(I'd like to thank Sen. Dibble for his insights into the session that just completed. - promoted by The Big E)
The Minnesota legislature adjourned the 2009-2010 session on May 17. The major focus of our work was addressing an additional mid-cycle $1 billion deficit. Just 10 days before session was constitutionally required to end, the Minnesota Supreme Court ruled the Governor's 2009 unallotment actions were illegal. This was an important victory upholding a fundamental aspect of our system, the balance of powers between the branches of government. However our budget balancing task was greatly complicated and tripled in one fell swoop.
It was solely up to the legislature to protect our core principles of compassion and opportunity. It was also solely up to the legislature conclude the session with some measure of civility. Minnesotans have long since made clear their impatience with total gridlock and mean-spirited partisanship. In light of the fact that only one party has been responsible for that dynamic, someone had to play the part of the grown up, leverage as much as possible to protect those most vulnerable, and take our case for change, especially in the executive branch, to the people. We can be especially proud of the fact that health care for the tens of thousands of people whom the Governor would completely disregard was protected.
Occasional Minnesota Governor and full-time 2012 Republican presidential candidate Tim Pawlenty had to take care of some state business today. He appointed two people to the MN Supreme Court including a new Chief Justice. He appointed Lorie Gildea as Chief Justice and added David Stras to the court as well.
Gildea is a far right, ideological conservative just like Pawlenty. In fact, her husband, Andy, is on the Republican House Caucus staff. U of M professor Stras is also a far right idealogue. He wrote a friend of the court brief in support of Pawlenty's unallotment.
As an aside, it's going to be interesting to have Gildea going to the legislature to beg for money for our state's judicial system. Especially ironic considering ideological conservatives believe that government is the problem and are looking at ways to slash the size of it. Gildea gets the job because the outgoing Chief Justice, Eric Magnuson, was probably sick of how underfunded our state's system is. At least, Magnuson complained about it incessantly and I surmise it really made him frustrated that he couldn't do anything about it.
Possible Pawlenty unallotment gambit?
These two appointments mean that the justices are now for unallotment by a 4-3 margin. Pawlenty's unallotment was ruled unconstitutional by a 4-3 margin. Is there a chance that Pawlenty will unallot? Is he banking that a new court will side with him?
Relax. The chances are slim, the precedent has been set.
Our legal system is based upon the concept of legal precedent. The law of the land is that unallotment, Pawlenty-style, is illegal. The attorney's I've spoken to think that there is a very slim chance Pawlenty would try to unallot and push the court to rule in his favor.
The question is ... would Pawlenty have the gall to try a gambit such as this?
Jeff at MNPublius has been railing on this for the past day, and rightfully so: Tim Pawlenty's defeat at the hands of Minnesota's constitution is a big deal.
The issue with gubernatorial unallotment is not that the budget was imbalanced and Pawlenty had to do something. Concurrently, the issue is not the existence of the unallotment power itself. The issue is that Pawlenty put his own political ambition ahead of his oath to uphold our state's constitution and the laws passed under the aegis of that document.
Going forward, our own Aaron Klemz makes some great points: The Supreme Court's decision is a challenge for DFL gubernatorial endorsee Margaret Anderson Kelliher. If she takes Klemz's first path -- force the veto, fight the override battle -- then the risks are high, and she could come out a winner. If she takes a third, unnoted option and gives Pawlenty what he wants, then I think the DFL primary quickly becomes a dicey affair for the Speaker and her campaign.
If a deal is made, I don't see how it ends well for anyone -- the underprivileged affected by the resulting budget slashes, or the DFL's standard bearers running for statewide office. Such a deal would at least in some way (probably most ways) ratify Pawlenty's unconstitutional action, putting us further from the bottom line our government needs to be meeting in its commitment to all our state's citizens.
Let's get this out of the way - there will be no victory lap for anyone on the Brayton v. Pawlenty decision, except for Galen Robinson. Exultant DFLer's take note: the only way out of this box won't be pleasant. And the hopes of Margaret Anderson Kelliher's campaign for Governor may turn on what the end result looks like. At a minimum, it forecloses the possibility that she will step down as Speaker, since this will be a crucial moment for her and for the DFL majority in the Legislature.
'Breaking,' I believe, is the relevant term for this:
The Minnesota Supreme Court has dealt Gov. Tim Pawlenty a significant blow by ruling he exceeded his authority when he slashed $2.7 billion from the state budget.
I'll update this post as I find more stuff.
There are a lot of potential scenarios here. Anyone who cares to speculate and/or exult, that's what the comments are for. Clearly, TBag's intent of sliding through the legislative session with few problems and plenty of little 'victories' (for him, that is, not for Minnesotans as a whole) ain't gonna be reality. And that's righteous.
Update
Here's the opinion. Almost half of it's a dissent from the court's right-wing bloc.
The item linked at the top of this post, from 'CCO, has been updated to include reaction from Unilateral Timmy himself.
I'm going to indulge in some idle speculation myself, below the fold. Any informational updates will continue to appear here, on the front page.
