The Ax-Man cometh Gov. Tim Pawlenty will announce unallotment targets – or something like that – at 2 p.m. on Tuesday, according to the PiPress. This isn’t the actual unallotment, but rather an announcement of his plan. In theory, he’s still open to hearing other voices, but given T-Paw’s record on listening to people who disagree with him on budget issues, that’s not likely to move him off target. The likely targets? Local government, health care, higher ed, and fancy footwork with funding shifts for K-12 education.
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Tag Archives: budget
News Day: The Ax-Man cometh / SPPS stumbling out of the starting gate / Charter schools / Somali teens / Iran protests
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News Day: MN economy’s “gruesome bookends” / IRV or RCV – now legal in MN / Iran elections today / more
MN economy’s “gruesome bookends” Steve Perry writes in MinnPost that Minnesota’s dwindling unemployment insurance fund and tax revenues tied increasingly to the business cycle offer two troubling “bookends” of evidence that the state’s fiscal troubles will continue far into the future. On the UI front, Minnesota has less than two months of reserves, with a year considered healthy, and is expected to join the ranks of states borrowing from the feds to pay unemployment benefits, and running up a debt that will further complicate future budgets.
On the tax side, Perry cites a complex analysis offered by state economist Tom Stinson in a PIM interview with Perry, which explains in greater depth what Perry summarizes for MinnPost as:
To make a long story short, and somewhat over-simple: Through-the-roof revenues from capital gains and bonus income during the bubble years both distorted and inflated state revenues, and led states to cut taxes and expand spending in unsustainable ways.
The PIM interview includes some Stinson recommendations about needed changes in the tax structure, including raising some taxes, changes in capital gains tax treatment, and much more. From a journalistic point of view, it’s somewhat amusing to see Perry in MinnPost referencing and simplifying Perry in PIM. I’m glad he did, as the PIM article is both important and tough reading. Its conclusion: Minnesota tax revenues will not return to pre-recession levels until 2014.
IRV is in The MN Supreme Court ruled that Instant Run-off Voting, aka Ranked Choice Voting, is legal and constitutional and Minneapolis can go ahead and use the choice already approved by voters a couple of years ago. Opponents say they will keep on suing, in other cities that adopt IRV, and probably also in challenges to results of elections using IRV. They don’t really care what the voters say, or what the Supreme Court says. Their lawsuits just increase the costs of IRV for every city that adopts it. The St. Paul City Council is expected to consider IRV now, having delayed consideration to see what the Supreme Court would say.
The FairVote Minnesota press release explains the process:
RCV is a tested, accepted and implementable system by which voters rank candidates in order of preference, ensuring majority winners in single-winner races where there are more than two candidates on the ballot. Under RCV, voters cast their vote for their favorite candidate knowing that if he or she doesn’t gather enough votes to be one of the top two finishers, their votes will count toward their second choice. Votes cast for the least popular candidate are not “wasted”, but rather redistributed to more popular candidates, based on the voters’ second choices, until one candidate emerges with a majority of votes. In multi-winner elections, like the Minneapolis Park Board RCV ensures majority rule while empowering small groups of voters with greater opportunity to elect a candidate that represents them.
Politics in Minnesota explains the expected political impacts of IRV:
Since, of course, the DFL dominates Minneapolis politics, this could let marginalized urban conservatives and independents efficiently consolidate their votes around more conservative candidates. On the other hand, it also frees those to the left of the DFL mainstream to vote for Greens and other lefties, and then safely set a second choice for a liberal DFLer.
You can’t get there from here Stretches of I-94 and I-35W in the heart of the metro area will be closed this weekend. The Strib summary: “All northbound lanes on 35W will be closed from Crosstown Hwy. 62 to 94; all of 35W’s southbound lanes will be closed from S. 60th Street to the crosstown (which will remain open). Westbound lanes of 94 will be closed between 35W and Hwy. 280; access from the Cretin-Vandalia exit in St. Paul will be blocked.”
Minneapolis Police Department layoffs No police officers get the ax, but 17 community service officers will be laid off, a consequence of less-than-expected federal stimulus funding, reports the Strib. In February, Mayor RT Rybak thought the city would get $5 million for police — the actual figure is now down to $3.73 million.
