Pawlenty vetoes Minneapolis money

On Wednesday of last week, Gov. Tim Pawlenty vetoed state funding that would have provided $4.5 million to enable the Hennepin County and Minneapolis library systems to merge. Since then, local politicians and others have reacted to the news with astonishment.

“You can’t print what I’m going to say. It’s a newspaper,” Minneapolis Library Board member Alan Hooker said with a laugh. “I mean, is he on crack?”

“I was at an event yesterday for Keith Ellison,” Hooker said. “I ran into [Mayor] R.T. Rybak, [Council Member] Barb Johnson, people like that. All of them were the same way: just incredulous. [The veto] makes no sense. No rhyme or reason. We’re talking $4.5 million, you know. That’s basically like chump change.”

Said Rybak, “The governor’s veto was a one-two punch for those of us who want the library merger. He went out of his way to veto the money to help with the transition. By cutting our Local Government Aid, he made it harder for us to find the money to open the three closed libraries.”

In addition to the merger funding line-item veto, Pawlenty axed $13 million earmarked by the legislature for the city in increased Local Government Aid.

Rybak said the city and county must move forward with the merger despite the absence of state funding to aid the transition. He admits the vetoes will make the task significantly more difficult.

City Council Member Diane Hofstede (Ward 3), who served on the Minneapolis Library Board for 21 years, opposed the merger, but said she was still surprised and disappointed by the veto.

“It’s sad for all of us,” she said. “Not just the city, but the whole state.”

Said Hooker, a member of the DFL, of Republican Pawlenty: “You have to sit back and try and wonder why [he vetoed the funding]. Is it just an attempt to stick it to Minneapolis? Is this his way to look good to some conservatives in his party and the Taxpayers League crowd?”

(Fellow Library Board member Sheldon Mains refers to the governor as “Tim ‘I Hate Minneapolis’ Pawlenty” on the Minneapolis Issues Forum.)

Hooker said in his lobbying efforts with legislators, he got the sense that the governor was on board with funding the merger with state money.

“If this stands as it is, unless he has some type of miraculous Ebenezer Scrooge-like conversion of decency, we are really going to have to come up with some kind of plan here.

“I know also speaking with some of my City Hall colleagues, R.T. and others, I got the sense [Thursday] that we have come this far, and this is certainly disappointing, but we are all going to work hard to find a solution for this,” Hooker said.

He said he thinks it’s possible that the city and county might be able to find a way to fund the merger entirely.

“Again, $4.5 million statewide is a drop in the bucket. Citywide, for the city to take on that financial obligation, it hurts, but also I think it is an option the city will be looking at because, again, in the long run, it’s going to be more financially beneficial to the city to have the library system off its books.”

Pawlenty spokesperson Brian McClung said the governor was told by legislators pushing for the merger that there would be “no fiscal impact to the state for the Hennepin County-Minneapolis merger. So it was represented as just an intergovernmental action and that it wouldn’t cost any money at all. Then in the final day of the legislative session, the K-12 education bill appears with $4.5 million for the merger after the authors of the legislation to allow the merger had indicated there was no cost involved in doing this.

“So now we understand, reading news accounts, that they’re proceeding with the merger without the funding. So maybe the authors were right in the first place,” he said with a laugh. “They’re apparently able to proceed with the merger as discussed.”

McClung brushed aside the notion that the governor might have used his veto power to punish Minneapolis for being more supportive of DFL candidates than Republicans in recent elections.

As for the comments about the governor by Hooker and Mains, McClung said, “We’re not going to engage in that kind of behavior.”