UpdateX2
Many of the local progressive blogs also have reaction to today's ruling, but I'm just going to link the following (both from Minnesota Independent) as particularly relevant to the 'what now?' issue. Here's reaction from high-profile Dems like DFL-endorsed gubernatorial nominee Margaret Anderson Kelliher, and GOP endorsed candidate Tom Emmer.
Our Democracy was based on certain ideals like a constitution that protected rights of people and like separation of powers into three branches of government. Constitutionally making corporations into people has broken the rights of people. The budget and policy rights of the legislature have been taken by presidents and governors. Our Governor Tim Pawlenty's deliberate planned use of unallotment to essentially remove legislature power is part of a court filing, quoted in one of today's recommended diaries on DailyKOS:
It would dramatically change the structure of government created by the Minnesota Constitution if this Court were to sanction a process in which this or any other Governor could sign appropriations into law, then veto revenue bills, and then use unallotment to ignore legislative appropriations and to rewrite the budget according to the Governor's own legislative priorities. This in fact is what has occurred. This use of unallotment was unauthorized by any law and was unconstitutional.
The Uptake will be streaming live coverage of the oral arguments today before Minnesota's Supreme Court.
The executive power has also been abused through how the law is enforced. Republican governors have particularly not enforced selected laws. Now judges and sheriffs are now getting into the process of overruling legislatures through how and which laws are enforced. This totally violates the principles of separation of powers, democracy and values of fairness.
In perhaps the most bizarre twist of all, my local Ramsey county Sheriff's race now has a group of ***DFL*** supporters and perhaps the campaign arguing for voting for the Sheriff based on legislative policy issue stances! My endorsed candidate, Matt Bostrom, from the beginning of the campaign declared that legislative issues are off limits unless they are very directly related to the Sheriff's office. For there is no perception of fairness when officiating civil rights issues when then personal stances of law enforcement officials is known. For example, Sheriff Fletcher is widely known to be a pro-war advocate. Especially law enforcement and judges ought to be selected by character, integrity and fairness (as well as ability to do the job).
So the real questions are: Do we stand up for principles of democracy and separation of powers always? Or is the DFL as bad as Republicans in erosion of Democratic principles when it is in our policy favor? Will we be suddenly for unallotment and expanded gubernatorial powers when we have a Democratic governor?
Last night, on AM950 Radio's "Minnesota Matters - Friday Edition" show, we had State Senator Jim Carlson, DFL, SD-38 on, to discuss how Minnesota, under the "fiscally (non)conservative" Gov. Tim Pawlenty got the state into it's latest budgetary mess.
Well, we also talked about The Sons Of Nixon's Plumbers, a story that's not going away, and we played "False or False Witness!" too - Bachmann MotorMouth Overdrive's quote is below the fold, at the very end. But, the bulk of the show was how Gov. TBag deliberately put the State into an unbalanced budget, so TBag could exercise Unitary Executive Power (Nixon would be so proud!).
When the podcast/download becomes available, I'll update and link to it.
In the meantime, Senator Carlson's sheet explaining what we talked about is below the fold.
In a nutshell, here's what happened:
The February 2009 Forecast predicted revenues of $31.1 Billion (rounded). Knowing that number, Gov. TBag proceeded signed Spending Bills of $33.8 Billion (rounded) anyway.
This created a deficit from Governor-approved spending (remember, when TBag signed those spending bills, they were now law) and the Feb 2009 Forecast of $2.7 Billion (rounded). A bill to balance that deficit, HF-2323, was passed and presented to Gov. TBag to sign. Except, TBag didn't sign that revenue bill to balance the budget; he vetoed it.
Upon creating an unbalanced budget, TBag immediately claimed unilateral power to fix the problem he created, and then hit the campaign trail. As to TBag's actions creating an anticipated budget problem, then using powers to deal with unanticipated budget problems? The Court was not amused.
- WCCO has what is apparently intended as a cautionary message. People better not get the idea that this will be a serious problem for Gov. Pawlenty, the man whose presidential run is going to be 'CCO's ticket to an almost frantically longed-for ratings boost...in their own minds, anyway.
Though I've been having fun with debunking the right, I see a need to debunk something on the left too. Specifically, I'm referring to this moroseness afflicting many of us who were getting ready to party a year ago as we looked forward to a new Congress and new president. Plenty has gone wrong this year, sure. We poured our personal wealth and elbow grease into electing people who in some cases have disappointed us. It seems we're always having to give up something really good in hopes of getting just something.
However, a lot has gone right in this year ending tonight, more than many of us have recognized. The health care bill has sucked the air out of the proverbial room. More troops heading to Afghanistan has grabbed most of the attention available for foreign policy. The biggest complaint of many on the left, me included, has been the continuation of Bush policies in regard to civil liberties and human rights.
It's been long enough since I posted part 2 (and here's part 1) that I felt a need to explain the point of these posts again. My own experience is I thought this would be one post, and I was surprised when I finished part two that there was plenty for a part 3.
That's a good thing.