World/National Headlines
Worth-less The personal wealth of Americans dropped by $1.3 trillion in the first quarter of 2009, pushing back to 2004 levels, reports AP. The 2.6 percent decline, mostly in the value of homes and stocks, came on top of earlier losses during 2007-08. On the other hand, “Americans’ personal savings rate zoomed to 5.7 percent in April, the highest since 1995.”
Peru protests move to Lima About 20,000 marched on Congress, amid clouds of tear gas, reports BBC, protesting last week’s violence against indigenous people blocking roads in the Amazon region and protesting against oil and gas drilling.
Confrontations between police and indigenous protesters last week led to the deaths of more than 50 people.
Congress in Lima voted on Wednesday to suspend two controversial land decrees.
Aung San Suu Kyi BBC reports that the trial of Nobel Peace Prize winner Aung San Suu Kyi has been continued to June 26. Suu Kyi has been under house arrest for most of the past 19 years, but her house arrest was scheduled to end in May. Instead, a bizaare incident involving an American who swam a lake to enter her home uninvited led to the government charging Suu Kyi with violating the terms of her house arrest. According to BBC, “Observers believe that Burma’s military leaders will seize on the incident to keep her behind bars during what they say will be multi-party elections in 2010.”
Iran elections today Huge turnouts are reported in today’s presidential elections in Iran, where President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad faces a strong challenge from the more moderate former prime minister Mir Hossein Mousavi, after an intense campaign in which the economy was a major issue. Two other candidates are also on the ballot. BBC notes that:
Iran is ruled under a system known as Velayat-e Faqih, or “Rule by the Supreme Jurist”, who is currently Ayatollah Ali Khamenei….
But the constitution also stipulates that the people are the source of power and the country holds phased presidential and parliamentary elections every four years.
War Reports
Pakistan A senior Islamic cleric was killed in Lahore, reports BBC. The suicide bomber attacked Sarfraz Naeemi at the Jaamia Naeemia madrassa around the time of Friday prayers. Naeemi had denounced the Taliban as “un-Islamic” and also denounced suicide bombing
News Day: Pawlenty: Layoffs coming / Misleading Strib headline / Peach-glazed pig cheeks / Tweeting the revolution / Karen fleeing / more
Pawlenty: Layoffs coming Gov. Tim Pawlenty said Tuesday that he will announce state spending cuts within two weeks, reports the PiPress, and the cuts will mean layoffs for some state employees. The governor also plans to use “budget shifts” to delay state payments to public schools. Pawlenty vetoed budget plans sent to him by the state legislature, leaving a $2.7 billion shortfall in the two-year state budget that takes effect July 1, and leaving him with the authority to make unilateral “unallotments” to balance the budget.
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News Day: Veto forecast / Charter school in trouble / New car rules / more
Even without the legislature in session, the forecast for Minnesota is high winds and lots of heat today.
T-Paw QOTD “The legislators are gone away and they are not coming back.”
Health care, bullying, transportation More end-of-session news: Pawlenty plan is recipe for massive job losses from Workday Minnesota, and Pawlenty talks unallotment, veto plans from Session Daily. Getting down to specifics:
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News Day: Minnesota’s midnight madness / MN Job Watch / NYT and plagiarism / more
Midnight madness Just moments before midnight, the legislature passed a new tax bill, but it faces certain veto by the governor, MinnPost reports. Governor Tim Pawlenty claimed that he offered a “choice” to DFLers in the legislature, which came down to: you can keep me from making unilateral cuts by agreeing to those cuts, which would make them … not unilateral. Or, as Sen. Tarryl Clark put it: “He left us with two choices. We could do it his way or he would do it his way.’’
