Almanac: At the Capitol

Based on the pace so far, it's going to be very late tonight or early tomorrow morning before what was supposed to a brief special session ends. The property tax relief that the House was seeking is now off the table. But many hours of the special session were eaten up try get that to take off. A Senate committee has been marking up a disaster relief bill in technical boring fashion for what seems like hours now. It appears a second bill will also be considered, dealing with the Help America Vote Act. It would delay townships enactment of HAVA for people with disabilities needing special equipment. The governor is said to be on board. But the attempt to add other major subjects seems to be dead. Now after a few more hours of hammering out the final disaster relief bill, then the two chambers will take several more hours of speeches to actually pass the bill. It seems impossible that Gov. Pawlenty will have a bill to sign tonight and he's not around tomorrow because he's in Washington D.C. to talk about clean energy in front of the National Press Club. No wonder he was so eager for a special session and bill today.

So much for a quick and easy special session. There's a bit a chaos afoot at the Capitol tonight. Both chambers only gaveled in quickly and left again to keep crafting deals. What we're hearing is slowing things down is an effort led by the House to pass a property tax relief bill. The bill is apparently at the Revisor's office now, and it's the same tax bill the governor vetoed minus his objections. The Senate is not on board. One high-ranking senator just told me "we're not interested" in doing the property tax bill. In fact several lawmakers have told me the Senate Tax Chair Tom Bakk may not be attending the special session at all. Gov. Pawlenty has gotten wind of this and just sent a letter out to "inform the legislature of the purposes for which they are convened" and he added that "a deal is a deal" to hold a one-day session limited to disaster relief. He concluded by saying he looks forward to signing the bill later this evening. We'll see...

House Majority Leader Tony Sertich just told us that leaders and the governor are trying to negotiate a last-minute deal on property tax relief. Politically, taking on more than the flood may be good for lawmakers and the governor. That tax relief would affect the whole state and get people thinking they have a stake in this special session. We'll see; the governor has been traveling in Greater Minnesota much of the day so I'm not sure how much he's around to actually cut this 11th-hour deal. There's also lots of pressure to do something about transportation. Many interest groups and lawmakers have had press conferences already today saying it's a missed opportunity to address transportation issues. We're expecting lots of long speeches about the lack of agreement on transportation yet tonight, but likely no amendments to the single bill under consideration dealing with the floods, fire and drought. Lawmakers say they hope to finish up tonight, but you never know.

Odd timing, leaving when the heat is off, but Health Commissioner Mandernach is calling it quits. Interesting that more pressure is on Transportation Commissioner Molnau. This could come as a blow to Gov. Pawlenty, who's enjoying record approval ratings — and that was before the floods. People tend to rally around a leader in crisis and Minnesota has certainly had more than its share this summer. The governor's swift response and media savvy have helped him through the tragedies, but Mandernach's resignation will stir up the controversy of earlier this summer. Here's the story that it appears MPR's Tom Scheck broke.