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Serving Northern St. Louis County, Minnesota

End of session

An ugly finish that leaves state’s top priorities unaddressed

Posted

There’s an old saying that the two things you never want to see being made are sausages and legislation.

There was little danger of Minnesotans getting the chance to see lawmakers at work this session since much of the negotiating took place behind closed doors and late into the night.

Indeed, most legislators never even had the opportunity. House DFLers protested the passage of a jobs bill that they didn’t get a chance to read and Gov. Mark Dayton said Tuesday he hadn’t had a chance to scan most of the budget bills approved in a late-night frenzy on Monday. He has three days to go through the bills and decide whether to use a line-item veto to remove the most onerous sections or just veto the entire bill.

And that’s not counting the inadvertent mistakes that are bound to happen when bleary-eyed legislators and staffers cobble together bills in a last-minute rush. A simple punctuation error or misplaced adjective can change the entire meaning of a bill.

It happens all the time, according to state Rep. David Dill, DFL-Crane Lake. But that doesn’t mean it should.

Legislators have ample time to debate the issues openly and legislation should be crafted with care and deliberation, not thrown together in the heat of a deadline. But it seems to always boil down to a couple legislative leaders huddling together with the governor behind closed doors to hammer out a deal, which they then present to their respective caucuses for rubber-stamp approval. That’s hardly a democratic or transparent process, and it’s a poor way to end a legislative process that is otherwise conducted in the open and with input from a diversity of stakeholders.

It’s little wonder that public disdain for lawmakers has become so toxic. Although state legislators generally fare better than their peers in Washington, D.C., they should be wary of the impression they create. When constituents feel shut out of the process or moan about the lack of action by legislators, it leaves a sour taste that can manifest at the polls.

When two of the linchpin issues of this session — addressing the state’s dire need for repairing crumbling roads and bridges, and providing tax reform and relief — are left hanging, it’s hard to consider this session anything less than a disappointment. Throw in the lack of a deal on education funding and legislators don’t have much to show for four months of work.

There is plenty of blame to go around. Some will say what do you expect from a divided government with the House run by Republicans and the Senate controlled by the DFL. But we should expect better than partisanship. Lawmakers may disagree on how to best prepare Minnesota for the future, but they ought to be able to reach meaningful agreement instead of being forced to come to the table by a ticking clock.

The system is broken and we need legislators to acknowledge that and start to address it instead of chalking it up to business as usual.