Of course those Yankees won a World Series along the way, so no one should presume that the Senate GOP’s opening tussles with Senate Democrats, the Dayton administration and each other will ultimately keep them from their legislative goals. It’s just that the tone is not quite what Capitol hands expected from Senjem’s crew. We ask into the reasons why below.
But first a spin through the week’s other events.
Notes on the Week That Was
RIGHT-TO-WORK: If bonding proposals dominated the new bill introductions this week, the other category of note was constitutional amendments. Seven such bills were filed in the House this week, nine in the Senate. The biggest rollout came behind a right-to-work amendment whose proponents held a Capitol presser yesterday to unveil a new Center of the American Experiment report on the subject. (Freshman Dave Thompson is expected to carry the measure in the Senate, Rep. Steve Drazkowski in the House.)
Of the half-dozen or so frequently mentioned amendment proposals in play this session, only right-to-work rivals the already passed gay marriage ban as a public lightning rod. Similar battles in other states have consumed tens of millions of dollars. GOP legislative leaders will have to weigh the risks involved — the potential for mobilizing a reaction that exceeds the measure’s support, and for siphoning campaign dollars away from the coffers of candidates and party units — in choosing whether to put it on the ballot.
This week labor opponents of right-to-work added a prominent Republican to their lobbying stable: Former GOP legislator and Pawlenty administration legislative liaison Chris DeLaForest signed up to work for the operating engineers and carpenters unions.
VIKINGS STADIUM: Zygi and Mark Wilf were in town on Wednesday to meet with state and Minneapolis officials (including Mayor R.T. Rybak and City Council President Barb Johnson) about the Metrodome site that Gov. Mark Dayton has proclaimed the only viable option for 2012. The three-hour confab ended with the owners terming themselves “optimistic” about the location, a concession they were more or less forced by circumstance to make. But most of the legislators we talked to this week continue to believe a deal is unlikely. That’s especially so in the House, which has always been viewed as the limiting factor on any vote for a stadium or for the expansion of state-sponsored gambling that would probably be required to pay for it.
COMMITTEES SHUFFLE: Some committee roster changes of note this week:
- Newly elected Sen. Kari Dziedzic (SD 59, Larry Pogemiller‘s old seat) will serve on the Environment and Natural Resources and Jobs and Economic Growth panels.
- Former Senate Majority Leader Amy Koch was named to Transportation, Higher Education, and Energy, Utilities and Telecommunications.
- Newly elected Rep. Susan Allen, who won the House 61B seat vacated by now-Sen. Jeff Hayden, was named to HHS Reform, Judiciary, and the Veterans Service Division.
- House Education Reform Chair Sondra Erickson was named chair of the House Ethics Committee, and GOP Rep. Tim Kelly was added to the panel. Fellow Republican Rep. Tim Sanders was named an alternate to the committee.
KOCH RE-ELECT: We reported last week that many at the Capitol believed Sen. Amy Koch was spoiling to run again despite saying in her December 15 letter of resignation as majority leader that she would not. This week she publicly demonstrated as much before finally ruling it out.
Last Friday Koch said to PIM, through a caucus rep, that she was “standing by” her December 15 announcement. But tracking her words on the subject over the following few days proved to be like following the Dow-Jones ticker hour by hour. A featured Strib story on Sunday suggested she might run for re-election after all. Additional media outlets got similar comments, while others quoted her reaffirming the December 15 letter. When PIM got the chance to ask Koch herself about it Monday afternoon, she hedged, saying (emphasis added), “My statement of December 15 stands at this point…. I don’t think that is likely to change.” It was not until late Monday that she said definitively, “I won’t be running again.” A source with knowledge of the situation tells PIM it was pressure from her party unit back home, not from the caucus, that ultimately settled the question.
