John Tuma’s Capitol Update for May 18, 2010

“I rolled off the pony in a heap.  I staggered toward the stockade gate and fell headlong through the door of a house, where I lay in a stupor for hours.”
- Sam Brown, Fort Wadsworth, Dakota Territory, 1866

Sam Brown was a legendary frontiersman.  He was the son of Major Joseph R. Brown, for whom Browns Valley was named.  That valley lies between the headwaters of the Red and Minnesota Rivers on the western border of Minnesota; right at the tip of that little bump you see on the state map on our western border.

In 1866 Brown was assigned as a scout to Fort Wadsworth which was established only two years earlier in response to the Sioux uprising.  The fort was situated only a few miles west of the present-day city of Browns Valley, Minnesota.  In April 1866, the western frontier of Minnesota was on edge with fear of another Native American uprising when a report reached Fort Wadsworth from one of their scouts of a column of Native Americans moving toward Minnesota.  Sam Brown was quickly dispatched to warn settlers on his way to report the situation to the outpost at Elm River, 60 miles north.

Sam left in the fading light of dusk on April 19 and rode five hours on his stout pony, reaching the Elm River outpost a little after midnight — an amazing feat even for a seasoned frontiersman.  The veteran scout was mortified to find out from the outpost that they in fact had already encountered the Native American peace messengers who had earlier passed near Fort Wadsworth on their way north with no intentions of going to Minnesota.  Knowing he needed to quell a possible overreaction back at his home fort, he traded ponies and immediately set off for the 60-mile return ride in the dark.  He encountered a fierce thunderstorm, but was still able to guide his pony back to the fort.  Shivering from the cold rain he collapsed unconscious in the fort; when he awoke he was able to inform his commander of the false alarm.

This weekend, Minnesota’s legislators probably felt a lot like Sam Brown after his exhausting ride which was in fact a wild goose chase.  In order to reach a compromise on the state’s $3 billion deficit (almost 10% of the state’s general fund budget) and pass the last of their bills, the Legislature worked nearly nonstop starting Friday with the hopes of wrapping up their work by the constitutional deadline of Sunday at midnight.  After torturous negotiations they slowly reached a global agreement late Sunday night with the Governor.  Unfortunately, they realized they would not be able to “process the paper” in order to finish by midnight Sunday.  Therefore, the Governor and legislative leaders agreed to a short special session to be called one minute after the constitutional deadline of the regular session at 12:01 a.m. on Monday morning.

After long floor sessions and caucuses, legislators were literally collapsing from exhaustion.  They even had to take one legislator, Rep. Bud Nornes (R-Fergus Falls), to the hospital after he passed out during an early morning caucus, striking his head.  Fortunately, he was able to return a few hours later to cast his final votes when the Legislature actually was ready to process the final compromise between 8 a.m. and 10 a.m. Monday.  Not surprisingly, those votes happened several hours after they hoped to be finished.  Nonetheless, the last body finally adjourned at 10:57 a.m.

As is common, the global solution which closed the $3 billion budget gap was very anti-climatic.  Most legislators commented that it’s a bad product, but it was the best they could do in order to get them out of St. Paul.  Most of the savings were gained through budget gimmicks.  For example, nearly $2 billion was gained by moving a portion of the last payment in the budget cycle to school districts a couple of months.  This makes this biennium’s balance sheet look balanced by shifting the last payment into the next biennium.  In other words, it is a creative bookkeeping that simply kicks the can down the road for a future legislature to fix.

The environment and transit budgets were not immune to these budget gimmicks.  In April the Legislature adopted a smaller set of budget balancing provisions which included crediting $8 million to the general fund from a dedicated account known as the “closed landfill account.”  There was a total of $48 million in the account at the beginning of year.  This is money that has been set aside over the years to help reduce environmental problems from closing landfills in the future.  It was good fiscal planning by past legislatures to help our environment.  This Legislature took $8 million from this dedicated fund in April to help balance the budget with a promise to start replenishing the fund with interest by 2014 when the proceeds will start to be needed to actually close landfills.  That raid of only a portion of the account went so well back in April that as a part of the final budget balancing proposal passed on Monday, they raided the rest of the account, taking the full $48 million “temporarily” to cover the budget shortfall.

