Special-session options submitted to legislative leaders

09/28/2005

Dane Smith,
Star Tribune
September 28, 2005

Outlining an unusual process for considering whether to hold a special session this fall, Gov. Tim Pawlenty on Tuesday sent a “menu” of potential tasks for the session to the Legislature’s four caucus leaders.

The menu’s 11 items include a bailout of the Minneapolis teachers’ pension fund, increased transportation funding and publicly financed stadiums for the University of Minnesota, the Minnesota Twins and the Minnesota Vikings.

Pawlenty is asking leaders to check off those items that they believe their caucuses would approve. Any item that doesn’t get four votes probably won’t be on the agenda for continued negotiations, he said. If no items get the support of all four leaders, no session is likely until the regular one that starts March 1.

“I’m going to give them a menu,” Pawlenty said. “It will be like going to Perkins.”

The Legislature’s top DFLer, Senate Majority Leader Dean Johnson, has been criticizing the Republican governor as displaying a lack of leadership and “laryngitis” on key state initiatives. Johnson said the latest tactic makes Pawlenty look more like a waiter than a leader.

“He’s still following rather than leading, and I don’t think we’re interested in playing this tic-tac-toe game with the governor,” Johnson said. “He needs to get his spine up, get the five of us together and decide which issues we could reasonably take back to our caucuses.”

House Minority Leader Matt Entenza, DFL-St. Paul, said what the “multiple-choice letter tells me is that this governor has very little interest in calling a special sesssion.”

Pawlenty’s letter also set strict procedural conditions for calling a session at all, which is the governor’s sole prerogative. He demanded that all four caucuses show sufficient support for pre-agreed bills to withstand parliamentary roadblocks, that they pledge in writing to keep to those issues and adjourn immediately if others are raised and that the special session would last no more than two days in any case.

All that could be academic, however. Senate Minority Leader Dick Day, R-Owatonna, said two-thirds of his caucus members don’t want a special session, regardless of the agenda.

Pressure is on

Lobbyists and interest groups are working on several fronts to push for a special session and, to varying degrees, legislators want to accommodate them and address leftover problems from the contentious legislative deliberations that went from January to mid-July this year.

But the leaders and Pawlenty also have expressed concern that any such session not devolve into the gridlock and dysfunction that have afflicted the Legislature in the past two years.

Moreover, although there may be a majority of bipartisan support for one or more stadium proposals, lawmakers are well aware that opinion polls generally show strong opposition in Minnesota to public financing for wealthy owners and players on pro sports teams.

Johnson said he and House Speaker Steve Sviggum, R-Kenyon, met this week and “generally agreed that the two issues most worth considering were the Gophers and Twins stadium. We felt a one-day session around those two issues would be reasonable.” Sviggum could not be reached for comment Tuesday.

Pawlenty said he expects to hear back from the four leaders by Tuesday. But he stayed noncommittal about whether he wants to call a special session at all.

“I’m not more or less inclined than I was before, but I’m open to considering it,” he said. “I’m open to it, but I’m not going to push it unless we have a consensus to work quickly, orderly and decisively.”

Pawlenty himself did not fill out the menu. He said in an accompanying letter that his list of proposals is “not necessarily my preferred list” but rather special-session priorities most frequently mentioned by legislators.

Besides stadiums, pensions and transportation, the menu includes authorizing a new hospital for the northwest suburbs in Maple Grove, repeal of a minimum price law for gasoline, a constitutional amendment to dedicate a percentage of the existing sales tax for funding conservation programs and a state constitutional amendment to limit marriage to unions of one man and one woman.