In other action during the closing days of the session:
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News Day: Last legislative day today / Eating the evidence / Housing, foreclosure news / War reports / more
Governor No: More cuts to health care, education, local government aid In a grueling and emotional session on Sunday, May 17, the House failed to overturn Governor Tim Pawlenty’s veto of its tax and finance omnibus bill, by an 85-49 party-line vote that saw two DFLers defecting to the Republican side. By an 87-47 vote, the House also failed to overturn the Pawlenty line-item veto that ends medical assistance for General Assistance recipients in mid-2010. The prospect: deep cuts in health and human services, education, and local government aid, dictated by the governor to the legislature or unilaterally imposed as unallotments in the year ahead. Full article here
Comic banana relief C’mon folks – you know we all need something to laugh at after the dismal news from Capitol Hill in St. Paul. So here it is — from North Carolina, via BBC:
A US teenager who was thwarted in an attempt to rob an internet cafe armed with a hidden banana ate the “weapon” before he was arrested, police say.
The shop owner and customers overcame the teen, who held the banana under his t-shirt and said it was a gun.
Ash borer week Emerald Ash Borer Awareness Week started yesterday in 16 states, including Minnesota and Wisconsin. Joe Soucheray says Minneosta has 937 million ash trees, or about 179 per person. For more info, photos, advice, and questions, go to the official emerald ash borer site.
Foreclosures up again in April The Calculated Risk blog reports on Realty Trac figures for April, which show an upswing in foreclosures after the end of an informal , voluntary moratorium.
[F]oreclosure filings – default notices, auction sale notices and bank repossessions – were reported on 342,038 U.S. properties during the month, an increase of less than 1 percent from the previous month and an increase of 32 percent from April 2008. The report also shows that one in every 374 U.S. housing units received a foreclosure filing in April, the highest monthly foreclosure rate ever posted since RealtyTrac began issuing its report in January 2005.
In more bad news, good news, bad news, MinnPost reports that home prices fell 14% nationally and 12.9% locally in April, while the Strib reports that home sales were up by 23% — but that the growth came in “lender-mediated” (read foreclosure-related) sales, and that traditional sales fell.
The worst news is reserved for minority and immigrant homeowners, as reported by the Pew Research Center: “The boom-and-bust cycle in the U.S. housing market over the past decade and a half has generated greater gains and larger losses for minority groups than it has for whites.”
Fong Lee trial The PiPress reports that the civil suit against police officers and the city of Minneapolis over the police shooting of 19-year-old Fong Lee in 2006 is set to begin this morning.
World/National Headlines
Robbing pension funds TPM’s Josh Marshall notes that Bush appointee Charles Millard, who headed the Pension Benefits Guaranty Corporation, is under investigation for “a suspicion pattern of communications with big investment houses just before Millard piled tons of [Pension Benefits Guaranty] money into their funds.”
Gay marriage: Bad for business? The latest GOP attack on gay marriage says it’s bad for business, AP reports. GOP chair Michael Steele says gay marriage will hurt business because — horrors! — more people will be eligible for health care coverage. Well, here’s an alternative — maybe we could just have single-payer, national health care coverage? OR —as the Daily Kos suggested later:
And if we want to really polish our fiscally conservative creds, we can outlaw marriage for everyone! Especially heterosexuals! Because they reproduce and add even more more dependents for the rolls of small-business health care programs!
Not the dog again! The Republican National Committee has a new TV ad out criticizing — the presidential puppy. The Daily Kos recalls that this puts Bo in good company, along with FDR’s Fala, also the subject of Republican attacks.
Record time for broken promises The health care industry promise to slow the annual health care spending growth rate? Forget that, reports the Daily Kos. Now the Hospital Association’s executive vice president, Richard J. Pollack denies that any promise was ever made. Daily Kos reprints the signed promise letter.
Congress Party in India The Washington Post reports a big win for India’s ruling Congress Party, and a second term for Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, “a former economist who has championed programs for the poor and pushed for rural development and economic reforms.”
War Report
Sri Lanka BBC reports that the Sri Lanka president declared victory over the Tamil Tiger rebels, although some fighting continues. On Sunday, the NYT reported that the Tigers also acknowledged the war was over, coming to “a bitter end.” By Monday morning, BBC joined other media in reporting that the Tamil Tiger leader, Velupillai Prabhakaran, was dead.
Pakistan BBC reported May 16 that a car bomb in Peshawar killed at least 11 people, and a U.S. drone killed 10 people in the North Waziristan tribal region.
