Minnesota Shutdown Diary 2: The Menu
When we left Part 1, Governor Dayton had just said in February that we should pledge not to have the shutdown we currently are in. The negotiations leading up to the shutdown included much fulmination that the Legislature had not done its job, not gotten its work done on time. Indeed, the Dayton administration repeatedly wrote to its client agencies and state workers and beneficiaries that the legislature had not passed a budget.
Nothing could be further from the truth.
A curiosity in Minnesota state budget politics is our reliance on "the forecast", a projection of tax revenues and expenditures done by the state economist. His February release (usually arrives on the first week of March) defines how much money the government can spend in the next biennium. We are required to have a balanced budget, and we can't borrow for current spending. So while the Legislature comes to St. Paul in January, all the activity up to the forecast is prelude. The real action starts from that moment.
The action includes setting broad spending targets for 10 budget categories, and detailed budgets for each one. All of this was done over the next six weeks. Before our Passover/Easter break in mid-April, the entire set of 10 bills were passed off the floors of the House and Senate.
Of course none of the 10 were in full agreement between the two chambers so there has to be a conference committee for each. The governor's commissioners and staff are invited to the committees to review the work. The expectation was that, while a commissioner can't negotiate on behalf of a governor, they could signal areas of agreement or disagreement. This would provide us almost six weeks to figure out where common ground would be. We would move the reports on budget items as we found conference reports the governor agreed with.
But Governor Dayton took and has held stubbornly to the idea that he had to have a "global solution" to the budget. Regardless of approving of any one of the bills he would insist on a total budget number, which would force all discussion through what was to be a $3.7 billion tax increase, funded almost entirely by individual income taxes on the top 5% of income earners. In short, nothing should pass unless the tax increase was agreed.
(Dayton relented on one bill, the very small agriculture department bill. He later said he felt duped into signing it because it included policy provisions on streamlining department operations. He seems to this day quite chagrined that the ag bill got through.)
In this period he proposed a solution that our legal scholars on Ricochet will find quite bizarre. A conference report is signed by its committee members before coming to the floor of the two chambers. It cannot be amended, only accepted or returned to the committee. What Governor Dayton seemed to propose was that the committees would sign reports and send them to the two chambers, which would pass them and offer them to the governor. There they would sit waiting in limbo until all 9 appeared, at which point the Governor could choose which ones he wanted. Those he did not would not be vetoed but sent back to the Legislature to get them to undo their votes and send them back to conference committees. This is not only unique, it would appear unconstitutional. The governor can sign, not sign and allow to pass, or veto. He doesn't get "send it back to the chef." As one of our leaders observed, the Governor seemed to want to pick government as if off a menu.
This menu approach persisted even after we had convinced him the first plan would not work. Commissioners would not negotiate, and for five weeks we danced around the issue of what does the governor want, what will he sign, and why won't he tell us? These were lost weeks. In retrospect others have suggested perhaps we should have just sent him the bills and forced vetoes, so we could be back to a second round of budget bills earlier. But I'm not convinced that would have avoided where we are. He was fixated on this tax increase, which would have funded an extra 15% growth in government over the biennium beyond the increase of 6% we were offering.
By the beginning of the last week of the Legislature, we realized time was up, and we had to get the bills to him. Time was growing short.
Stay tuned tomorrow for Minnesota shutdown diary 3: Compromise is half a spreadsheet
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Comments :
Dec '10
Re: Minnesota Shutdown Diary 2: The Menu
That's interesting stuff, King. I get the feeling that Dayton is in way over his head on this one. He doesn't seem to have too much in terms of political skills, either with the public at large or with legislators. And, of course, the tax increase will never bring in close to as much as the static models say it will (but you know that better than I).
Apr '11
Re: Minnesota Shutdown Diary 2: The Menu
Thanks for the updates. Dayton clearly believes that the shutdown benefits he and the democrats. How is that being perceived in the media? What program or programs does he claim will be harmed by the budget that passed?
Dec '10
Re: Minnesota Shutdown Diary 2: The Menu
This is interesting stuff and I wish we had the same kind of diary available from our legislature, in Florida. Partisanship aside (our governor is new and Republican), we seem to have quite a mess in our capital and the governor's numbers are tumbling, but we don't really know why we have the mess, only the more final results of actions. I think I will copy my state Senator on this thread and ask him if we could get more insight. We can't get it from news sources, as they lean left and treat bad news from Tallahassee as a cause for celebration and snark.