Agreement on budget retreat eludes lawmakers

06/27/2005

Mark Brunswick and Patricia Lopez,
Star Tribune
June 28, 2005

Senate Majority Leader Dean Johnson on Monday morning rejected a request by Gov. Tim Pawlenty to isolate legislative leaders at Camp Ripley for budget negotiations, suggesting instead that they gather at the Governor’s Residence in St. Paul.

With only four days to go before a partial government shutdown on Friday, Pawlenty had said he wanted only the Republican and DFL leaders of the House and Senate to meet behind locked doors at Ripley, away from the influence of staff, interest groups and other legislators.

By noon, the state jet was fueled and sitting on the tarmac at St. Paul’s Holman Field.

But shortly after House Speaker Steve Sviggum, R-Kenyon, told reporters that “my bags are packed and I’m ready to go,” Johnson said he thought the Ripley meeting “makes little sense.”

Historically, Johnson said, the governor’s residence has been relied on by every other governor who felt the need for meetings out of the public eye.

Private meetings that shut out experienced fiscal and legal staff in the past, he said, “have resulted in mistakes. The people of Minnesota deserve better than that.”

Claiming that the Senate had several hours of business today that required his presence, Johnson said that if Pawlenty continued to insist on meeting at Ripley, “I’ll drive up. It’s not a good day for flying.” That would put Johnson at Ripley no earlier than this evening.

Johnson said the Senate’s most immediate task was the consideration of a “lights-on” bill that would continue base funding for government operations. Such a bill would, for instance, keep the state parks open and prevent the layoff of nearly 16,000 state employees. The bill would have no tax increases in it and probably would be limited in duration to a week or two, he said.

Johnson said he hoped the Senate would take up such a bill when it reconvenes this afternoon.

But Sviggum said he would not agree to any “lights-on” bill unless he already had a handshake agreement on a budget deal.

Sviggum said Pawlenty’s request for a meeting at Ripley was “to make sure that we’re forced to make a decision or we won’t come home. We’ve seen what hasn’t worked. Let’s see what works.”

Administration officials were not immediately available with a response to Johnson’s request for a meeting at the residence.

Three of the caucus leaders had accepted Pawlenty’s offer by Monday morning: Sviggum, Senate Minority Leader Dick Day, R-Owatonna, and House Minority Leader Matt Entenza, DFL-St. Paul.

“Matt will travel anywhere, from Warroad to Worthington or anywhere in between to negotiate for health care and education funding,” DFL House caucus spokesman Glen Fladeboe said today.

During a noon Senate floor session, an agitated Day told members that ‘we’re soon to become the most dysfunctional legislative body in the United States. We’re not far from it… I can’t believe we’re all sitting here and we’re going to let this happen.”

Day openly bemoaned the DFL rejection of his plan to generate money through slots at Canterbury Park racetrack _ the “racino” plan that has struggled for support all session.

“I laid $319 million of racino on the table,” Day complained. “And the DFL walked away from that. Why is it that you wouldn’t want $319 million given to you.”

The racino would compete directly with the Shakopee Mdewakanton Sioux’s successful Mystic Lake casino, the largest and most lucrative casino in the state. The racino has run into a bipartisan wall of opposition, a combination of those opposed to any expansion of gambling, those opposed on moral grounds and those who don’t want state revenues tied to gambling profits.

DFL and GOP leaders remain about $800 million to $1 billion apart on a budget deal, with education, health care and taxes remaining as the primary sticking points.

Pawlenty had made the Ripley offer late on Sunday after receiving a Senate DFL budget offer that he described as “not particularly helpful.”

In a letter to the leaders, Pawlenty instructed them to have their bags and toothbrushes packed, with a plan to leave at 11:30 a.m. today. “Please plan to be away for up to several days,” the letter said. “What we’re doing now isn’t working,” Pawlenty said on Sunday.

Johnson joked today that perhaps Pawlenty had chosen Ripley because “he thought I’d be more comfortable up there.” Johnson, a brigadier general and chaplain in the National Guard, said he has spent part of nearly every year for the last 30 years at the facility. “I’m on a first-name basis with the mosquitos up there,” he said.

Pawlenty had described Camp Ripley, an Army base between Brainerd and Little Falls, “as a nice controlled setting,” where only the five leaders would be ensconced, without lobbyists, staffers or the media. Intruders would be escorted off the grounds, he said.

Sviggum earlier had criticized Johnson for being out of the state Sunday. Johnson was in Kentucky attending a National Guard function and also planned to attend a dinner honoring Hennepin County Sheriff Pat McGowan, who was receiving a national award.

Senate Finance Chairman Dick Cohen, DFL-St. Paul, said Johnson was in constant contact with Senate leaders and staff throughout the day. “Senator Johnson is every bit as available to all of us this evening as Gov. Pawlenty was [Saturday] when he was engaged in family activities; when Gov. Pawlenty was in Washington on state business earlier this week,” Cohen said.