The relatively drama-free state government shutdown left Jim Schowalter facing an unexpected question last week: Why wasn't it worse?
The commissioner of Minnesota Management and Budget presented a report detailing how his agency threaded the state through a potential financial and public relations nightmare during the 20-day shutdown in July.
Schowalter appeared to be wedged into a strange situation. Had the shutdown caused a catastrophe, he surely would have been called to account for what went wrong. But since it appeared to go relatively smoothly, Minnesotans could be left with the idea that maybe shutdowns aren't the calamity politicians had predicted.
Without any huge malfunctions to dissect, Schowalter was left discussing the things that could have blown up. He talked about dealing with rapid-fire court orders that constantly changed state finances, fending off cyber-attacks and trying to keep everyone informed.
"We had circumstances that were changing rapidly, and we made it through," he said. "That's the cautionary tale for the future. You don't know if it is going to go as uneventfully as this one."
Schowalter didn't do it alone. For the first time, the state used a national disaster planning model to guide shutdown management. The federal government created the framework after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks and Hurricane Katrina to improve government responses.
The state created a nine-member crisis team to manage the shutdown, including Schowalter, human resources heads and members of the governor's staff. "It's the only way we survived," Schowalter said. "We always needed to make very quick and real-time decisions."
What most people outside the Capitol never knew was that Schowalter, who served as a deputy budget chief under Republican Gov. Tim Pawlenty, was in a position no other state budget leader has faced in recent history.
