Governor’s budget comes with local impacts

Published 2:15 pm Saturday, February 20, 2010

When session began, we identified our top three issues as passing a jobs bill, finding a solution to the Gov. Tim Pawlenty’s veto of the General Assistance Medical Care (GAMC) program and balancing the state budget. We made good progress on all three of these issues this week.

On Monday, the House passed its capital investment bill, putting in place an investment strategy for creating jobs and maintaining state assets such as higher education facilities, clean water and roads and transit. The Association of General Contractors estimates an additional $1 billion in nonresidential construction spending would create or sustain about 21,000 jobs, including 7,100 direct construction jobs and 3,400 indirect jobs such as engineers or architects. Of those jobs, 10,500 would be in areas outside the immediate construction sector in areas such as manufacturing, materials supply, food service, health care and retail.

The House and Senate bills are now in Conference Committee, where the differences between the two will be worked out before a final bill is passed by both bodies and sent to the governor.

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Also on Monday, Pawlenty announced his plan to address our $1.2 billion budget deficit. He cut $250 million from aid to local governments, $347 million from the health and human services budget, $53 million from higher education, and $181 million from state agencies and programs.

The numbers are big, and the results are serious. Under the governor’s budget, Albert Lea will lose an additional $854,000 in local aid up and above $780,000 lost through last year’s unallotment. His plan will impact health care benefits for 40,000 Minnesotans, with 20,000 losing their benefits all together. Early childhood cuts and higher education cuts will also undermine the state’s ability to educate Minnesota’s children for the jobs of the future.

Maybe most surprising was the fact the governor counts nearly $400 million in funding the federal government has not yet passed as part of his budget fix. If Congress fails to enact this funding, even deeper cuts will be necessary.

Our biggest success of the week came on Thursday, when we passed a bill to cover 70,000 of the poorest and sickest Minnesotans with health care coverage. Of this group, 8,000 are veterans, hundreds are homeless and 80 percent suffer from mental illness, chemical dependency or chronic disease. They were scheduled to lose their GAMC on April 1 due to the governor’s veto of the program last spring.

On a vote of 125-9, it was truly a bipartisan effort. The House bill creates a 16-month program that costs $200 million less than the governor’s plan, and brings more dollars to local hospitals. It has the support of hospitals, health care providers, the faith community and citizens.

Finally, by passing a plan to reimburse hospitals for some of the cost of caring for this population, we are helping keep insurance premiums and health care costs down for every Minnesotan.

The Senate passed the same bill later in the day, which means it has now moved to Pawlenty. As much as I was hoping the strong bipartisan support it received would encourage him to sign it, as this column went to press I heard the governor intends to veto the GAMC bill. While not perfect, this bill covers more people at a lower cost to taxpayers, and is a good solution to a serious problem. I remain hopeful he will reconsider.

It continues to be an honor to serve you. Please continue to contact me as the session progresses. I can be reached at 651-296-8216 or by email at rep.robin.brown@house.mn. I look forward to hearing from you.

Robin Brown, DFL-Moscow Township, is the state representative for District 27A.