FRANSON BILLS: Freshman GOP Rep. Mary Franson of Alexandria, who chief-authored some 15 bills last year, has already introduced eight pieces of legislation in 2012, ranging from an anti-Obamacare constitutional amendment to a sweeping, Herman Cain-like repeal of whole broad classes of state taxes in favor of a general flat-rate tax (also via constitutional amendment). But she spent a lot of time this week talking up a bill she has not yet introduced — a repeal of the state’s legislator gift ban under certain circumstances. It’s not entirely clear what those circumstances are, but we’re guessing it gets dubbed the Buy Me a Drink Act.
Senate starts the session in a fighting mood
So much for the kinder, gentler regime of Senate Majority Leader Dave Senjem. In an opening week where nothing of public import really happened, there was plenty of internecine drama around the Capitol, and nearly all of it involved Senate Republicans. The newly retooled caucus came out jabbing — at the Dayton administration, Senate Democrats, and each other.
Before the session had even gaveled in, word began circulating that the caucus had decided to take out Dayton administration PUC chair and former DFL Sen. Ellen Anderson early in session. (At this writing, we’re hearing that a floor vote denying her confirmation is likely to come on Monday.) Then, in Tuesday’s initial meeting of the Senate Rules Committee (pictured left), Senjem pushed through a set of long-deferred cuts to the Senate budget — cuts largely conceived by deposed Majority Leader Amy Koch and executive assistant Michael Brodkorb before their departures — that included $444,000 in reductions to the DFL minority’s partisan staff (that’s 12-14 bodies) and none to the GOP majority’s.
Privately, some Republican members and staffers were chagrined about the budget play. Publicly, though, they emphasized that the payroll for DFL partisan staff had actually been higher than the payroll of the more abundantly staffed majority caucus, thanks to the tenure built up by DFL staffers during their nearly 40 years in the majority.
None of it seemed very Senjem-like. In style and temperament, it was more akin to the Dr. No school of political brinksmanship favored by Sen. David Hann and the ultra-conservative wing of the freshman class — which is to say, most of the freshman class. To observers across the political spectrum, it highlighted both the tenuousness of Senjem’s hold on his caucus and the number of political accommodations it requires. Senjem reportedly only beat Hann by one vote for the majority leader post, and the margin has clearly left the former minority leader from Rochester with a shaky leadership mandate that forces him to guard his flank against conservative counterattack at every turn. Hence, we presume, the take-no-prisoners tone of Senate Republicans’ actions in the early going.
Meanwhile segments of the caucus remain uncomfortably at odds with each other.
- There is abiding disappointment, and some say bitterness, on the part of Hann and his backers regarding the outcome of the leadership election and the role that they believe pressure from gambling advocates played in it.
- There is a pro-Koch element in the caucus that tends to blame her leadership team for its handling of the matter more than it blames Koch for her actions.
- And there is widespread anger toward Koch and her not exactly contrite-sounding series of pre-session interviews with local media. In last Sunday’s Strib, she was quoted as saying “There have been a lot of people who told me that I shouldn’t have even stepped down from majority leader,” and characterized her ordeal as a “punch to the face.”
The last comment prompted a reaction from Hann (to the Pioneer Press’s Doug Belden) that’s worth quoting at length:
Referring to an interview in which Koch was quoted as saying she had taken a punch to the face, Hann said: “If anybody got punched in the face, it was the caucus.
“There are people who believe the problem is not with Senator Koch but with others,” but that’s based on “faulty information,” said Hann. “It raises issues of trust and whether or not we can work together.”
The events of this week, meanwhile, have left Senate DFLers all het up — “ready to go to war,” according to the surmise of one of their House DFL counterparts. Beyond parliamentary shenanigans and stalling actions on the floor, their options seem limited.
With one exception. A number of Democratic senators reportedly arrived for session with an interest in pursuing an ethics complaint over the Koch scandal — not against Koch, but against former Deputy Majority Leader Geoff Michel for his handling of the matter — and the Senate’s new budget is unlikely to leave them in a more forgiving mood.
This doesn’t mean an ethics complaint is certain to follow, but last week’s conventional wisdom that the Koch episode was in the Senate’s rear-view mirror, at least publicly, has undeniably shifted.
