It’s funny: Republicans have been in control of the legislature for a year now, and we seem to be hiring a lot of layers to clean up after their messes. First, the Senate had to retain outside counsel in the wake of their firing of Michael Brodkorb. Now, the University of Minnesota is consulting a lawyer about the GOP’s hiring of Regent Steve Sviggum:

Linda Cohen, chairwoman of the University of Minnesota’s governing board, said Friday she has sought outside legal advice about Regent Steve Sviggum’s potential conflict of interest with his position in the Minnesota Senate….

She announced at Friday’s Regents meeting that attorney John Stout of Fredrikson & Byron would review the issue as an “additional step” to preserve objectivity. Stout “has advised the boards of large publicly-held corporations, educational institutions and well-recognized nonprofits” in the past, according to a memo Cohen provided to the board.

I wonder what his hourly rate is?

The GOP seems to be wasting quite a lot of taxpayer money because of their questionable ethics. I don’t know about you, but I can think of a lot of better ways to spend that money than on cleaning up after their messes. If the GOP can’t prove that they can be responsible, they shouldn’t be governing.

Earlier today, Mark Dayton vetoed a number of Republican bills that would have reduced consumer protections under the law. The GOP calls these “tort reform,” and claims they’re about reducing frivolous lawsuits. In reality, they provide new windfalls for corporations by taking away our rights to address their wrongdoings.

In one of his veto letters [PDF], Governor Dayton got to the crux of the issue:

I am deeply concerned that this legislation would make it more difficult for average citizens to defend themselves against powerful interests. The suggestion that passage of this measure will somehow create jobs in Minnesota lacks merit and substantiation. Not a single job would be created — but important protections would be greatly impaired.

In this legislative session, we’ve already seen time and time again that the GOP isn’t working to create jobs. Just like last year, all of their energy is focused on giving gifts to the already rich and powerful. I’m glad we have Governor Dayton watching our backs.

The Republican majority in the legislature, despite being a majority with the capability of passing legislation, has apparently decided not to do any legislating. Oh, there are plenty of laws they want to pass, but they’ve decided not to. Instead, they’re going to put a seemingly endless parade of constitutional amendments on the ballot this November.

We’re already going to be voting on the marriage discrimination amendment, and at least three other amendments have a lot of momentum right now: amendments to suppress voting, bust unions, and bankrupt our government. And it could get even worse. There are a whopping 33 constitutional amendments currently proposed in the House. Here’s a list:

This isn’t how our system of government is supposed to work. We have a representative system of government. We elect our representatives, and they pass the laws. This legislation by constitutional amendment is a disgrace.

We can’t stop the Republicans from making a mockery of our system, but we can reject their effort to rewrite our constitution. This November, vote NO on the entire Republican Overreach Agenda.

Wow:

The Republican Party of Minnesota announced today that Florida Congressman Allen West will headline the party’s annual Lincoln Reagan dinner in March.

If the name Allen West sounds familiar to you, here are a few places you may have heard of him:

• West painted [Congressman Keith] Ellison as someone who “really does represent the antithesis of the principles upon which this country was established” [ThinkProgress]
• Rep. Allen West (R-Fla.) is backing away from comments he made over the weekend telling Democratic leaders to “get the hell out of the United States of America.” [Huffington Post]
• Rep. Allen West (R-FL) fomented a racial controversy with comments describing African-American voters’ tendency to support the Democratic Party as a “21st-Century plantation.” [ThinkProgress]
• Florida GOP Congressman Allen West this afternoon dispatched a scathing personal email to Democratic National Committee Chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz, calling her “vile, unprofessional ,and despicable,” “a coward,” “characterless,” and “not a Lady,” and demanding that she “shut the heck up.” [Politico]

I could go on, but I think you get the point. This seems like a pretty good insight into the state of mind of the MNGOP these days.

To say Mark Dayton is angry at the partisan attack on one of his appointees would be putting it mildly. Dayton is clearly furious — as he has every right to be. Senate Republicans are clearly bent on spending the legislative session doing nothing but attacking the DFL.

In response to the vote against Ellen Anderson, Dayton released a long statement slamming the Republicans as “unfit to lead:”

You would think after their leadership scandals, which caused them to replace all of their leaders last month, they would behave themselves for at least a little while.  However, they seem incapable of doing so.  After it was disclosed that they had ignored a $2.6 million reduction in their own operating budget during the past six months, the Republican Caucus hired a new Communications Director at a salary $10,000 above his predecessor.  And they picked someone, a decent man, who now has a very serious conflict of interest as a University of Minnesota Regent, which he won’t acknowledge and they won’t deal with – thus sullying the good reputation of our great university.

Last week, their very first week back in session, the Senate Republican leaders addressed their deficit by cutting DFL Senators’ share of the budget almost half-a-million dollars, while cutting theirs…zero.  Zero.  They did it after their new Leader said the Senate was “like family.”  Some family. 

Now, to begin their second week, they have smeared and rejected an outstanding public official.  They claim PUC Chair Anderson is “too extreme.”  Her record proves them wrong.  Since she joined the PUC, there have been 221 votes among the five commissioners, the other four of whom were all appointed by Governor Pawlenty.  Three of them are Republicans….

I’ll tell you what is extreme.  As Chair of the Senate Tax Committee, Senator Julianne Ortman, who leveled the charge of being “too extreme” against Ellen, is the one person most to blame for eliminating the Homestead Market Value Credit last year.  She put the credit’s elimination in the first tax bill, which I vetoed.  During the final negotiations in both June and July, she, more than anyone, insisted on eliminating it.

