Minnesota Shutdown Diary 3: Compromise is Half a Spreadsheet
For those of you new to this series, see the first two entries here and here.
Minnesota's constitution requires that in odd-number years the Legislature must adjourn on the Monday after the third Saturday of May. That date was rapidly approaching with now about a month having passed since the budget had gone to conference committees. Little had been learned of what the governor would negotiate on, as his commissioners continued to say they were not authorized to do so. Publicly, the governor was silent except to say he wanted a tax increase and wanted a full budget agreed to before signing any spending bills.
So on the Monday before adjournment the Governor finally spoke through a new offer that he called a compromise. In it he agrees not to repay a shift in state transfers to school districts that had helped finance the previous budget deficit. Of the remaining gap of $3.6 billion, he had initially offered in March tax increases of $3.356 billion, largely out of an income tax increase on the top 5%. He was now willing, he said to reduce that to a tax on the top 2%, estimated to raise $1.8 billion. This would hit couples earning over $300,000 and singles earning over $180,000. The letter provides pretty good detail of the tax proposal.
What it lacked was ANY statement of the $1.928 billion in cuts. If you look at the last page of that letter I've linked you will see only the vaguest references to unspecified cuts. Throughout the week and indeed through to the shutdown, the Administration never release details of what those cuts would look like. This meant that all the interest groups promised goodies with the $3.356 billion in tax increases could think they would still get theirs, though $1.5 billion of them would be disappointed.
Almost immediately, public employee unions started rallies holding pre-printed signs saying "Tax the richest 2%." They were sure the additional money would help shield them from several reform proposals, chief among them a proposal to use a soft hiring freeze to reduce the state workforce by 15% by 2015. The press has largely ignored a report that showed 22% of state workers would most likely retire by then. Then again, 15% fewer workers means 15% fewer dues-paying union members, so not hard to understand why the union leaders oppose this proposal.
We were determined at that point to just pass our proposal without any tax increases, since we had already adopted a budget of $34 billion over the $30 billion we had spent last time (plus, if you want owing the school districts money and what the federal government spent in its stimulus money on states.) Due to delaying tactics of the DFL minority our conference reports (which cannot be amended) took more than three days to pass. With this, it turned out, they had succeeded in making it impossible to get the entire budget on the Governor's desk until Saturday. That would permit Dayton to hold the budget through the Legislature's deadline before vetoing it. We were pretty sure he would, but if he wanted a solution why would he have coordinated the delays with the DFL? Why did he wait until Tuesday to veto all the bills?
Did he want it to end this way? Did Governor Dayton want the shutdown? And why? All this and more in our fourth edition: I Can't Serve You, I'm Busy Planning a Shutdown
- Comment (1)
- · Quote
- · UnfollowFollow (0)
Comments :
Dec '10
Re: Minnesota Shutdown Diary 3: Compromise is Half a Spreadsheet
Did Governor Dayton want the shutdown? And why?
Yes. It's the Clinton gambit. Republicans always get blamed for shutdowns. I'd like to think that this time around both at the national and state levels that the meme isn't petulant Republicans unwilling to compromise but irresponsible Democrats unwilling to grasp reality.
But I'm not optimistic.