The bill is in for the first three months of legal work defending the Senate from a lawsuit by Michael Brodkorb, and it’s expensive:

The Minnesota Senate has rung up a $46,150 legal bill so far to defend its firing of former Republican caucus staffer Michael Brodkorb….

The four-page invoice itemized 169 hours of work from mid-January through March. Most of the work was done at a rate of $330 an hour.

Here’s the thing, though. Remember what happened the last time incompetence among the Republican leaders of the Senate caused budget problems? Republicans voted to force the layoffs of a dozen DFL staffers, without sacrificing a single staffer of their own.

$46,000 is roughly the salary of a mid-level staffer, give or take a bit. So I can’t help but wonder: If Republicans maintain control of the Senate, will they pay for the Brodkorb scandal by firing a staff member for the DFL caucus?

Once again, Mark Dayton is looking out for Minnesota taxpayers while the MNGOP plays financial games in a desperate attempt to retain control of the legislature. Republicans proposed an irresponsible tax bill that would pilfer from our budget reserve to provide a tax giveaway to corporations, and after a bit of soul-searching, the Governor thankfully vetoed it:

DFL Gov. Mark Dayton vetoed a GOP-led package of business tax breaks that would have blown a $100 million hole in the state budget in coming years.

“It ignored my requirement that any future spending must be paid for and avoid adding to the next biennium’s projected deficit,” Dayton said in the veto letter….

Dayton said the GOP wrongly targeted cuts to business property taxes when individual property taxes have risen much more.

The GOP keeps doing things like this. They know that Minnesotans are furious with them for causing a shutdown to protect the super-rich. So they’re trying to buy their way back into office with borrowed money. First, it was pretending to pay back the school shift, when in fact all they would have done was shuffle our debt around. Then, it was a corporate tax giveaway “paid” for by depleting our budget reserve.

At every step, the Governor has been there to demand fiscal sanity. Thank you, Governor Dayton, for protecting us from the MNGOP’s horrendous fiscal failures.

Governor Dayton signed the bonding bill last week, which is a good thing. Anything that will create jobs in Minnesota is a victory. Unfortunately, it should have been a much bigger job creator. The bonding bill sent to Dayton for his signature was the smallest in two decades.

Signing the bonding bill was the right thing for Governor to do, since the legislature had already adjourned and $500 million is much better than nothing. The Republican legislature that produced the bill, though, should be ashamed for passing such a weak jobs bill.

While the legislature spent months working on a giveaway to one particular billionaire, they skimped when it came to helping Minnesotans. Minnesota needs something to jumpstart our economy, and the GOP utterly failed to provide that.

Over the last week or two, I’ve been following the MNGOP tax bill closely. The original tax bill was an irresponsible corporate giveaway that would have increased our already out-of-control deficit, and which the Republicans only pretended to pay for with fraudulent accounting tricks. Fortunately, the Governor vetoed it.

The most recent version, passed after Dayton’s veto, is much smaller but still increases the deficit and takes money from our budget reserve. Session Daily reports that Dayton is unsure whether or not to sign it:

As for the omnibus tax bill (HF2337*/ SF1972), Dayton said there are many provisions he likes, but that he’s still concerned about the impact of the bill’s “tails” on the state’s budget. A second package of mostly technical tax changes (HF2690*/ SF2136) is also a concern to Dayton, because he said it contains local government aid formula changes that would hit certain cities hard. He said he plans to study both bills in detail before he decides whether to sign or veto them.

Governor Dayton, I would urge you to veto this bill. Remember, despite improvements in the economy, we’re still facing over a $1 billion deficit in the next biennium. Not only that, we still owe our schools over $2 billion — a debt we need to begin paying down. Given our still-precarious budget situation„ we can’t afford to increase our deficit and raid the state’s budget reserve.

I’m surprised and grateful that Republicans didn’t try to hold the Vikings stadium or bonding bill hostage to try to force Mark Dayton to sign their irresponsible corporate tax giveaway. That means we’ll escape this session without the MNGOP adding $2.3 billion to our deficit over the next 14 years.

Still, that doesn’t mean they’re giving up. Yesterday, Republicans passed a stripped-down version of the tax bill. As it turns out, though, they still won’t properly pay for it:

The cost of House File 247′s tax cuts in the next biennium is less than in House File 2337. But it still creates a $73 million hole in the next biennium’s budget – and this bill does not identify which revenue increases or cuts in services would be used to fill in that hole….

In this budget cycle, $28 million of the cost is covered by drawing on the state’s budget reserve. The other $18 million is not specified in the bill, but is described as being covered by savings elsewhere in the budget.

The Republicans are up to their same old tricks, marred by the same fiscal incompetence.They just don’t get it — our budget reserve is not a slush fund, it’s an important tool for our state’s fiscal health. Minnesota, we can’t afford another two years of being governed by a party that doesn’t understand the difference.

The State Senate approved the Vikings stadium last night, making its final passage all but certain. In the process, they eliminated certain provisions in the House bill that made the deal at least palatable. The Senate’s version of the Vikings bill is a sweetheart deal for the Vikings and billionaire Zygi Wilf. A few of the differences include:

• The House upped the Vikings’ contribution to $532 million; the Senate set it at $452 million.
• The House provided for shared naming-rights revenues between the team and the public; the Senate gives all that revenue to the Vikings.
• The House made cost overruns the responsibility of the team; the Senate will make operating cost overruns the responsibility of the public.