Somalia BBC reports that President Barack Obama’s top official on Africa, Jonnie Carson, expressed concern over possible arms sales by Eritrea to al Shabaab militants in Somalia, and also over reports of Chechen and South Asian fighters in the al Shabaab forces. Eritrean government officials denied the charges. Meanwhile, President Sheikh Sharif Sheikh Ahmed told BBC that he has asked his former ally and Islamist spiritual leader Sheikh Hassan Dahir Aweysto negotiate an end to fighting in Mogadishu, but that the al Shabaab leader refused.
Chad/Sudan BBC: Chad’s government admitted air raids inside Sudan, saying they had destroyed seven groups of mercenaries.
Governor No: More cuts to health care, education, local government aid
In a grueling and sometimes-tearful session on Sunday, May 17, the House failed to overturn Governor Tim Pawlenty’s veto of its tax and finance omnibus bill, by an 85-49 party-line vote that saw two DFLers defecting to the Republican side. By an 87-47 vote, the House also failed to overturn the Pawlenty line-item veto that ends medical assistance for 30,000 General Assistance recipients in mid-2010. In the Strib, Lori Sturdevant summarized:
DFLers warned that depriving the poor of routine medical care would only cost society more, as those now covered by the vetoed program seek medical care at costly emergency rooms. But money was not the focus of the House debate; morality was. This somber, emotion-laden debate seemed to be about Minnesota’s soul. DFLers invoked Scripture and, in some instances, shed tears as they pleaded with Pawlenty’s fellow Republicans to put politics aside and vote to preserve health care for “the least of these.” They pointed out that the bulk of the program’s beneficiaries suffer from mental illness, chemical dependency, and chronic disorders including diabetes, arthritis and heart disease.
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News Day: Governor No: Line item vetos and unallotment / Cop pleads guilty / Beware the borer / more
Governor No No new taxes. No special session. No compromise. That’s essentially the message that Governor Pawlenty delivered with $400 million in line item vetoes and a threat that he will balance the budget by unallotment if the legislature does not agree to his terms. Rachel Stassen Berger’s PiPress blog describes who gets hit by the biggest line item veto:
In signing the Health and Human Services bill the Legislature sent him, he slashed $381 million in funding for General Assistance Medical Care, a health insurance program for adult Minnesotans who don’t have health insurance but may not be eligible or may not yet be approved for other subsidized health care programs.
Health insurance through GAMC is only available to folks who make $650 a month, about $7,800 a year, or less. Many covered under GAMC are homeless. .. (Worth noting: Pawlenty cut the program’s funding only in 2011, which gives the Legislature next year to work with him on finding funding.)
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News Day: Waiting for the veto / “Independent” contractors / Playing to lose / more
Passed, passed, passed and waiting The legislature passed a number of bills yesterday, and the stack on T-Paw’s desk continues to grow. Will he sign or will he veto? Only the governor knows for sure. Among the bills awaiting decision:
• Flat funding for P-12 schools and cuts for higher ed. Minnesota Miracle and expanded Q-Comp both lose out.
• House and Senate leaders offered to plug about $2 billion of the budget gap with a school funding shift and use of budget reserves. That still leaves a billion dollar gap, which T-Paw wants to fill by borrowing and the House and Senate leadership want to fill with taxes.
• The House and Senate passed a “lights-on” bill, which would keep the state running to July 2010, even if no budget agreement is reached by Monday.
• The House and Senate passed the state bonding bill by wide and seemingly veto-proof margins, providing $300 million that would quickly create up to 3,000 construction jobs, provide flood relief to the Red River Valley and fund a new museum and rail projects in the St. Paul area.
• Minnesota’s nuclear moratorium stands, as the Senate agreed to a compromise energy policy bill.
Freeze? What freeze? Though the governor declared a freeze on state hiring in February 2008, MPR reports that “The number of people on the state’s payroll has grown even though thousands of government employees have retired since Gov. Tim Pawlenty issued an executive order last year to implement hiring restrictions at state agencies.”
MN Job Watch One day after Park Nicollet announced that it will cut 240 jobs, the Hennepin County Medical Center said it will cut 100 jobs, and will require supervisors and administrators to take a two-day unpaid leave.
