Finishing touches already are being felt in MN Legislature

03/26/2006

Conrad Defiebre,
Star Tribune
Last update: March 25, 2006 – 10:25 PM

Senate Majority Leader Dean Johnson’s ethics imbroglio wasn’t the only item to achieve apparent closure at the State Capitol last week.

A subcommittee probe into the Willmar DFLer’s shifting accounts of his conversations with Supreme Court justices about Minnesota’s marriage laws ended with Johnson agreeing to deliver a formal apology on Senate floor Monday.

A couple of committee chairmen, DFL Sen. John Marty and GOP Rep. Mark Buesgens, watched their own panels bury their pet initiatives—respectively, slashing ATV trail funds and instituting school vouchers (or, in the latest formulation, “parental enhancement").

Rep. Tom Hackbarth’s bill to dedicate a sales-tax fraction to hunting and fishing improvements suffered a subtler, but likely no less deadly, fate. It got gussied up in committee with a tax increase for the arts and clean water, a slash in prospective transit funding and even another gay-marriage ban.

“The bill is a mess,” lamented House Speaker Steve Sviggum, R-Kenyon. “It’s so heavy you can’t carry it. I hope it gets cleaned up.”

On the marriage front, gay rights advocates outnumbered constitutional amendment fans in dueling rallies last week at the Capitol, where the Senate rejected another effort to bring the stalled initiative to the floor.

Meanwhile, showcase legislation was passed off both chamber floors—immigration crackdowns in the House and a $990 million bonding bill in the Senate. The latter’s surprise appearance and lightning progress struck some as an effort to shift the spotlight from Johnson’s troubles to what he called “the state’s vision.”

Far from all this turmoil by week’s end was Gov. Tim Pawlenty, who secretly jetted off with U.S. Sen. John McCain to Iraq, where about 3,000 Minnesota troops will soon be deployed. The governor said it was the least he could do “to fully support our warriors.”