Editorial: Courts are good check on executive

Published Friday, November 20, 2009

Some charge that the lawsuit challenging the governor’s unallotment powers in the court will be bad because courts don’t need to be setting the state budget.

For instance, this excerpt from an editorial by the Fairmont Sentinel:

“There is only one process that can determine these issues, and that is the legislative process. If lawmakers default on their responsibility and the governor has authority to act, he must and he should. That is what he did. Were his actions arbitrary? Of course. They couldn’t be anything else. As would a judge’s.”

It misses the point of the lawsuit. The state budget isn’t being decided by the courts so much as whether Pawlenty was correct in using the unallotment power. It is indeed the role of the courts historically to be a check in the balance of powers on whether the executive was right or wrong when interpreting a power given by the legislative branch.

It’s Civics 101.

Calling the lawsuit anything else is only politics.

That said, it indeed is true that — no matter which party is in power — Minnesota’s governor and its Legislature would more likely find common ground if the powers of line-item veto and unallotment were stripped of the executive branch. They give a lopsided advantage to one person. A true budget originates from a broader representation of the people — the state Legislature. The governor’s role should be only to approve or disapprove. Doing it that way actually produces sound compromise.

Minnesota was better off before line-item veto was granted and before unallotment was used every year.

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