Lori Sturdevant: Pawlenty's 'unallot' reasoning doesn’t hold up

Last update: July 1, 2009 - 7:16 PM

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On Wednesday, Gov. Tim Pawlenty officially approved a package of unilateral spending cuts and payment delays totaling $2.7 billion over the next two years.

That's possible, Pawlenty contends, because of the "unallotment" authority granted to the executive branch in statute. His exercise of that authority has been much disputed by the DFL leaders of the legislative branch, who consider the Republican governor's action an unconstitutional power grab. Meeting as the Legislative Advisory Council on Tuesday, they officially but futilely registered their protest, approving a resolution calling unallotment "unwise."

Stopping unallotment would require the intervention of the third branch of government, and that requires a lawsuit. The Legislature itself likely lacks legal standing to make that move, since it has no financial stake in Pawlenty's action. Whether any entity that has funds at stake is preparing a suit is not known -- but given the amount of money involved, it's likely.

One of the reasons Pawlenty cited for opting for unallotment, rather than signing a DFL-backed $1 billion tax increase, is that tax increases would be detrimental to job growth. State economist Tom Stinson said that Pawlenty is correct: The DFL tax increase likely would have cost the state 1,000 jobs over the next two years. But the spending cuts in Pawlenty's plan will lead directly to 3,300 to 4,700 lost jobs, Stinson said. Indirectly, the cuts could eliminate several thousand more positions.

What's more, those lost jobs in city and county government, schools and private-sector health and human services also represent the loss of services needed to keep Minnesota attractive to would-be job providers. Pawlenty also justified unallotment as preferrable to raising taxes on people struggling during a recession. But the DFL-backed tax bill's tax increases would have fallen primarily on upper-income Minnesotans and on those who purchase alcohol. Senate tax chair Tom Bakk cited projections Tuesday that Pawlenty's unallotment will lead to a $238 million increase over two years in a tax that falls on many more Minnesotans, the property tax.

The Washington-based Center on Budget and Policy Priorities release an analysis this week that called tax increases "less harmful to families and less damaging to state economies than the likely alternative: deep cuts in services." That assessment, and the tax and job implications of unallotment, raise a question for Pawlenty: If the DFL plan was better for struggling families and less damaging to job numbers, why was unallotment the better choice?

LORI STURDEVANT

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