DFL wants answers!

Posted at 1:42 PM on June 17, 2009 by Tom Scheck (2 Comments)

DFL House Speaker Margaret Anderson Kelliher and DFL Senate Majority Leader Larry Pogemiller sent a letter to the governor today that requests answers to several questions. They are sending the letter today so MMB Commissioner Tom Hanson has time to gather the information.

Here are the questions (I'll link to the letter when they send me the pdf):

1) How will your proposal affect public and private sector jobs?

2) How many state and local employee layoffs will occur due to your proposal?

3) How many teachers will be laid off in both the K-12 and university systems?

4) How many private sector jobs within the health care industry will be terminated?

5) What impact will your proposal have on local property taxpayers at both the city and county levels?

6) Will you unallotments jeopardize any federal funds, and if so, how much loss in funds are we to expect?

7) With your use of unallotment, you have no legal authority to repay the schools without legislative action. Under what statutory authority would the final payment in FY12 school appropriation be made?

8) What impact will the K-12 cuts have on school district financing and districts currently in or near statutory operating debt?

9) Governor Pawlenty's E-12 budget bill (S.F. 836 Article 1, Section 11) recommended changes to statute 123B.75 subd. 5 to enact a property tax recognition shift. There is no authority to recognize E-12 levies early without this change. As a result, it is our understanding the Commisioner of Education does not have the authority to require school districts to recognize a portion of their levy revenues. This will leave your unallotments $600M short or require legislative action in order to make these cuts. How do you propose to make up the difference?

10) Unallotment is a one time solution. Give this fact, what is the projected shortfall for FY12-13? How are you planning to address it? Since your staff has met with various stakeholders and discussed possible unallotments, we trust you have this information already compiled and should be able to outline the impacts for legislators and the public.

Comments (2)

How are upper and upper-middle class people sharing the burden with these cuts? They seem to place the burden on the poor and working classes.

Specifically, how will these cuts affect you, Governor?

And what I don't understand is how the governor is able to change the law with the unallotments. State law states that:
A household of two or more persons must not own more than $20,000 in total net assets, and a household of one person must not own more than $10,000 in total net assets.
in regard to Asset Limitations for families and children. But the governor has changed this law with his unallotments. Would he be able to change any law with unallotments? It may save money to reduce the minimum wage, can he do that?

Posted by Kassie | June 17, 2009 2:20 PM

The state of MN spends too much money, has increased spending much faster than any inflation numbers and has less to show for it than ever before.



Could it be spending priorities are skewed and need an honest reevaluation. Democrats can clearly take credit for the explosion of state spending as they are the ones who forced it upon us. They said all the right things, but didn't deliver on anything, which is typical of liberal agendas. They are more interested in increasing government role in everyone's lives, teaching everyone that you need government in order to make it.



This is a fallacy. These unallotments need not be one time shifts. They should end up being permanent reductions in state spending, giving citizens more responsibility and control over their own destiny.



If we simply kept our budget restricted to inflation and pop. growth for the last 10 years, we would not be discussing this because there would be no defecit, no finger pointing, but the democrats en mass would never have it that way.



The only way they thrive in on crisis and dependency. Welcome to the statist nation.

Posted by CommonSenseRambler | June 18, 2009 11:38 AM

Services

• Hourly Newscast
• HD Radio
• iPhone App / Mobile
• E-mail newsletters
• RSS feeds
• Podcasts
• Submit your photos
• Videos
• Weather
• Most e-mailed stories