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Democrats blast Governor Pawlenty for derailing Central Corridor
When Governor Pawlenty used his line-item veto powers to axe $70 million in state funding for the Central Corridor light rail project Monday, he said he was "pulling it into the maintenance shed for further inspection." Supporters of the transit project, linking downtown Minneapolis to downtown St Paul, used other words Tuesday to describe the Governor's decision. "Governor Pawlenty's veto, let me be clear, is reckless and irresponsible," remarked Congresswoman Betty McCollum, the Saint Paul Democrat who represents Minnesota's 4th District in Washington. In a press conference at the State Capitol that resembled a DFL mini-convention, McCollum read from a letter Pawlenty sent to Minnesota's congressional delegation March 6th of this year seeking $160 million in federal aid. "These funding requests we have made have merit and should receive funding," McCollum read, before turning to reporters to reveal, "That funding request was Central Corridor." "Yesterday Governor Tim Pawlenty killed the Central Corridor light rail project with his veto pen." Saint Paul Mayor Chris Coleman also blasted the Governor's actions, noting the Pawlenty had originally included the transit project in his own bonding wish list. "The Governor's gone from an indifferent observer to the fates of cities across the state of Minnesota to actively sabotaging the future of Saint Paul, the East Metro, and the entire state," Mayor Coleman argued. "At some point politics stops being about games and starts being about real people's lives." Coleman and McCollum said they felt especially perplexed because they'd made several adjustments to the plan to satisfy Governor Pawlenty and his point man on transit, Metropolitan Council Chairman Peter Bell. "Every time the Governor asked us to do something on the Central Corridor we did it," Coleman said. "He asked us to put aside differences and come together around a common vision. We did that." McCollum said transit supporters had been meeting in "good faith" with the Met Council, assuming they were on the right track. "Chairman Bell from the Met Council said you need to go on a diet," McCollum said. "Every single one of us had his insurance if we came down to the governor's number we had a handshake." But Representative Michael Paymar, a Saint Paul Democrat, said he's still holding onto to hope that Pawlenty will give the Central Corridor a second chance yet this session. "I want to be optimistic about this," Paymar said to reporters and the politicians gathered him. "There's too much riding on this for the entire metropolitan area and for the state of Minnesota. So I think some of us are still holding out a little bit of light here that we can get this thing accomplished." Minneapolis weighs in The veto also drew the ire of West Metro leaders, such as Hennepin County Commissioner Peter McLaughlin, because the western end of that light rail line will run through Minneapolis. "They're smiling this morning in Sacramento and Miami and Charlotte and Salt Lake City," McLaughlin told reporters. "Because they've seen this governor pull the legs out from under Central Corridor." The Democrat said he's concerned the veto will jeopardize hundreds of millions of dollars in federal aid for the project, and place it at a competitive disadvantage with other cities vying for the same money from the Federal Transit Authority. "Don't make any mistakes here," he explained, "There's incredible competition all over this country for these federal funds and that's where half the money's going to come from for these projects!" Congressman Keith Ellison, the Minneapolis Democrat who represents Minnesota's 5th District, said the state's credibility in Washington is also threatened by the veto. "When we get our legs cut out like that it really is very disconcerting," Ellison offered, "And why would we send money to other states when we could have it here?" Representative Frank Hornstein, a Minneapolis Democrat who has championed mass transit, held up a map of the regional rail and busway blueprint for the future. "He vetoed a vision. He vetoed a transit vision that we accomplished in that override." Senator Scott Dibble, the Minneapolis sponsor of many transit initiatives added, "And the only reason we overrode that veto was his years-long lack of leadership on transportation." What's driving Pawlenty? The project was among 52 lines Governor Pawlenty nixed from the bonding bill passed last week by state lawmakers, on his way to slicing $208 million dollars from the $965 million package. He worried the the debt payments on the full bonding bill would break the state's overall budget. "The state of Minnesota has to live within its means and somebody has to look out for the taxpayers," Pawlenty told reporters and other onlookers Monday, "The legislature obviously has not." He noted that the transportation bill, which became law when legislators overrode his veto earlier in the session, includes fuel tax hikes, a boost in license tab fees on new cars and a local option sales tax hike for transit metro counties. "They added a bunch of tax increases on," Pawlenty remarked, "Now they dump a spending bill that breaks the credit card on my desk. They do not seem very willing to be fiscally restrained." Saint Paul lawmakers Monday cried foul instantly when they discovered 11 of the projects scratched by Pawlenty, including the Central Corridor, were in Saint Paul. "We looked at the list and oh my God, every St Paul project?" Senator Sandy Pappas told KARE 11 Monday, "What is going on here? How can the governor