The naming-rights revenue has always been one of the most infuriating parts of the deal for me. The public builds a brand new stadium for a team, and they immediately turn around and leverage our investment into a private payday worth over $100 million. It really dramatizes the point that the taxpayers are directly subsidizing hundreds of millions of dollars in profits for these privately-owned teams.

Nevertheless, I expect the bill that emerges from the conference committee will look more like the Senate’s version than the House’s. Legislators have come too far, and given in to too many Vikings demands, to play hardball now.

In fact, it appears legislators are eager to get the deal done and take credit for it. I’ve been struck by the large margins the stadium has passed by in both houses — 15 votes in the House and 10 votes in the Senate. Earlier this week, I had predicted it would pass by a single vote, with vulnerable legislators allowed to take cover once passage was assured. The fact that the margins were significantly higher indicates to me that legislators actually think the voters will reward them for this deal.

I think our legislators are sorely mistaken; the voters will not reward this sweetheart deal for Zygi Wilf. But regardless, Wilf will get his deal, and I suspect it will be a very lucrative one for him.

Well, at least they passed something:

The Minnesota House has passed a $496 million package of public construction projects.

Today’s vote of 99 - 32 sent the bonding bill on to the Senate.

You’ll have to excuse me if I don’t seem overly excited. But our economy is still struggling — thanks to public-sector austerity — and our government is once again failing us. This is the smallest bonding bill passed in Minnesota in two decades.

Yeah, it’s better than nothing. But just barely. We desperately need a real stimulus; when will our policymakers learn that austerity doesn’t work?

We owe our schools over $2 billion, but last night the House voted to approve a $1 billion Vikings stadium with a surprisingly large margin:

After a dreadful 3-13 record on the field in 2011, the Minnesota Vikings received some good off-field news well before the 2012 team begins to practice.

The House voted 73-58 to support a $975 million stadium plan that would provide a new facility to house the team. Forty DFL members and 33 Republicans voted yes. Thirty-seven Republicans and 21 DFLers voted against the bill.

This is a serious case of misplaced priorities. I agree with Rep. Mindy Greiling (DFL-Roseville), who voted against the bill:

“If we’re going to raise money or taxes of any sort, why doesn’t it go to education or health care or the other things that have been cut or that we owe money to,” Greiling said. “I don’t understand the priority tonight of voting for a stadium that a lot of people will not even be able to afford tickets to go to.”

Our policymakers won’t raise taxes to properly fund education. They’d sooner slash access to healthcare than raise new revenues. But raising hundreds of millions of dollars for a privately-owned football franchise gets bipartisan support. I don’t believe Minnesotans share our legislators’ warped priorities.

Today, with any luck, the big questions of this legislative session will finally be answered. There should be at least two big votes in the legislature today, and depending on the results, negotiations over the final outcome of the session may go on for a few days. Here’s what to watch for.

Does Governor Dayton’s Vikings plan have the votes?

After years of lobbying for their millions, Zygi Wilf and the Vikings will finally get an up-or-down vote. Speaker Kurt Zellers has said he doesn’t think they have a majority; the Vikings insist they do. Since legislators are starting to fall into line, I suspect the Vikings have found the votes. Given the political sensitivity of the issue, I wouldn’t be surprised to see it pass by a single vote, with a few legislators held in reserve but allowed to vote no once the magic number has been reached.

Will the GOP’s corporate tax giveaway make another appearance?

Dayton vetoed the MNGOP’s top priority for the session — an irresponsible, budget-busting, corporate tax giveaway. I would be surprised if the Republicans let it go at that, and I expect to see another form of the tax bill find its way to the Governor’s desk.

Will the GOP hold one of Dayton’s priorities for ransom?

On a related note, I wonder if either the Vikings bill or the bonding bill will be held ransom for Governor Dayton’s signature on the GOP tax bill. They don’t sound willing to give it up without a fight, and it would be easy for a handful of Republicans to scuttle either bill — or both — while making it clear that they’ll change their votes once an agreement is made.

Such a maneuver would lead to intense negotiations between the Governor and the leaders in the legislature. That means today might not be the end of the session. At the very least, though, we’re in the endgame, and we’ll have a much better sense of how everything will play out after today’s votes.

Here’s some good news to end the week: Governor Dayton has vetoed a GOP tax bill that would have increased Minnesota’s budget deficit. The bill would have used fraudulent accounting maneuvers to make the budget appear balanced on paper, a practice which deserved a veto even if the bill itself were good policy.

In his veto message [PDF], the Governor specifically cited the bill’s fiscal irresponsibility:

This bill would not pay for the business property tax levy freeze and other tax breaks. It would reduce the Budget Reserve for the current biennium and add another $145 million to the deficit projected for the next biennium, which is already projected to be $1.1 billion. Freezing the state business levy would reduce state revenues by a total of $2.3 billion between 2013 and 2026.

My biggest concern was that the Governor might relent on the GOP tax bill to get a Vikings stadium passed, so I’m very happy about this report from MPR:

Dayton said he’s willing to negotiate an alternative tax bill with Republicans, as long as it doesn’t add future debt. [Emphasis added]

Great news! Thank you once again, Governor Dayton, for standing for fiscal responsibility and against the GOP’s irresponsible tax giveaways.