DFL bloodletting: What’s that about?
Why did Senate Republicans choose to start the 2012 session by picking a nasty partisan fight? That’s a question that left many Capitol observers flummoxed. Caucus staffing, after all, isn’t generally fodder for prominent media coverage. If Senate Republicans had simply waited a week and quietly gutted DFL caucus staff hardly anyone would have taken notice. Instead coverage of the session’s opening day was dominated by partisan sniping. “I think people were kind of scratching their heads: Why did they do it now?” notes one GOP Capitol insider. “Certainly it was a real big stick in the eye to the DFL early on.”
One likely explanation for the move: the campaign season ahead. “It’s an election year,” notes another GOP insider. “The partisan staff, on both sides of the aisle, will use their vacation time and comp time and take leaves of absence to be the foot soldiers of the campaign.” But that still doesn’t explain the timing. “Not the brightest move,” concedes the GOP insider, “because it gave the Democrats a very good talking point for the first day of session.”
Dayton wants voter photo ID legislative solution
Senate Republicans made headlines this week as they called for a fast and hard push to pass a photo identification requirement at the polls via constitutional amendment. It’s not exactly fresh news; the amendment authors — Sen. Scott Newman and Rep. Mary Kiffmeyer — announced their plans to move ahead this year after the 2011 session ended. Now Republicans say they want to get the constitutional amendment through Session 2012 as quickly as possible.
“With the governor’s veto, there doesn’t seem to be any desire to come to a legislative solution to the problem; we don’t see any solution to that other than the constitutional amendment,” Sen. Warren Limmer, who authored the legislative photo ID proposal last year, told PIM. He added that the governor’s office would have to reach out and try to revive the vetoed bill. “That would have to come from the governor’s office rather than us rubbing our hands together and trying to work this out,” Limmer said. Senjem echoed that sentiment, saying a compromise in statue is not out of the realm of possibility. “We’re going to visit with the governor,” Senjem told the Star Tribune this week. “Is there a way that photo ID could have worked? If we could do it statutorily, I don’t think we’ve given up on that.”
By Dayton’s account, there’s “definitely” an appetite from his office to find a legislative solution to photo ID this session. Within weeks Secretary of State Mark Ritchie will release recommendations from a photo ID task force, which Dayton said he expects will serve as a springboard for legislation. In an interview with PIM on Friday, Dayton reiterated that he vetoed the legislation last session because it did not have bipartisan support. “My principal objection was that it passed on a party-line vote and the constitutional amendment is a way to get around that and get around me, and I think that’s a poor way to legislate and a poor way to govern.” The same will be true for any proposal in 2012.
University of Minnesota political science professor Larry Jacobs thinks it would be a wise move for legislative Democrats to join Dayton and extend a hand on photo ID. “It’s got some curbside appeal,” he said. “It would look good for some Democrats in conservative districts.” About 10 DFL House members voted for photo ID during the 2010 session, when former gubernatorial candidate and then-GOP Rep. Tom Emmer offered it as an amendment to a larger bill. Most were DFLers sitting in conservative swing districts, including Kory Kath, Ann Lenczewski, Denise Dittrich, Bev Scalze and Julie Bunn. “Democrats in more conservative districts could do a lot for their base of support in reaching out on this,” Jacobs said.
Jacobs adds that Dayton’s involvement could mean input on the final piece of legislation — which he wouldn’t have if it’s passed as a ballot initiative. Not to mention Democrats would have the opportunity to repeal photo ID in statute if they regain the majority in 2012. There are even some Republicans who feel photo ID is better served in statute than enshrined in the state’s Constitution. GOP freshman Sen. Dave Thompson is of that opinion, but adds that he has never said he would not vote for photo ID as a constitutional amendment if it came up to the floor. “I would just prefer to do it with accordance with the governor.”
Enviro permitting: Round 2
Round two of the GOP’s effort to overhaul the state’s environmental permitting process will commence next week.
