Lori Sturdevantcolumnist: Wind shifts on prospects for a special session this fall

Seeking more tax money for transportation in Minnesota has been a Charlie Brown and Lucy comic-strip saga. Every year for the past dozen or more, the football's been teed up, then yanked away.

A fallen interstate bridge changed the game, didn't it?

"I'm not sure it did," said a glum Robert Vanasek last week, before Wednesday's legislative hearing on a replacement for the Interstate 35W bridge.

Trust a former speaker of the Minnesota House to know when the wind shifts at the Capitol. By the hearing's end, Vanasek wasn't the only one who felt it. Resolve was weakening to agree on more investment in roads, bridges and transit, and enact the deal in a fall special session.

"Will there be a special session?" asked the House's party-maverick transportation champion, Ron Erhardt, R-Edina? He got no response, at least not from the Minnesota Department of Transportation officials at the witness table.

Of course, that's a question only Gov. Tim Pawlenty can answer. Only he can call the Legislature into action this fall. He said in the days after the bridge fell that a special session to address transportation needs is likely. Tantalizingly, he said he was now willing to put the gas tax increase favored by DFLers on the table.

He kept the special session idea alive on his radio program Friday, but he didn't repeat his gas-tax offer. Rather, he implied that a serious effort to strike a deal with legislators was in progress. "We don't have all of them on the same page ... but we'll keep working on it," he said.

That work has been hard for the press corps to detect. Last week produced no summit sessions or stakeouts outside the governor's office. At week's end, DFL leaders were preparing to send the governor a letter "saying we agree to accommodate everything the governor is asking for," said Senate Majority Leader Larry Pogemiller.

"We're taking the governor at his word" that he still wants to call lawmakers back, Pogemiller said.

Hmm. Then why did Wednesday's hearing produce no clarion call from MnDOT for emergency action to finance a new I-35W bridge, or anything else? MnDOT's Abby McKenzie told legislators that while there might be "cash shortages in the winter" and that a "delay of federal funds will cause a greater challenge," MnDOT has "adequate budget authority to award all the contracts necessary."

Through the fog created by such responses, it seemed apparent that the state will pay eventually for a new bridge, the cost of which will run somewhere north of $300 million. The feds are good for $250 million, but probably not more.

But an impression was created that "eventually" might not equate with "soon." Not a few people left the hearing room wondering whether the transportation deal and special session that seemed like a lock a week earlier had fallen out of favor within the Pawlenty administration.

It clearly had with some of the governor's Republican allies. House GOP leader Marty Seifert argued Thursday that no special session is necessary. Neither is an increase in the highway-dedicated gas tax, he said. The state's general fund appears to be accumulating a surplus this summer. It can be tapped instead, he suggested.

It can, if legislators are willing to settle for a one-time Band-Aid rather than real investment. And if they are up for a fight with cities, schools, and the rest who covet the same money.

No special session this fall would mean no response to the collapse until the 2008 Legislature convenes in February, which, knowing the Legislature, means no action until May. Pawlenty and GOP legislators would be betting that by next spring, the public's notoriously short attention span and aversion to higher gas prices (57 percent said no in a Survey USA poll days after the bridge fell) would cool the heat they'd feel this fall to raise the gas tax.

That's a risky bet. No special session also means an escalating partisan blame game in the next six months. For Pawlenty, it means dashing expectations he himself created. His initial impulse to get the transportation fight settled was well-received. In a Survey USA poll conducted three days after Pawlenty said he's open to a gas tax increase, his approval ratings were up significantly.

No transportation deal this fall would tag the governor with the criticism President Bush faces -- that he squandered a rare opportunity to bring people together and do good. That would be a lot of ammunition for Pawlenty to hand the opposition.

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