Lori Sturdevant: Budgeting by ballot? I'm still not persuaded

Not every interest-group lobbyist slunk off in discouragement last week as word of a $373 million hole in the current state budget sank in.

The folks at Conservation Minnesota sounded almost upbeat -- even though their own number-crunches produced a sorry projection: Beginning in 2010 and as far as they can see thereafter, the Legislature in this Land of Lakes will put less than 1 percent of the state budget into environmental protection. That will be their cause's tiniest slice of the state money pie in 30 years.

What gives green people hope is this thought: Now that the state is short of funds again, the inability of Gov. Tim Pawlenty and the Legislature to do right by the environment anytime soon is undeniably evident. Voters will feel compelled to raise the sales tax constitutionally, and dedicate a piece of it to Mother Nature.

Conservation Minnesota's Paul Austin said he's confident that most of DFLers who run the Legislature will assist their proposed end run around representative democracy. Environmentalists have been promised an early-in-the-session vote to put a constitutional amendment to their liking on the November 2008 ballot.

Austin likes the "Legacy Amendment" that was poised to pass last May 21, had time not run out on the House floor. It would raise the state's 6.5 percent sales tax to 6.875 percent for the next 25 years and would divide the new money three ways: one-third for water cleanup, one-third for habitat and land protection, and one-third shared among parks, trails and the arts.

Those things have taken a funding beating at the Capitol in this decade, Austin said. "That's because, when times get tough, the protection of water and the outdoors is easy to put off for a couple of years. Those are long-term things. 'We'll get to it later,' legislators say. Well, we never do."

The Constitution is the right place for the state's long-term priorities to be protected, he argued. "This is about making Minnesota continue to resemble the place that Minnesotans love."

Putting a tax increase into the Constitution is also the only way to slip past the roadblock to a statutory tax hike that is firmly positioned in the governor's office. Constitutional amendments don't require gubernatorial approval. They go directly from the Legislature to the voters.

Austin thinks those political and fiscal realities will prove persuasive even to the Capitol's republican (that's a small "r") purists -- say, the chair of the Senate Tax Committee and a certain newspaper editorial writer in the basement.

I have to admit, he had me wavering a little. Sen. Tom Bakk, DFL-Cook, confessed that he's had a second-thought twinge himself: "I've thought some about this the last couple of months, when I've been considering a run for governor" in 2010. "I've thought, maybe I should rethink this, politically." The conservation-plus-culture coalition that backs the Legacy Amendment is formidable, both at a DFL state convention and in a general election.

"But I've come to the conclusion that I'm not going to sacrifice what I very strongly believe. I just think it's bad government to take the flexibility away from future legislators to fund the priorities that they see, as they see fit."

Bakk's all for raising a tax for the sake of funding environmental protection. But he wants it done by the Legislature, not by the voters.

"Put it on the governor's desk, and we'll see if he supports environmental funding," he said. "Then in years to come, if priorities haven't changed, it'll stay that way. But if something changes and the Legislature needs to respond, they'll have the flexibility to change how the money is used."

We spoke on Thursday, one day after a disturbed young man killed himself and eight shoppers at an Omaha mall. "In Omaha today, people's No. 1 priority is public safety," Bakk said. If your government is so hamstrung by constitutional claims on tax dollars that it cannot nimbly respond with measures to make you feel safe going to the store, "then government has failed you."

Opponents of the Legacy Amendment (yeah, I'm still on that side) acknowledge that state government has failed environmental protection in this decade. But unlike its advocates, we don't believe the failure need be permanent. My guess: If Conservation Minnesota, the Sierra Club and the rest had put as much energy into winning a statutory funding increase as they have -- and will -- into a constitutional amendment, they would already have the bigger slice of the budget pie they crave.

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