The U.S. Department of Labor reported an increase in initial unemployment claims last week: “In the week ending May 9, the advance figure for seasonally adjusted initial claims was 637,000, an increase of 32,000 from the previous week’s revised figure of 605,000.” The total number of people receiving unemployment compensation remained at a record high.
A new twist on “independent contractors” comes in response to a state law that targeted abuses in the construction industry, reports the Strib.
The laws, which took effect Jan. 1, take aim at an old problem — contractors who illegally classify their employees as independent contractors to cut labor costs in the roofing, drywalling, remodeling and other building trades.
Such workers are shortchanged on Social Security, unemployment benefits and coverage for job injuries, and many don’t report all their income to state and federal tax collectors, a 2007 legislative audit said.
Now, often with employer encouragement, such workers are registering in record numbers as LLCs — Limited Liability Companies — with filings of new LLC registrations more than double the pace of a year ago. The situation is complicated by what workers and employers agree are onerous registration procedures for independent contractors that resulted from the new law, as well as by employers’ continuing reluctance tohire workers as employees, withhold their taxes and pay workers compensation premiums.
Playing to lose The Minnesota Spokesman-Recorder reports that black athletes at the U of M are lagging significantly behind their white counterparts in graduation rates, and have not kept up with national improvements in black athletes’ graduation rates.
Unfortunately, at the University of Minnesota, the school’s top three revenue sports — football, men’s basketball and women’s basketball — are not doing as well in graduating their Black players. Their rates are 40 percent (football), 57 percent (women’s basketball), and 38 percent (men’s basketball), compared to Whites in football (73 percent), men’s basketball (50 percent) and women’s basketball (67 percent).
New power plant in Chisago county The Strib reports that a new, gas-fired power plant in Chisago County came one step closer to reality with tax breaks passed by the legislature. The plant still faces the PUC approval process.
The $300 million Sunrise River Energy station, an 855-megawatt natural gas-fired plant, would open by 2013 pending regulatory approvals, according to the company that would build it, LS Power, a private utility with offices in New Jersey and Missouri.
War Reports
Sri Lanka BBCA local doctor said that government forces shelled a hospital for a second day, killing 50 people, and government forces denied the report. Satellite images and UN sources seemed to confirm reports of shelling. Journalists cannot confirm or deny the reports, because the government does not allow journalists in the area.
DR Congo BBC Rwandan Hutu rebels killed more than a hundred people in the eastern DR Congo over the weekend. BBC notes: “Many of the rebels fled to DR Congo after the 1994 Rwandan genocide, in which some its leaders were accused of taking part.”
Pakistan BBC A school girl’s account of fleeing Swat:
… My sympathies are neither with the Taleban nor the army. Both have been cruel to us.
The Taleban have destroyed us and the army is murdering our people. …
National/World headlines
Burma BBC The Burmese government has taken ailing Nobel Laureate and opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi from her home, where she has been under house arrest for 19 years, to prison. She is being charged with violating conditions of her house arrest after an American man, John Yettaw, was arrested after swimming across a lake to her house and staying there secretly for two days. Her lawyers say the man was not invited and BBC correspondent Jonathan Head says that, “it looks as though this is a pretext to keep her detained until elections due in 2010 which the generals think will give them some legitimacy.”
Haitians drown in attempt to reach U.S. NYT At least 10 of 27 would-be immigrants died when their boat capsized off the Florida coast.
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News Day: Closing the door to college / Five days, a billion dollars / No blood on the gun / more
I’m on the road, so this blog post is short and late — I hope tomorrow will be earlier and longer.
Closing the door to college Minnesota has had a proud tradition of higher education and of making higher education available to its residents. That may be ending, reports MinnPost:
Tuition is rising faster in Minnesota than in most other states. It has doubled since 1999 at the U of M. ..
Meanwhile, state spending for higher education has stuck flat for years in some areas and dropped by double digits in others. Now it is set to fall sharply as the governor and the Legislature wrestle through the current financial crisis.
Although job retraining is essential in times of high unemployment, and although enrollment at Minnesota State Colleges and Universities (MNSCU) jumped by 14% in January 2009, Governor Pawlenty announced a $40 million cut in higher education funding this year, on top of the 28% drop from 2000 to 2007.
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Mary Turck