Lillehaug said this could become a historic state case on the separation of powers but shouldn’t be considered a partisan issue, even though it’s widely viewed that way because of the standoff between a Republican governor and DFL-controlled Legislature.
“That’s what we have now, but consider what could happen in the future with a DFL governor and a Republican Legislature,” he said.
He also gave another example of how unallotment as practiced by Pawlenty excessively expands the Governor’s powers:
Pawlenty’s version of unallotment, Lillehaug argued, would mean that a governor has unlimited power in budget matters whenever a deficit is anticipated.
And it gave Pawlenty in effect two chances to veto projects. “These items were already passed and he signed the bills. Now he goes back again and gets another chance to cut them,” Lillehaug said.
Taking it further, he suggested that, in theory, the governor could veto a bill, have the veto overridden by the Legislature and then unallot the funding — in effect, overriding the override.
Read more of Lillehaug’s comments at MinnPost.
But, but…KH says it's perfectly fine, and DtM thinks it's the same thing as budget reconciliation. Certainly Lillehaug has nothing on them!
The courts may soon provide the answer but those who suggest the "second veto" argument have never seemed very assured. One thing is sure however. Nobody with any intelligence has made the argument that lojasmo and others have used, that the legislature's last minute passage of a bill that included revenue increases has any meaning, that somehow a balanced budget was passed. It was a press release and nothing more. Besides, Lillehaug is a DFL advocate, nothing wrong with that but he is not a person likely to present both sides of an issue.
Nobody who argues that unallotment is unconstitutional has been able to provide a reasonable alternative in this case. If anything it seems that the weakest link in the various laws is the statute that requires a balanced budget. The courts can't force the governor to sign revenue increases into law and neither can they force the legislature to send only bills where all spending is already paid for.
The "reasonable alternative" would have been to call a special session. No, it's not efficient, and it should not have been necessary, but that was the reasonable (i.e. constitutional) alternative.
Incidentally, it is the Constitution, not a statute, that requires a balanced budget. A technicality, perhaps, but it means that it would be far more difficult to fix the weakest link.
True about the balanced budget, my mistake.
A special session would have been basically meaningless as there is still no mechanism that can force the legislature and the executive to agree just because the session happens in a different month. On top of that the constitution only allows the Governor to call a special session, not the courts or legislature. If the governor and legislature have allocated more in spending then they have available in revenue and the constitution demands a balanced budget something has to give. Right now the mechanism for remedying the situation is unallotment.
So again, what is the remedy that does not itself have a more direct constitutional conflict?
When these laws were written, they assumed that governors would act like adults instead of little babies taking their ball and going home. And don't even pretend T-Paw was willing to compromise. A compromise between 1 billion in revenue increase and 0 is not 0.
O increase could be viewed as a compromise between 1 billion and cuts and 1 billion in increases though. The problem with the "compromise" BS that so many seem focused on is compromise is not a legal argument in any way shape or form. If we could count on compromise we wouldn't need constitutions, laws or rules of governance. The laws are supposed to be written to provide a framework that will be followed in the event a compromise can not be reached. Since the power to unallot was only available because the legislature sent bills to be signed which outstripped available revenue, why did they do it? Why not take the compromise already available? The one where the executive branch with veto power can block tax increases and the legislature is able to make decisions on where the money already availible gets spent. If that wasn't good enough MAK needed to find a few, very few, Republicans to help override the veto. There were options available, just not ones that were appealing to the DFL.
I agree that unallotment is a terrible method of determining spending and yes, I believe Pawlenty knew what he was doing and once again played the DFL into giving him what he needed. But since we can never force the different branches to compromise without destroying the separation of powers there needs to be a way to meet the balanced budget requirement in the event of legislative gridlock. That method can be changed or we can remove the balanced budget requirement but what was done was based on the rules at the time. Again I ask, what were the other structural options in the event the legislative and executive branches refuse to agree on a balanced budget?
Unallotment is supposed to be only for unanticipated shortfalls, not as a remedy for disagreement.
You do posit an interesting scenario: what if no one agrees, and the Governor refuses to call a special session? There is no authority to spend any money without legislative authorization, so would the entire government (even essential services, like law enforcement) have to shut down?