St. Paul Pioneer Press (Minnesota)
March 15, 2010 Monday
Pawlenty slashes bonding bill
By Bill Salisbury bsalisbury@pioneerpress.com
Gov. Tim Pawlenty carved up a $1 billion public works bill over the weekend, canceling more than half the money lawmakers had appropriated for state colleges and universities, scrapping all new funding for metro transit construction and eliminating cash for dozens of parks, trails, conservation projects and civic and cultural centers.
In all, Pawlenty slashed $313 million, or about one-third of the projects funded in the bonding bill.
The Republican governor told lawmakers, in effect, I told you so.
"I am deeply disappointed the bill spends nearly $1 billion despite my repeated and pointed warnings that I would not sign a bill of this magnitude," he wrote in a veto message delivered to legislators Monday. "Like any family or business, state government needs to live within its means and follow a budget."
After his cuts, the state is now authorized to borrow $686 million for new public works projects. That is less than the $725 million he had said he would accept but close to the $685 million he proposed spending in January.
Democratic-Farmer-Labor legislators complained that Pawlenty vetoed far more than he had led them to believe he would cut. "He basically massacred the bill," said Sen. Keith Langseth, DFL-Glyndon, chairman of the Senate Capital Investment Committee.
But St. Paul-area projects fared relatively well in the surviving portions of the bonding bill.
The city got $16 million to build a 1,100-seat concert hall at the Ordway Center for the Performing Arts and $11 million for a new gorilla exhibit at Como Zoo. In addition, Ramsey County will receive $10 million for an addition to Gillette Children's Specialty Healthcare, and Metro State University got $5.9 million for a new classroom building.
"This is a big day for St. Paul," Mayor Chris Coleman said in a statement. "Funding the Ordway and Como in the bonding bill is a significant investment in two of our strongest regional assets, allowing us to put thousands of people to work improving the crown jewel of our parks system and maintaining the momentum we have built downtown."
Usually a harsh critic of Pawlenty, Coleman thanked the governor for sparing those city projects and the city's legislators for helping to pass them.
Much of the credit should go to the negotiating skills of Rep. Alice Hausman, DFL-St. Paul, chairwoman of the House Capital Investment Committee and co-chief sponsor of the bonding bill.
While Hausman was delighted St. Paul fared so well, she criticized Pawlenty for his deep cuts in other areas. DFLers called the public works measure a "jobs bill," and Hausman estimated the line-item vetoes would cost 7,000 of the 21,000 to 27,000 jobs that the bill was projected to create. Another analysis by Wayne Cox, executive director of the pro-labor Minnesota Citizens for Tax Justice, found the vetoes would eliminate 8,500 potential jobs.
Pawlenty left the door open to negotiating a second, smaller bonding bill, but Hausman said lawmakers could not pass such a bill because "so many (legislators) lost so much" to the line-item vetoes, and they wouldn't vote for a second bill unless it funded their projects.
She also said the DFL majority most likely won't try to override any of Pawlenty's line-item vetoes because that would require a handful of Republican votes and GOP lawmakers have refused to defy the governor this year.
Langseth agreed, saying "I see no point in going further." He said he would try to revive the vetoed projects next year, "when we will have a governor we can trust." Pawlenty is not seeking re-election this year.
The governor flew back from a Florida vacation Sunday to sign and line-item veto the bill. He was not available for comment Monday because he flew back to Orlando, Fla., to speak at a Republican Governors Association fundraising reception.
"The DFL played political Santa Claus," said his spokesman, Brian McClung. "They loaded up the bill. There was a little bit of something for everybody. And then they left the governor to be the one who's fiscally responsible, who brings the bill down to size, and so he did that for them."
The governor used line-item vetoes to eliminate 17 of the 27 building projects that the Legislature had approved for the Minnesota State Colleges and Universities system, cutting its appropriation by $91 million to $88 million.
"We are very disappointed that the governor vetoed so many projects," said MnSCU spokeswoman Linda Kohl, noting that Pawlenty cut $8.5 million more than he initially recommended funding.
"The projects that were vetoed all have a common theme of strong student enrollment and heavily based in the sciences," Kohl said. "We are hopeful some projects will get a second look."
Pawlenty also vetoed the entire $43.5 million appropriation for Metro Transit construction projects.
"If there was any doubt that Gov. Pawlenty was hostile to transit, his line-item vetoes of the capital investment bill made that position definitive today," Senate Transit Division Chairman Scott Dibble, DFL-Minneapolis, said in a statement.
But Met Council Chairman Peter Bell said the veto won't delay any of the major projects on the drawing board, including the Central Corridor light-rail line between St. Paul and Minneapolis, the Cedar Avenue high-speed bus line in Dakota County and the proposed Southwest Corridor light-rail line from downtown Minneapolis to the western suburbs.
While no current projects will "drop dead," Bell, a Pawlenty appointee, said the transit projects that won't be funded now will have to compete with other projects in the future. But Dibble said vetoed transit funding included an $8.5 million state match needed to qualify for a $45 million federal grant to convert St. Paul's Union Depot into a transit hub. Now Ramsey County officials will have to search for another source of matching funds.
Pawlenty also cut the entire $25 million allocated for the Reinvest in Minnesota program, which pays landowners to take marginal cropland out of production. Steve Morse, executive director of the Minnesota Environmental Partnership, said that will cost the state an additional $35 million in federal matching dollars and is a "setback in water quality, wildlife habitat and land conservation."
The governor scrapped all $21 million appropriated for state trails, projects that lawmakers like to brag about back home.
In addition, he cut:
- $53 million for civic centers in Mankato, Rochester and St. Cloud.
- $5 million for an Asian-Pacific Cultural Center in St. Paul.
- $3 million for a regional fire training center in Maplewood.
- $2 million for the Minneapolis Sculpture Garden.
- $1 million for renovating Phalen-Keller Regional Park.
- $1 million for a winter Olympic training center in Minneapolis.
Although Pawlenty previously ridiculed funding arts and sports projects while the state faces a budget deficit, he did approve funding the Ordway and a $16 million renovation of Minneapolis' Orchestra Hall, plus $4 million for an addition to the National Volleyball Center in Rochester and $950,000 to add women's facilities to the National Sports Center hockey rink in Blaine.
Other east metro projects that he approved include $21 million for a new entrance, visitors center and education facilities at the Minnesota Zoo, $6.5 million for a MnDOT training center in Arden Hills, $5 million to renovate the Cedar Street National Guard Armory, $2.3 million for a public safety emergency operations center in Arden Hills and $1 million for a park and trails at the Rock Island Bridge in Inver Grove Heights.
- $91 million from Minnesota State Colleges and Universities (leaving $88 million for construction projects)
- $43.5 million from the Met Council transit construction program
- $25 million from the Reinvest in Minnesota land conservation program
- $21 million from state trail acquisition and development
- $28 million from Rochester to expand the Mayo Civic Center
- $13 million from St. Cloud's civic center expansion
- $12 million from Mankato's civic center expansion
- $5 million from an Asian-Pacific Cultural Center in St. Paul
- $3 million from an east metro regional fire training center in Maplewood
- $2 million from the Minneapolis Sculpture Garden
- $1 million from renovating Phalen-Keller Regional Park
- $1 million from the Theodore Wirth Winter Recreation Center in Minneapolis