DFL legislators prepare to go after unallotment powers

2010 agenda includes push to limit the governor’s emergency budget-cutting authority

When Gov. Tim Pawlenty announced last May that he planned to unilaterally cut $2.7 billion from Minnesota’s budget, Democrats cried foul. They argued that the budgetary maneuver was an abuse of the governor’s so-called unallotment powers.

With the Legislature set to reconvene next month, DFLers hope to ensure that future governors can’t operate in a similar manner. They are preparing to pass legislation that would constrain - or perhaps eliminate -  the unallotment authority of the state’s top official.

An initial bill was introduced by Rep. Andrew Falk, DFL-Murdock, in the dying days of the last legislative session and would repeal the state statute laying out the governor’s unallotment powers. No action was taken on the measure, but Falk intends to push for passage this session. Sen. Scott Dibble, DFL-Minneapolis, expects to introduce a companion measure in the Senate.

“Clearly this has been an abuse of power,” says Falk. “We have to fix that problem.”

Repealing the statute is almost certainly not going to be the only proposal for amending the governor’s budgetary powers. DFL legislators have also been discussing a bill that would tweak and more explicitly define the governor’s unallotment authority. The proposal, however, is still being drafted and the exact provisions it will include remain uncertain.

According to Rep. Lyndon Carlson, chair of the House Finance Committee, the bill is likely to include explicit limits on the percentage of the general fund budget that can be slashed through unallotments. It also will likely prohibit the governor from abolishing programs that have been enacted in statute. Pawlenty’s cuts in 2009, for instance, defunded the General Assistance Medical Care.

“Those are policies that are in statute,” says Carlson. “The unallotment law has always been used as a fiscal tool and not a tool to change policy.”

Sen. Dick Cohen, who chairs the Senate Finance Committee, expects to carry the bill in the upper chamber. He says that repealing the unallotment statute might cause unease among bond-rating agencies that Minnesota wouldn’t have a means to handle future budget emergencies.

“We’re working on legislation that we think would be closer to what we’ve understood the unallotment statute to be, and what we think it historically was meant to be,” Cohen says. “We think the governor has overreached in his usage of the statue.”

The idea of repealing the unallotment statute - or even significantly altering it - is unlikely to attract much support from GOP legislators. Most Republicans applauded the governor’s budgetary hardball as a welcome riposte to what they viewed as dithering by the DFL-controlled Legislature.

Rep. Mark Buesgens, the ranking Republican on the House Finance Committee, says that some form of unallotment authority is absolutely necessary to deal with budgetary emergencies. He further argues that repealing the entire statute would be overkill. “The bottom line is, let’s not go replace the whole carburetor just to find out we’ve got an obstructed muffler,” Buesgens says.

Any whittling down of the governor’s budgetary authority is almost certain to wind up at the business end of Pawlenty’s veto pen. “We think any attempt to limit the chief executive’s ability to balance the budget is wrongheaded,” says Pawlenty administration deputy chief of staff Brian McClung. “The buck has to stop somewhere.”

The veto prospect means that in order to mount an override, at least a few House Republicans (three if all 87 DFLers hold together, more if they don’t) would have to be on board with any reduction to unallotment powers that passes the Legislature.

Attempts to alter the unallotment statute could also be complicated by the courts. Last month a judge ruled that Pawlenty overstepped his authority by eliminating a $5.3 million nutrition program and ordered the money reinstated. The Pawlenty administration has appealed the ruling and wants the matter expedited to the Minnesota Supreme Court.

A separate court case challenging Pawlenty’s elimination of the state’s political contribution refund program was dismissed earlier this month in part because it failed to adequately raise constitutional issues about the governor’s authority. Common Cause Minnesota, however, has suggested that it might bring a separate lawsuit challenging the abolition of the political refund program.

DFL legislators say that they’re not particularly concerned about what happens with the lawsuits. Even if the Pawlenty administration ultimately loses in the courts, they still believe the unallotment statute needs to get a thorough vetting from the Legislature.

“This isn’t just about Tim Pawlenty,” says Dibble. “This is about a fundamental constitutional question about balance and separation of powers in our state. We need to have that conversation.”

Buesgens, however,  argues that any discussion about changing the statute should wait until the legal process has played out. “We should stand back until we hear a ruling from the courts,” he says. “Let’s let the courts look at it and let that play out.”