Lori Sturdevant: Unallotment should be challenged

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Lori Sturdevant: Unallotment should be challenged

Updated: July 2, 2009 - 5:35 PM

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Practical worries evidently trumped constitutional ones at the League of Minnesota Cities' June board of directors meeting, when the possibility of filing a lawsuit to try to block Gov. Tim Pawlenty's unallotment was discussed. The League's online bulletin, published Wednesday, reported that the meeting ended with "no group consensus" on proceeding with a suit, and "no indication that any other individual organization would choose to pursue that strategy on its own at this time."

The league's directors believe that Pawlenty overstepped his constitutional bounds when he unilaterally imposed $2.7 billion in spending cuts and delays this week, the league's Gary Carlson reported. But go to court, they reasoned, would risk a decision that would put more of the burden, not less, onto cities' shoulders. They might also see a bigger cut in 2010 at the hands of a time-pinched Legislature than the one Pawlenty imposed this week.

If the cities don't sue, it's not clear who among those who have a financial stake in the cuts has the wherewithal to go to court.

But someone should, for the sake of better defining the rightful balance of powers among state government's three branches. Pawlenty is applying a 1939 statute in an unprecedented way. If his action stands, it will embolden future governors to take much greater control of budget decisions than previous governors have. Unallotment at the start of the biennium, to close a budget gap created by gubernatorial vetoes, freezes the Legislature out of the final decisions that are often most crucial in budget-making.

IF YOU LIKED THIS DEFICIT ...

2012-13's is going to be a monster

With unallotment, the state budget is balanced. That's no small achievement, given that the gap between revenues and expenditures in 2010-11 was a yawning $4.5 billion five months ago and that a lot of states are still struggling with recession-related budget woes.

But Minnesotans need to know that the state is still in a deep fiscal hole. Just how deep was measured by state Senate fiscal analyst Matt Massman for the Legislative Advisory Commission this week. Using current law's spending requirements, a projection for 2012-13 -- the biennium that follows the one that started Wednesday -- shows a huge $5.9 billion deficit. Factor in expected inflation in state costs, and the hole grows to $7.2 billion.

If those numbers hold, the budget problem that will confront the 2011 Legislature will be the largest in modern times. A $7.2 billion deficit constitutes about a 20 percent gap between expected revenues and forecasted spending during that period.

Those numbers count Pawlenty's line-item vetoes and unallotment as one-time measures. That's how the law says the governor's actions must be tallied. But the size of the coming deficit should tell anyone on the receiving end of those measures that they are likely to last well beyond the current budget period.

It's fitting that the faith community's rally about Pawlenty's health care cuts Tuesday was called "A Witness of Lament" and featured people dressed as if for a funeral. No resurrection is in the offing anytime soon for the programs Pawlenty cut.

LORI STURDEVANT

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