Clearly, Dayton is hurt by the GOP’s partisan attacks. And can you blame him? In one short week, the GOP has completely blown up any chance of a productive working environment in the Senate. One can’t help but wonder why they decided to create such a poisonous atmosphere.

The legislature has only been back in session for a week, but we already have a clear sense of new majority leader David Senjem’s leadership style: petty and vindictive. On the very first day of the session, his party voted to force the DFL to bear the consequences of the GOP leadership’s fiscal irresponsibility. To start week two, they ousted a dedicated public servant from office:

Minnesota Republicans took the rare step on Monday of voting to remove an appointee of DFL Gov. Mark Dayton.

By a 37-29 party-line vote, Republicans voted against confirming Ellen Anderson, a former longtime member of the Senate, as Dayton’s appointee to chair the Minnesota Public Utilities Commission.

Trying to hide the vindictive partisan motives behind the move, GOP Senators claimed Anderson was too “extreme.” But as Patrick has already covered, if Ellen Anderson’s tenure at the PUC was “extreme,” then the entire body is extreme, since nearly every vote it has taken has been unanimous during Anderson’s tenure.

Apparently this is what we have to look forward from the GOP under Senjem — a fresh partisan outrage every single week. You’d think they’d be more interested in trying to rebuild their credibility with voters, but I guess they just don’t care about actually governing.

After a disastrous session last year, in which the GOP agreed to put our state $1.4 billion in debt to protect the super-rich, Minnesota voters seem inclined to return control of the legislature back to the DFL:

When asked, “If there was an election for the Legislature today, do you think you would vote for the DFL or Republican candidate from your district?” 48 percent of those polled said they would vote for the Democrat and 39 percent said they would vote for the Republican. [Star Tribune, full results via Public Policy Polling (PDF)]

The Republicans aren’t doing anything to help their case, either. Instead of showing they can properly govern our state, their top priority in 2012 appears to be petty attacks on the DFL, such as cutting the Senate DFL’s budget and voting PUC chair Ellen Anderson out of office.

The Republicans, seemingly acknowledging that they won’t be in office for long, are switching tactics in their quest to protect the super-rich. Their new plan is to pass a slew of constitutional amendments to force the DFL legislature’s hand in 2013. Not only do we need to work hard to help the DFL take back the legislature, we need to defeat the GOP’s efforts to govern by constitutional amendment as well.

People of Minnesota, you’ve clearly rejected the GOP and their policies. If you’re going to throw them out of office, don’t let them rewrite our constitution on the way out.

Under Amy Koch’s failed leadership, the Minnesota Senate acquired a significant deficit of $2.6 million that had to be addressed at the beginning of this session. So the Senate GOP immediately acted to reduce the deficit — by slashing the DFL caucus’s budget.

Republicans voted to reduce DFL staff at the Senate by more than $400,000 — meaning the DFL will have to lay off 12 to 14 people of its 43 person staff. Republicans will not reduce their staff of 73 people at all. 

This is really outrageous. The lack of accountability or even basic decency is just astounding. But I don’t know why things like this still shock me. This is the GOP’s typical method for handling budgets — first they screw it up, then they force someone else to pay. 

You can see video highlights of the committee meeting below, courtesy of The UpTake:

MPR is out this morning with a look at why the MNGOP is $2 million in debt. Here are just a few examples of the party’s fiscal incompetence:

Chief among [party activists’] concerns are dollars paid to Tony Trimble, the party’s attorney who argued unsuccessfully in the 2008 U.S. Senate recount and the 2010 gubernatorial recount. During Sutton’s tenure, Trimble made more than $1 million, an amount leaders say was excessive.

Also on the party books was $221,000 paid to Strother Communications, a public relations firm charged with rebranding the party. One party leader said the effort never resulted in a concrete plan.

The party also paid officeholders — or those campaigning — $120,000 in consulting fees and salary; a staffer already earning an $85,000 salary an additional $14,000 for legal work; and two former party staffers $56,000 for consulting….

In September 2010, the party paid TG Med, a small company that markets medical products, roughly $10,500. TG Med owner Tim Goer said his contacts within the party asked him to look into the efficacy of medical marijuana.

There’s much more here. Between this fiasco and the legislature’s irresponsible borrowing, do you really want to trust the GOP with our state’s finances?

Just two and a half weeks ago, I predicted that Republicans in the legislature would oppose infrastructure spending to create new jobs, including the bogus reason they would use:

Though it is a bonding year, a bonding bill will not be passed. Republicans will call it irresponsible borrowing, and incorrectly compare it to the borrowing they did to balance the operating budget.

I then proceeded to explain why this sort of argument is bogus, and how responsible bonding differs from the Republicans’ irresponsible borrowing.

Sure enough, Speaker Kurt Zellers is already starting to use the dishonest and hypocritical reasoning I predicted:

Republicans remain concerned with the rising financial commitment of debt service. If we have learned anything from the mortgage crisis and subsequent high rate of foreclosures, buying more because rates and costs are low isn’t financially prudent or sustainable.

Oh, you’re concerned, are you? That’s funny, it didn’t stop you from putting us $1.4 billion in debt to pay for our basic operating costs. But now you suddenly object to spending half that on responsible long-term capital improvements? 

Speaker Zellers, your excuses for opposing the jobs bill are as flimsy as they were predictable.