Unallotment lawsuit watch: As cuts draw near, search for potential litigants goes on

As we await this afternoon’s budget-cutting announcement, I wanted to briefly flag something pertinent that Mike Kaszuba of the Strib wrote late last week about the specter of court battles over Gov. Tim Pawlenty’s use of executive power to balance the budget.

Kaszuba’s story tended to confirm a couple of points made earlier in PIM Weekly Report: a) that part of the point of House Speaker Margaret Anderson Kelliher’s (DFL-Minneapolis) recent spate of meetings with organizations likely to be harmed by Pawlenty’s cuts has been to scout out and help coordinate potential legal challenges, and b) that the Minnesota Hospital Association is widely seen as the likeliest candidate.

On the first point, Kaszuba dutifully reports Kelliher’s sort-of denial (emphasis added): "I don’t think I’m urging people to do it… I think there is a definite question around whether the governor has stretched the unallotment statute further than it was originally meant to be used for." In a PIM interview on June 2, Kelliher said she expected that there would be lawsuits over the governor’s statutory authority and over government separation-of-powers issues.

Kaszuba also mentions the League of Minnesota Cities as a possible litigant. From what we’re hearing, that’s much less likely.