as long as Senator Hauschild and I are representing the Range.”

Hauschild was just as put out. “Nearby politicians are salivating at the idea of taking what is rightfully the Iron Range’s money for themselves and we cannot let that happen.”

It was an overwrought reaction, and Rarick shouldn’t feel any regret for his proposal.

This Iron Range grip on a finite source of funding likely will need to expand as mining does in areas not typically considered on the Range.

It isn’t “stealing,” and Rarick’s detractors are being obtuse and shortsighted.

Mike Creger is a reporter and page designer for the Pine Knot News. Contact him at [email protected]