Almanac: At the Capitol

1. Rep. Cornish brought everyone cake on his birthday.
   
2. Rep. Finstad's kids stop by the floor once in a while (they're really cute kids.
3. With all of Rep. Siefert's random rants on the floor, I've been able to catch up on my constituent email.
4. Rep. Berns' kids visit, too, and they're just as cute as Finstad's.
5. Bipartisan support for the Education, Public Safety, Environment, and Agriculture bills.

A point of clarification, Rep. Siefert mentioned that 4 of the past 7 years have resulted in special sessions. Oddly enough, he forget to mention his party was in control at the time.

The House DFL reminds me of Sanjaya from American Idol: There's some initial intrigue, but eventually people have lost patience with the lack of a quality performance.

As we enter into the last 5 days of the 2007 legislative session, 2-½ weeks after mandated budget targets for conference committees being broken, it is now time for Democrats to sit down with the Governor and negotiate an end to session. It's time to concede that tax increases are not going to happen, that 9.8% spending is enough and our surplus will provide for key needs expected by the people of Minnesota.

The brinkmanship is obvious again this year — it's an old, tired tactic having been employed by the Senate DFL for years now. In fact, under DFL Senate control, the legislature has spilled into special session 4 of the past 7 years.

Instead of sitting down and negotiating the final bills in good faith, we have DFLers loading up bills, not agreed upon by my caucus or the Governor to launch at the last minute, which are likely to be unacceptable. The public knows that the new legislature had plenty of time to get its work done. Everyone knew the Governor would veto tax increases and unsustainable spending increases that would slide us into long-term deficits. Our caucus wants a successful conclusion to session and would ask the DFL to drop bills that are time consuming or not needed and get down to finishing the budget right now.

Do we need to spend time on the mandatory insurance pool for school employees? I know that the teacher's union spent hundreds of thousands of dollars to defeat GOP House members last year, so the budgets must be set aside to pay back a powerful political ally. Pretty sad — if this was a high policy priority, it should have been done months ago. Watch the bipartisan opposition to this bill.

An honorable mention to my House DFL friends for managing the sloppy and bloated 39 committees that were set up to slog legislation along at a complicated snail's pace. It helped stop some really bad bills.

The recent disorganization is also obvious: The House Tax Committee quickly adjourned today without taking action on Rep. Tony Sertich's bill to dedicate money in the constitution for arts and heritage. With a huge majority on the committee, one would think that the DFL could easily help out their own leader in passing his bill. Apparently, the votes just were not there to pass it.

The House adjourned today in the early afternoon. Wouldn't this be a great time to sit down and negotiate bills out with the Governor? No — it was just to have the Tax Committee meet and adjourn without taking a vote and for the Senate Rules Committee to load up unacceptable bills.

Every veto of the Governor will stand upheld and we hope our DFL friends will take that seriously as they flail about in feeble attempts to over-ride. It's time to work together and stop the "gotcha" politics.

Many of us were hoping that the past would not repeat itself, but unfortunately, the mismanagement and lack of cooperation is taking over on this last week. The offer is open to finish session productively with a healthy 9.8% budget growth, no tax increases and keeping wedge issues off the table.

With a dozen days to go, it's ODD at the Capitol. Gov. Pawlenty has issued 9 vetoes this session, raising his ranking to one of the most "vetoing" governors in state history. I'll have much more on the historical perspective on vetoes tonight on Almanac: At the Capitol when we'll have a killer show with Senate Majority Leader Larry Pogemiller and House Minority Leader Marty Seifert.--OOPS--UPDATE: We were going to have Poge on, he wouldn't come on with Seifert because of his "tone" so we replaced Pogemiller with Majority Leader Sertich. This should be good too, but guests don't get to dictate who they appear with. The pace has picked up dramatically today, but time is starting to run out. The transportation and smoking ban conference committees completed their work today, so that's a positive sign. Overall, lawmakers still have to start from scratch on the majority of the budget after vetoes. In the Senate Tax Committee, Poge turned his constitutional amendment into a straight statutory dedication to the environment, but hours later Poge got his bill to his Rules committee and returned the bill to its orginal condition. Many are sensing a power struggle between Pogemiller and Senate Tax Chair Tom Bakk who only lost to Poge by one vote for majority leader. Meanwhile today, Bakk abruptly took a fellow lawmaker's bill and turned it into the House property tax relief bill saying it would be a compromise "in the event the session stalls." Again, it's a "compromise" that will get another veto. It sounds like we're being set up for the session to stall and go into extra-innings.