Editorial: A troubling dearth of budget details

The clock will start ticking the moment that a winner is declared in Minnesota's historic 2010 governor's race. Once the balloons come down and the cheers go up on the night of Nov. 2, the winning candidate will have a scant three months to deliver a budget that not only tackles Minnesota's titanic deficit, but charts a sustainable course to the future, balancing expectations for economic growth and government services.

It's a complex assignment -- and voters deserve to know well in advance of Election Day how candidates will carry it out.

So far, there's been a disappointing dearth of detail. That's unacceptable given the gargantuan problem the new governor must grapple with: a budget deficit officially pegged at $5.8 billion over the next biennium. Making this year's spending cuts permanent, delaying repayment on the K-12 school aid shift and other whittling around edges could get that down to roughly $3 billion.

Budget proposals, directly from each candidate:
Mark Dayton
Tom Emmer
Matt Entenza
Tom Horner
Margaret Anderson Kelliher

But $3 billion is still an enormous sum. "All the easy things to cut have been cut. In fact, not only have the easy things been cut, some of the hard things to cut have been cut," said State Economist Tom Stinson.

Job One for voters is making sure that gubernatorial candidates truly understand the severity of the problem. And that they have a game plan voters can live with. Difficult choices lie ahead. Taxpayers are likely to pay more but get less. Any candidate who sugarcoats this, who says it's easy, that "finding efficiencies" is all that's needed to avoid cuts or tax increases, isn't being straight with the state. The same goes for anyone who claims that whacking welfare queens will suffice. The real money in state health and human services is spent on care for the elderly and the disabled.

Voters must demand more than rhetoric. Candidates who demonize big government should be called out. If the government needs to shrink, what programs will be cut? And by how much? And do those cuts balance the state's books?

A week ago, the five gubernatorial candidates provided an overview of their budget game plans to the Star Tribune news staff. The responses from the Independence Party's endorsed candidate, Tom Horner, and from DFLer Mark Dayton were a good start, but the plans were far too fuzzy from the two main parties' endorsees -- Republican Tom Emmer and DFLer Margaret Anderson Kelliher -- and from DFLer Matt Entenza.

This week the Editorial Board asked all five to provide more detail, and all of their responses are posted online. Dayton and Horner weighed in thoughtfully, providing the detail voters need to conclude they have a budget plan and to decide what they think of it. The remaining three have work to do. Emmer's response reads like a campaign speech, full of vague metaphors like "peel back the onion" of social services. Entenza ducked a key question on human services cuts, saying he's open to spending cuts but concerned about service cuts, whatever that means. Anderson Kelliher relies on about $1 billion in additional tax revenue, unspecified shifts and hope that the economy improves.