Pawlenty: Budget dawdling won’t pay

08/05/2005

Patricia Lopez,
Star Tribune
August 5, 2005

Embarrassed by a legislative session that blew past every deadline and ran eight weeks into overtime, Gov. Tim Pawlenty on Thursday said he wants legislators to dock their own pay if it happens again.

On a five-city fly-around, Pawlenty made the case for withholding paychecks for legislators—and the governor—should they fail to complete a budget on time.

Pawlenty said he wants his Performance Pay for Politicians proposal to be the first bill taken up in the 2006 legislative session.

That’s not likely given the reaction of Senate Majority Leader Dean Johnson, DFL-Willmar. “The Minnesota Senate will concentrate on bonding, pension reform and cleaning up Minnesota water,” Johnson said, “not waste time backtracking on something that 38 states did, which is go to a special session.”

Johnson dismissed the proposal as a publicity stunt designed to distance the governor from the state’s first budget-related government shutdown.

“If the governor were serious about reform, he would have called the four caucus leaders into his office for a respectful discussion,” Johnson said. “Instead, he called a press conference.”

Senate Minority Leader Dick Day, R-Owatonna, and House Speaker Steve Sviggum, R-Kenyon, could not immediately be reached for comment.

Pawlenty’s proposal comes in the wake of a session that saw state politicians bust first the constitutional deadline for adjournment, then the state’s fiscal deadline, culminating in an eight-day partial government shutdown in July.

Pawlenty, in a tour that took him to Rochester, Albert Lea, Mankato, Alexandria and Moorhead, called his plan a common-sense solution.

Minnesota has endured 10 special sessions in the past 12 years, he said during his noontime Capitol news conference. No matter who is governor or which party controls the Legislature, special sessions have become the norm, he said.

“Obviously there have not been sufficient consequences or incentives” to induce agreement by the deadline, he said.

Rep. Melissa Hortman, DFL-Brooklyn Park, said she was frustrated that Pawlenty was “flying around the state at taxpayers’ expense bemoaning his own inability to get the job done when he had the tools he needed in March and April.”

Rep. Dan Dorman, R-Albert Lea, said he got into a mini-debate with Pawlenty at the Albert Lea stop. He suggested that the governor and legislative leaders first offer to forgo their May paychecks if they failed to negotiate the “global agreement” necessary before conference committees can complete their work.

“I can’t get my job done till they get their job done,” said Dorman, who leads the House Capital Investments Committee. “I think what we’re seeing here is the governor trying to inoculate himself against effects of shutdown. Is there some politics in it? Without question.”

Dorman said Pawlenty’s proposal would punish 195 lawmakers for the intractability of a handful of leaders on both sides.

But Pawlenty said rank-and-file legislators should be held to account, adding that they could always dump their leaders. As for the money, he said, if that proved a financial hardship, “they should go get another job.”

Legislators make $31,140 a year, while the governor makes $120,303. Pawlenty’s plan would have lawmakers forgo their June pay if they exceed the May adjournment deadline in budget years. Should their work spill into July, they would forfeit their July and August checks as well.

David Schultz, a professor who teaches professional ethics and the legislative process at Hamline University, said Pawlenty’s proposal could “create a whole new problem without solving the existing problem.”

By tying pay to the completion of the budget, he said, “the governor will create the classic definition of a conflict of interest for legislators—a personal interest that comes into conflict with the duties of your office or the public good.” Legislators of lesser means might be tempted to settle, he said, rather than hold out for something beneficial to their constituents.

The biggest hurdle in crafting timely budgets, Schultz said, is the antiquated approach that kicks off with legislators convening in January, followed by a gubernatorial budget proposal. Only in late February or early March does the state receive the economic forecast that serves as the true basis for budgeting, he said. “That’s completely backward,” he said. “If you want to reform the process, start with that.”