Continuing his ongoing squabble with House Republicans over his pay hikes to cabinet secretaries, Gov. Mark Dayton on Wednesday made clear he would not appear before a House committee over the issue and also suggested GOP lawmakers are taking "revenge" against him for winning last fall's election.
Dayton a day earlier declined an invitation from Rep. Sarah Anderson, R-Plymouth, to testify before the House State Government Finance Committee about his decision to grant $800,000 in total salary hikes to about two dozen state agency commissioners. Anderson renewed the invitation Wednesday morning, but Dayton made it clear he wouldn't appear in a formal legislative committee setting.
"Other governors haven't, and I don't think that's an appropriate setting," Dayton said. He said legislative historians could find only one instance when a sitting governor testified at a hearing: in 2000, when then-Gov. Jesse Ventura appeared before a joint House-Senate panel to pitch his constitutional amendment for a unicameral rather than bicameral Legislature.
Lawmakers never put Ventura's proposed amendment on the ballot.
"I think something of a constitutional magnitude warrants that exception," Dayton said.
As an alternative, Dayton said he would meet with Republican lawmakers to discuss the pay raises, and that he believed the press should be allowed to attend too. But he signaled he would not be a shrinking violet on the issue. Dayton has been noting that several state House employee are pulling down salaries close to those of his cabinet commissioners. The recently-hired executive director of the House GOP took a pay boost shortly after his hiring, and now makes $124,000 a year.
"This is so far into irrationality and hypocrisy, that's what bothers me the most about it," Dayton said. "They just did it themselves, in January."
Dayton's pay raises appear likely to keep bubbling as a political issue. House Republicans have linked the issue to a stopgap budget bill currently moving through the legislative process. The state Senate is taking up the so-called "deficiency" bill on Thursday.