What got me to finally get on this today is something I just learned, and that I'm pretty sure is not common knowledge, but should be. Ever wondered why the Civil Rights Act was passed in 1964, but the Voting Rights Act was passed separately in 1965? Because the only way to get the Civil Rights Act past the conservative (including the dixiecrats who make up the base of the modern GOP) filibuster was to drop voting rights. Voting rights? And we thought dropping the public option was tough! But voting rights got through the next year, so don't anyone despair about having to do things incrementally.
So let's get started, and I think I'll start with what I expect will be the most controversial silver lining (you can tell me in comments if I'm right), the things that went right in regard to war crimes, human rights and civil liberties.
Of course the primary source for information and righteous opinion regarding yesterday's court decision spanking Gov. Tim Pawlenty for his abuse of unallotment is this very blog, i.e. scroll down to the posts by Grace Kelly and Joe Bodell. Very righteous opinion!
The other must-see was put together by Mike McIntee of The Uptake, and is posted at Daily Kos. His interview with David Lillehaug runs about twelve minutes.
Since this is unquestionably a setback for Guv. TBag - though the potential magnitude of it is still quite unclear, and it may be unwise to get too excited yet, even if you detest TPaw's governorship as much as I do - it's perhaps surprising local corporate media isn't trying to brush it off entirely on its golden boy's behalf.
Wow, while most of us saw Governor Pawlenty's use of unallotment as a total violation of legislative power, it is still very nicely reassuring when courts say the same thing:
It was the specific manner in which the Governor exercised his unallotment authority that trod upon the constitutional power of the Legislature, and the Legislature alone to make laws that, in the Court's opinion, was unconstitutional.
(snip)
The governor used unallotment rather that calling a special session of the legislature or vetoing the appropriations bill to balance the budget. He did this after singing numerous spending bills which taken together, he knew would not balance the budget unless revenues were raised. He used the unallotment statue to address a situation that was neither unknown nor unanticipated when the appropriations bills became law. The Governors actions in this instance differed from his use of unallotment in the Rukivina case. In that situation the governor used unallotment to protect the state from a financial crisis that was both unknown and unanticipated whiten the appropriation bills were signed.
(from an emailed copy of the court brief)
Good thing that the legislature is about to go into session, otherwise Governor Pawlenty would have to call a special session. Now Governor Pawlenty may have to learn the meaning of the word "negotiate".
the law requires the judge to take into account whether the plaintiffs have a reasonable likelihood of prevailing in the end, which means that Gearin thinks it's' reasonably likely that she will ultimately overturn Pawlenty's ruling.
Gearin specifies in the order that the governor's power of unallotment is constitutional, as previous court rulings have found, but the use of it in this specific instance was unconstitutional because it violated the balance of powers bwtween the executive and legislative branches of the state government.
It is noteworthy that the basis of her ruling is constitutional (not statutory) and the logic of her ruling would seem to apply to the entire unallotment, not just to the case of the few plaintiffs whose aid would have been cut off.
The constitutional vs. statutory point is important -- if Pawlenty's use of unallotment were simply a matter of law, that law could easily be changed. However, since the judge has found that there's a reasonable chance that Pawlenty has violated the state constitution, it puts T-Paw in a much more tenuous legal position.
Note to 2012 GOP convention delegates -- if the judge ultimately overturns Pawlenty's unallotment, it means he didn't actually keep to his reactionary promises on taxes and revenue.
As you may have noticed, I haven't written much lately. Normally and just going by past history, I really hate Teh XMas Season. I often get a case of ennui and angst this time of year and don't want to do anything. Strangely, the season doesn't seem to the problem this year. While the peanut isn't really old enough (15 months Wednesday) to understand XMas, becoming a father has changed my attitude.
Instead it seems that healthcare reform, the effects of unallotment and fears about the 2010 election have supplanted it.
In a time of America's desparate need for leadership combined with an unprecedented opportunity to fix how America does healthcare, America was given Sen. Harry Reid. Sen. Wetnoodle did his utmost, not just to grasp defeat from the jaws of possible victory, but to clasp that misbegotten, foul-smelling wretch to his chest in a loving embrace. Millions will be insured now which is good, but Congress protected the insurance industry when we had the chance to stop their evil ways. I kinda feel like Charlie Brown agreeing to try and kick the football again.
Tim Pawlenty is willing to stomp all over Minnesota's young, poor, elderly, disabled and mentall ill to further his presidential ambitions. Aw heck, he's willing to make all of us suffer but especially those least able to adapt to the changes. Sen. Linda Berglin (DFL-Mpls) described it best with her analogy that Pawlenty's idea of a diet plan was amputation. The real effects on real people's lives is going to be horrific.
"The federal government is running a Ponzi scheme on the Potomac, and it needs to come to an end." -- Tim Pawlenty, GINO-MN, Dec. 16th, 2009
Well, if TBag says so; after all, if there's anyone that should know Ponzi Schemes, it's Tim "I'm the unalloterer!" Pawlenty - shown here with his good pal, Tom Petters, who was recently convicted for running a $3 billion Ponzi scheme:
Someday, TBag is going to have to explain his relationship with not only Tom Petters, but Frank Vennes, too.
Birds of a feather flock together. And the initials are "t" and "p." As in Tim Pawlenty. As in Tom Petters. As in enough slime to gag a maggot. (more, here)
