Why isn’t someone taking him to court?

BY ED FELIEN

Governor Pawlenty has usurped the power of the Legislature.  He has taken it upon himself to write the budget for the State.  The Minnesota Constitu-tion clearly gives that authority to the Legislature, but, through his process of unallotment, he has rewritten the Legislature’s budget and trampled on the Minnesota Constitution.

Why isn’t someone stopping him? The Minnesota Legislature passed legislation that balanced the budget.  But it included restoring taxes to the wealthy to the level they were under Republican governors 20 years ago.  Pawlenty vetoed those taxes on his rich friends and then proceeded to cut programs and services.

He took money from the tobacco allotment fund by doing some tricky bookkeeping and promising to pay it back sometime in the future (of course, he’s not running for re-election, so someone else will have to figure out how to pay that back).

He slashed funding to schools and the university (making a college education a privilege of the rich, not a right of every citizen). He cut medical aid to the poor.  State Sen. John Marty, DFL-Roseville, said: “The governor’s action is in line with his recent veto of the anti-bullying bill. Tim Pawlenty has become the schoolyard bully; he is picking on the sickest, most vulnerable people in our state.  While the governor tried to minimize the impact of his cuts on cities, schools and hospitals, those cuts will cause real harm to real people. But the unallotments where the governor showed the least compassion were in the cuts to health and human services.

He used a long string of adjectives to decry the rapid growth of General Assistance Medical Care—even though this growth is caused by more adults losing their jobs and their health care, and in desperation turning to GAMC.”
He is creating a major crisis for all the cities in the state.  The situation for Minneapolis is most critical.  Cam Gordon, council member from the 2nd Ward, said: “Yet again, he has chosen to balance the State’s books on the backs of local governments. Local Government Aid to Minneapolis will be cut by $8.5 million in 2009 and $21.3 million in 2010, for a total cut of $30 million through 2010.

“With the governor’s action today, on top of his previous draconian cuts to LGA, the City of Minneapolis receives 43 percent less from the State than we did six years ago.”

The real kicker? The State of Minnesota is still using Minneapolis as a piggy bank. On top of the income tax the State collects from Minneapolis residents and workers, they take about $74 million off the top from our property taxes, and rake in $390 million in sales taxes generated in Minneapolis. Given what Pawlenty did today, the State now only returns 15 percent of those dollars to Minneapolis and prohibits us from collecting any kind of income tax ourselves and restricts the use of our citywide sales tax (.05 percent that generated $29.5 million in 2007) for use on Convention Center maintenance and debt.

“The Minnesota Miracle has been destroyed, a victim of the misguided, bankrupt state financing philosophy of Tim Pawlenty. I will be working with my colleagues to radically reframe the relationship between the City and the State, so that we can keep more of the nearly half-billion dollars in non-income tax revenue we generate for the State every year. We must stop depending on the Local Government Aid that Pawlenty has made clear we can no longer rely on.”
Senator Linda Berglin, DFL-Minneapolis, was quoted in the Legal Ledger: “Gov. Tim Pawlenty may be greatly overstepping his authority by proposing delayed payments to state health care programs and shifting money between accounts under his unallotment proposal, according to the chair of the state Senate Health and Human Services Finance Division.

“I think there are some things he’s doing that he doesn’t have the authority to do,” Sen. Berglin said. “The governor does not have the authority to make appropriations or change policy, and he’s proposing to do that in some cases.”
In an editorial in the Star Tribune, Lori Sturdevant wrote: “Unallotment should be challenged.  How long are the children going to whine? If you think the Governor overstepped his authority, then take it to court; otherwise, please take your little temper tantrum to your room and cry silently into your stuffed animals.”

That’s strong stuff coming from the Star Tribune, but it clearly states the case. Pawlenty is trying to show off as the Strongman, El Caudillo, the leader on a white horse.  It’s time to pull him down off his saddle and bring this situation down to earth.  If we don’t stop him now, he’s on course to becoming another George W. Bush, and then we’d have to spend four or eight years listening to whining about impeachment.