veto every Saint Paul project and not have us think it's personal?" When asked pointblank Monday, Pawlenty said it wasn't a personal attack on the city of Saint Paul or that town's legislative delegation. "There's no personal messages in here for anybody in particular," Pawlenty told reporters who gathered in his reception room at the Capitol, "It's just they overspent the budget, they had a very difficult time saying NO to anybody." The list of scratched out lines included $24 million for the new Bell Museum of Natural History slated for the University of Minnesota's Saint Paul campus, $11 million for the Como Zoo's polar bear and gorilla exhibits, $5 million for Saint Paul's Asian Pacific Cultural Center and $2 million for creating a transit hub in the city's old Union Depot. "Anything that Alice Hausman touched he vetoed," Senator Ellen Anderson asserted, referring to the veteran Saint Paul lawmaker who authored the bonding bill in the House. The governor had chided Representative Hausman and her counterpart in the Senate, Senator Keith Langseth, on his weekly radio show three days before cutting the bill down to a size of his liking. "And you know it's just a childish political game," Anderson declared, "So yes I'm angry! Yes, I'm outraged!" If Pawlenty did take anything personally it was the legislature's refusal to include some of his own bonding priorities in the bill, including $35 million for improvement to the Minnesota Veterans Home in Minneapolis. "The legislature saw fit to fund a sheet music lending library and provided zero funding for a much needed new nursing facility at the Minneapolis veterans home," the Governor explained, "Actions like that reflect misplaced priorities." No you didn't! One of the statements Pawlenty made during his Monday press conference drew especially sharp criticism from the Democrats at the Capitol. He implied the state, through the Metropolitan Council, would have to pay the entire operating cost of the Saint Paul light rail. "It used to be the local communities who wanted these projects would have to pay for half the operation costs of the projects," Pawlenty said, "That was eliminated, now the state is expected to pick up the full tab on that project." Commissioner McLaughlin suggested Pawlenty is either misinformed or intentionally misleading the public. "He's saying the state's going to have to pick up all the operating costs. That is absolute nonsense! Absolute nonsense!" He said the five counties who've voted to take advantage of the quarter-cent sales tax for transit are expected to use that money to foot half of the bill. "The counties are going to continue to pick up half the operating costs of Hiawatha and Northstar, we're just not going to use property taxes to do it and that's a step forward." Senator Steve Murphy, the Red Wing Democrat who chairs the Transportation Committee, used even stronger language. "Governor you either lied or you didn't read the bill," quipped the Marine veteran who's long been at odds with the Governor on roads and transit. "Page 22, line 10, metropolitan sales tax is going to be used for is operating assistance for transit ways." A spokesman for the Governor's Office explained later that Pawlenty intended to say that the state's share will grow relatively larger over time with inflation because the "lights on" transportation budget bill passed at the end of last session places a cap on Hennepin County's total payments for the rail line. What is bonding anyway? Bonding is state government's way of financing public works construction projects over a 20-year period. It's similar to the way homebuyers borrow money from banks to pay for their houses over 15 to 30 years because we can't afford to pay cash. The state essentially "borrows" the money for big construction projects by selling general obligation bonds on the open market through a bank in New York. The buyers of those bonds redeem them, with interest, over that 20-year period. While we call our house payments "mortgage payments" the state calls its house payments "debt service." Governor Pawlenty's concern through the process has been to cap the state's debt service payments at to 3 percent of the annual budget. That 3 percent limit isn't written in stone. But Governor Pawlenty points out it's been an unwritten rule dating back 30 years and held to by Governors of all three parties. As a practical matter going over the 3 percent debt service ceiling would also require a larger budget, which translates to more taxes. The Governor, on the other hand, is trying to shrink the budget to accommodate the nearly one billion dollar shortfall in the 2008-2009 fiscal cycle. And while the legislature is known commonly as the "bonding bill" it's actually entitled the Capital Investments bill, and the committees that craft those bills are Capitol Investment bills. The bonding battle often leads to regional turf wars over who gets what, and debates over whether local projects are truly considered statewide assets or simply "pork barrel" spending designed entirely to help incumbents win favor back home and hold onto their seats. Bonding is the only legal way the state can incur debt, because Minnesota -- unlike the federal government -- can not legally run a deficit. The state's two-year budget, roughly $34 billion, must be balanced before the next budget cycle begins. That's why even using the word "deficit" in relation to the state's budget and fiscal forecasts is a little misleading, because in truth it's only a projected deficit. It's the deficit that would occur if it were legal. But it's not, so that won't happen.
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