C. Ford Runge: A dubious brand of budget gaming

05/17/2005

C. Ford Runge
Star Tribune
May 17, 2005

As assistant U.S. attorney in Wisconsin in the 1950s, my father prosecuted mobsters who were hot in Illinois and came north to spend months “fishing” in Hayward and Spooner (and Mahtomedi). Every so often, he’d nab a guy in a suit sitting in a boat, on federal charges, for having driven a stolen vehicle across state lines. But the real crimes took place in Illinois: gambling syndicates, protection rackets and extortion. Today, the same techniques have entered the realm of public policy.

In the Minnesota Legislature, the governor’s endgame is now clear. Pawlenty has a failed gambling plan, but has threatened to cut education funding and MinnesotaCare if he doesn’t get what he wants: $200 million in gambling revenues. The reason: He has staked a balanced budget, which he is constitutionally required to achieve, on getting the 200 mil.

In their effort to divide the tribes over a casino scam, the gambling group took a page from Jack Abramoff, the lobbyist and Tom DeLay’s close friend, a Tony Soprano-like figure in the DeLay investigation. Abramoff bilked the Saginaw Chippewa and other tribes out of $66 million with his partner, a former DeLay congressional staffer. As revealed in the May 1 New York Times Magazine, Abramoff, who presents himself as a conservative family man, referred in e-mails to Native Americans as “morons” and “a lower form of existence.”

In Minnesota, the strategy was to offer certain tribes urban casinos in return for a percentage of the take: in short, a protection racket. Two of the tribes that were willing to negotiate over casinos have balked at coupling them to a racino, an idea born of desperation over insufficient votes.

The Christian gambler is in trouble. Having failed at protection, he is moving to extortion: If there is no gambling deal, the $200 million forgone (dubious anyway in light of probable legal challenges) will come out of the hide of Minnesota schoolchildren, higher education and the sick but uninsured.

Apart from cuts to education, another target is the group of Minnesotans who depend on MinnesotaCare, the state insurance program for the poor. The governor’s gang claims that single and childless adults should be cut off from eligibility because they are “healthy.” Sadly, to be childless and single does not confer health. If you are eligible for MinnesotaCare, it’s because no employer will offer group coverage, or because you are not employed. My disabled daughter has a personal care assistant who has lived with mild cerebral palsy since birth. Her bones are not well-supported by her weakened muscles; she has needed three operations to fix them. She got a job after high school, but was let go when she needed another operation. She has applied to MinnesotaCare. She is single, childless and 20.

Such is the moral vacuity of Pawlenty’s brand of budget gaming, which has slipped down a slope from gambling to protection to extortion, treating Minnesota’s schools, its poorest and most vulnerable citizens as pawns, all because he is scared to death of violating a profane pledge not to raise taxes. Are these actions criminal? No. But in terms of Minnesota traditions, they are as out of place as a zoot suit in a fishing boat.

C. Ford Runge is a professor of applied economics and law at the University of Minnesota.