The Legislature also took over $10 million from transit operations with the hope that it will not increase fare box obligations.  They’re hoping that the Metropolitan Council can cover the operating reductions without raising fares by taking dedicated money from the Motor Vehicle Excise Tax and the Building Livable Community accounts to cover the losses.  This is unfortunate because these dollars are typically used to help develop future transit and livable community projects.  It’s like stealing from your remodeling fund that you have been building up over the years to pay the light bills.  Unfortunately, that is the desperate straits our state budget is in and the future outlook does not look brighter.  Depending on how you count the budget gimmicks to balance this year’s budget, the 2011 Legislature will be facing a shortfall somewhere between $5 billion and $8 billion.

Despite this somber finish to the session, there was some good news in the environment area.  Governor Pawlenty signed the LCCMR bill (HF2624) appropriating more than $26 million in critical investments in our Great Outdoors from the lottery proceeds.  He did line item veto the funding for one small energy program.  The Governor also signed the Omnibus Environment, Energy and Natural Resources Policy and Finance Bill; Outdoor Heritage Appropriations (SF3275) bill.  The Governor did line item veto one conservation program for $100,000 to the Board of Water and Soil Resources (BWSR) for a pilot program to engage citizen volunteers.  The bill contains $58.9 million of Legacy appropriations and all the recommendations of the councils were followed.  The bill repealed the definitions of “protect, enhance and restore,” and left it to the selection process to follow the constitutional language.  This change was supported by many conservation organizations.  Given the terrible budget situation for the state, we were very fortunate that the voters in Minnesota passed this constitutional amendment.  Had we not had the protection of the Constitution, we would have seen significant cuts in our environment and conservation budgets.

In addition to the funding issues we were watching at the end of session, there were two negative policy provisions the Green Team was keeping a close eye on.  We were defending against a mining industry attempt to reduce their wetland replacement obligations by attaching an exclusive exemption on the Game and Fish bill (SF2900).   Fortunately, this provision was never offered as an amendment to the bill despite lobbying efforts by the mining industry.  We are thankful to the Senate author of the Game and Fish Bill, Sen. Satveer Chaudhary (DFL-Fridley), for not allowing the provision to be attached to the bill.  Also, the bill that included the repeal of the ban on new nuclear reactors never met for a conference committee and thus failed when the session adjourned.  Special thanks to Sen. Yvonne Prettner-Solon (DFL-Duluth) for her staunch opposition to letting this happen.

On the positive side, one of our top accomplishments of this session is the adoption of the state’s Complete Streets policy.  This legislation will provide for more comprehensive street planning that will help reduce air pollution.  On Saturday, the Governor signed the larger Omnibus Transportation Policy Bill (SF2540) which the Complete Streets policy was amended onto earlier in the session.  We appreciate the hard work and support of the authors of the omnibus bill (SF2540), Sen. Steve Murphy (DFL-Red Wing) and Rep. Frank Hornstein (DFL- Minneapolis), and the chief authors of the Complete Streets bill, Sen. Tony Lourey (DFL-Kerrick) and Rep. Mike Obermueller (DFL-Eagan).  It was also critical that we had the support of the Minnesota Department of Transportation Commissioner Tom Sorel.

Hopefully the legislators are home for a well-deserved rest before they have to hit the campaign trail.  It is always very difficult to leave a legislative session that starts with high hopes but ends in what seems to be a disappointing wild goose chase.  If it’s any encouragement to our legislators, Sam Brown did recover from his challenging ride in April of 1866, going on to help found the community of Browns Valley where he lived a long and productive life. And if you’re ever in Browns Valley, you can visit his first residence in the community that still stands to this day as a monument to the great frontiersman.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, May 18th, 2010 at 7:50 am by Tuma, Minnesota Environmental Partnership and is filed under Clean Water, Land and Legacy Amendment, Energy, LCCMR, Legislature, Sulfide mining, Transit and Transportation, Water. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.