The first round was signed into law in the early going of last year’s legislative session and was noteworthy for the way Gov. Mark Dayton embraced GOP proposals. Business groups like the Minnesota Chamber of Commerce see some need to tighten up last year’s law with changes that are opposed by environmental groups. The principals from last year, Sen. Bill Ingebrigtsen, R-Alexandria, and Rep. Dan Fabian, R-Roseau, are again rolling out bills designed to make the environmental permitting process less burdensome for industry. Ingebrigtsen’s Senate Environment and Natural Resources Committee will hear his bill and two other bills on Tuesday.
One key aspect is clarifying that businesses must be notified within 30 days if their application isn’t substantially complete. The proposal does away with language from last year that resets the 30-day clock by allowing a company to resubmit their application, making the timetable less definitive.
Another part of Ingebrigtsen’s bill allows private companies to prepare permit applications for consideration and ultimate judgment by the state Pollution Control Agency.
“With our resources the way they’ve been stretched to the limit here at the state level,” Ingebrigtsen said, “if there are organizations and different engineering firms that can look at this stuff similar to what state employees can look at and they can do what it takes to get a permit and get the stamp of approval from the state of Minnesota, the private enterprise should be able to do that.”
The proposals are drawing the ire of environmental groups. Gary Botzek, a contract lobbyist who has represented conservation organizations, said the bills are a “continued erosion of environmental review.”
Among the concerns is that private companies would have a business interest in the outcome of the applications they write.
Bits and Pieces
The Minnesota Agri-Growth Council is hosting its annual reception for legislators, congressional staffers and others on February 1. Free for Agri-Growth Council members, $10 for others. Hors d’oeuvres and drinks will be offered from 5:30 to 8 p.m. at 317 on Rice Park Event Center in St. Paul. RSVPs are required.
The St. Paul Chamber of Commerce kicks off its 2012 Public Affairs Series next Tuesday. Hear from St. Paul Mayor Chris Coleman from 11:30 a.m. to 1 p.m. at St. Thomas University’s Anderson Center, 2115 Summit Ave. Cost is $20 for members; $30 for non-members. RSVP here.
Next Friday, Patricia Lull of the St. Paul Area Council of Churches and Brian Rusche from the Joint Religious Legislative Coalition will appear at a Daybreak Briefing at the Council of Churches offices, 1671 Summit Ave. On the agenda: housing and homelessness, jobs and income, safety net, gambling, human trafficking and an impartial judiciary. Doors open at 7:30 a.m. and the briefing runs from 7:45 to 8:45. Coffee and bagels will be served. Please RSVP for this free event.
Lt. Gov. Yvonne Prettner Solon holds office hours Thursday, February 2 at Duluth’s Technology Village, 11 E. Superior St., Suite 210. To request a one-on-one meeting, call 1-800-657-3717 or click here for more information. Early registration discount ends Tuesday for the Minnesota Environmental Partnership‘s Legislative and Policy Forum. The event is Feb. 8 at the Summit Brewery in St. Paul. It starts with a 6 p.m. social hour and at 7 p.m., environmental advocates, legislators and agency leaders will give their take on the session ahead. $20 advance registration; $25 after Jan. 31. Register here.
DFL Senate Communications Director Beau Berentson will be leaving the legislature February 8 for a new position that he has not yet disclosed.
Lobbyist Tara Erickson was on hand for the first-day-of-session action, even though she was five days overdue for the birth of her first child, a boy.
DFL Sen. Gary Kubly received a warm welcome back from colleagues as he begins his final session in the Senate. Kubly, who is battling ALS, was accompanied by his wife, Pat, who told us that their daughter and daughter-in-law plan to be on hand during session to assist the senator as well.
Former House Government Operations Committee LA Ryan Hamilton is back at the Capitol. Hamilton is now the director of governmental relations for the Minnesota Association of Realtors.
House Majority Leader Matt Dean meets the press Friday morning.
Gov. Mark Dayton delivers the annual address to attendees of the Minnesota Chamber of Commerce Session Priorities dinner.
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