Lori Sturdevant: Fed up by inaction at State Capitol

When state Rep. Alice Hausman of St. Paul rises to speak on the House floor, I've noticed, chatter quiets and paper rustling stops. She commands attention -- never with bombast, but with the calm, collected reason of the Kansas farm girl, former teacher, Lutheran minister's wife and 10-term legislator that she is.

It was said after a closed House DFL caucus meeting on Sept. 11 that when Hausman vented her frustration about legislative unproductivity, a hush fell.

"We just moved through this time of crisis," Hausman said not long afterward, "and we didn't do a thing. ... People are fed up with us."

A freeway bridge fell, and the state still can't find a way to invest more in transportation, she lamented. Property taxes are spiking -- especially in her St. Paul district -- and there's no boost in state aid for cities. The Legislature will help rebuild flooded southeastern Minnesota, but it couldn't pass a bonding bill to meet other infrastructure needs.

When Hausman says "we," she isn't just pointing at the governor, or the Senate, or House caucus leaders. She means to include senior members of the DFL majority -- committee chairs, like herself.

Hausman heads the House Capital Investment Finance Division -- the bonding panel. That should give her a lot of say about broken bridges, stalled traffic, polluted water and the like.

It should -- but too often, she said, it has not. Too many decisions, bonding and otherwise, have been left to a discordant trio -- the Republican governor, the Senate DFL majority leader and the House DFL speaker.

That must change, Hausman said. "The day of three leaders sitting in a room making decisions for us is over," she said.

"We will not let gridlock between three leaders be the defining point of government in Minnesota. We all represent our constituents. We don't represent our leaders."

She intends to prod her fellow committee chairs to organize before the 2008 session, independently of their caucus leaders, and write bills in consultation with each other, working across both chamber and party lines.

She'd leave the governor out of the loop until the bills reach his desk. If he vetoes them, "then we respond. That isn't gridlock. That's the way the process is supposed to work."

Hausman was saying as much before last week's set-to over the latest attempt to govern this state by microcommittee. The Pawlenty administration wants a little-known eight-member leadership panel, the Legislative Advisory Commission (LAC), to OK the spending of $195 million in federal money on a new Interstate Hwy. 35W bridge.

Granting that permission should be a "no-brainer," Gov. Tim Pawlenty said Tuesday. The only teensy problems: The federal money it seeks to spend has not yet been appropriated by Congress. And the LAC might not have legal authority to proceed.

If state government's decision-making process worked, the spending authority would have been granted during the recent special session, or a plan would have been set for addressing it later, when Congress acts. It would have been discussed face-to-face by the governor and legislators before or during the special session.

Instead, it bounced around in side conversations among staff members and testy letters between leaders, leaving both the executive and legislative branches to claim that they wanted the issue addressed but were rebuffed by the other side. Same old story at the Capitol: Lots of finger-pointing. No action.

Hausman said last week that there's no better time than now for senior legislators to put her ideas into practice.

"This is not an appropriate use of one small group of legislators," she counseled. "We should get into special session and deal with it there. That is the point of representative government. The LAC should just say no."

Ah, but calling a special session is not senior legislators' prerogative. That power belongs solely to the governor. And the threatened price for a no vote by the LAC is $195 million in cuts in already scheduled highway projects. Here's betting that the preponderance of those cuts would occur in DFL legislators' districts.

That's the vise in which House Speaker Margaret Anderson Kelliher and Senate Majority Leader Larry Pogemiller are caught this week: restive, respected senior members like Hausman on one side, and a Republican governor capable of stirring up trouble in DFL districts on the other. That could get uncomfortable.

Lori Sturdevant is a Star Tribune editorial writer and columnist. She is at lsturdevant@startribune.com.