By Mike Kaszuba

So how much has the state Department of Revenue vetted Independence Party gubernatorial candidate Tom Horner's budget plans? Some, said Horner, but not really that much. Jim Mulder, Horner's lieutenant governor running mate, acknowledged that the department's vetting of Horner's proposal was not as involved as what the department did with DFL gubernatorial candidate Mark Dayton's tax hike plan. A department spokesperson agreed. On Wednesday, as the issue continued to percolate, a Horner spokesman said the campaign had spoken again with the state Department of Revenue and that state officials had "confirmed" that the campaign's budget numbers were within acceptable "parameters." With Republican Tom Emmer and Mark Dayton having had at least parts of their budget plans reviewed by state revenue officials, Horner has come under scrutiny for not doing the same. The state Republican Party on Wednesday called on Horner to submit his 2012-13 budget plan to state revenue officials. Horner and Mulder said they did contact state revenue officials – but mostly to obtain data sheets that they then used to form their budget proposal. The primary data sheet, which state officials released Tuesday, gives a general "budget options" breakdown. For example, the one-page sheet shows that increasing the state general sales and use tax by one percent would generate $648 million annually. Raising it a half percent, t he department said, would bring in $324 million a year. And implementing a state sales tax on clothing, at a 6.5 percent general fund rate, would produce $280 million annually. Horner has advocated broadening the state sales tax to clothing and some services. State revenue officials also said: Raising the liquor tax by 10 percent would raise $8 million annually, hiking the cigarette tax by $1 a pack would produce $148 million a year and increasing the gasoline and special fuels taxes by 1 cent per gallon would yield $30 million a year. Going back to the 1998 rates on individual income taxes, the department said, would raise $806 million a year. "We did work off of information provided by the Department of Revenue," said Horner. After using the data sheets from the department, he added, "we did have the Department of Revenue validate that we got the numbers right. "I think, in all honesty, it's an overstatement to say that the Department of Revenue vetted any of the plans [from the gubernatorial candidates], at least in the context that an economist would understand the vetting," said Horner. "We feel confident in the accuracy of the information based on Department of Revenue numbers," he added. "That was done before we released the plan." Kit Borgman, a Department of Revenue spokesperson, said the one-page sheet was "as far as we know" the only information provided to the Horner campaign. The document, she said, was widely distributed during the last legislative session. Borgman added that Paul Wilson, a senior state revenue official, "gets requests from individuals and he doesn't always know if they're with one of the campaigns. But he recognized one requestor as someone in the Horner campaign – and he provided the [data sheet]." Mulder said he talked to Wilson about the review. "What we did is, we got a document and used a document from the Department of Revenue that Paul Wilson had put together, which was the 'fingernail revenue numbers' of what you can generate depending on which choices you make," said Mulder. "After I got done, I talked to Paul one day. I said, is this still OK? He said for the work that you're doing, for the estimates you're making – yes," he said.