Lawmaker pitches continuing resolutions

A Supreme Court ruling that cautions the Capitol not to rely on the courts for emergency funding has spawned a quasi-congressional proposal to eliminate government shutdowns — a continuing resolutions bill.

Freshman Rep. Randy Jessup, R-Shoreview, presented draft legislation to the House Ways and Means Committee on Feb. 8. It provides for what he calls “continuing appropriations” if state budgets are not enacted before the July 1 start of a biennium.

The bill would allow government agencies to run at 90 percent of full funding during impasses until a deal gets reached. It was not put to a vote. Still-unnumbered, it has yet to be formally introduced.

House Ways and Means chair Jim Knoblach, R-St. Cloud, said he wanted it set before committee members to get them thinking about the Supreme Court’s line-item veto decision and its implications.

The high court ruled Nov. 16 that Gov. Mark Dayton acted within constitutional bounds when he zeroed out the Legislature’s budget last May. However, they issued a stern warning that the judiciary has no authority to make appropriations, as Ramsey County’s District Court effectively did in three previous shutdowns between 2001 and 2011.

Jessup said his bill would keep the government operating but provide a tough incentive — effectively, a temporary 10 percent budget cut — to keep negotiators working to resolve a stalemate. “I think that something along the lines of a continuing appropriation at a lower amount is the best way to go,” he said.

Myron Frans, Minnesota Management and Budget’s commissioner, testified at the hearing. He said the Dayton administration is willing to help find better ways to pass budgets on time. Failing that, he said, the administration would help better manage core funding if shutdowns do come.

Speaking afterward, Frans said Jessup’s plan is the wrong remedy.

“We think there needs to be a deadline,” he said. “The end of the biennium is the appropriate deadline, and we will help decide how to fund core functions at that point. But we don’t support a continuing resolution.”

Keeping up the pressure

The idea does have some support on Ways and Means, however. One member, Rep. Greg Davids, R-Preston, who doubles as the House Taxes Committee chair, said in an interview that he would vote for a bill like Jessup’s.

Knoblach took no position on the bill, but expressed concerns that it could have unanticipated consequences. Anti-big-government legislators in his caucus might like a de facto 10 percent funding cut, he said, making them less than eager to end impasses.

Continuing resolutions might also diminish the urgency that negotiators feel to work quickly and resolve disputes, he said.

“You need to have the pressure on,” Knoblach said. “We’ve got to make sure we don’t put in place some sort of law that makes it harder to actually reach a deal.”

Nonetheless, Knoblach said a continuing resolutions bill could be necessary in light of the Supreme Court decision. While he doubts the judiciary would ever allow prisons to close, he thinks it likely the judiciary won’t ever again be as generous as it was in the past.

“Clearly they are trying to send a signal that perhaps they would at least not fund as many things as have been funded in the past,” he said.

Rep. Jean Wagenius, DFL-Minneapolis, opposes Jessup’s plan. It seems patterned, she said, on the mechanism that Congress uses to keep the federal government operating at current spending levels while punting on actual budgets.

“It feels like a very strange situation to be discussing this kind of bill to say, ‘Let’s be as incompetent as Congress,’” she said.

“I have no interest in becoming as incompetent as Congress,” Knoblach replied, drawing laughter.

Wagenius, a former Minnesota Court of Appeals staff attorney, said the court’s warning about emergency funds should not be held up as “a bogeyman.” Court cases are fact-specific, she said; it’s possible that, given a different set of facts, the courts actually might grant emergency money in the future, if asked.

Speaking to the committee, Frans had a different view. “We believe the Supreme Court has given us some direction,” he said. “This alternative funding mechanism through Ramsey County court, I think, we all feel is no longer necessarily available.”

Complications

Passing a continuing-resolutions bill likely would be complicated. Rep. Debra Hilstrom, DFL-Brooklyn Center, pointed out that it could even be unconstitutional. By guaranteeing funding, even at a reduced rate, the bill could defang a governor’s constitutional right to line-item veto appropriations.

Colbey Sullivan, the committee’s research analyst, agreed. “The governor’s ability to completely eliminate an entity’s funding would be curtailed under this language,” Sullivan said.

Another problem, Hilstrom said, is that requiring the state to operate at 90 percent funding could lock the government into deficit spending in some cases — a constitutional violation. Again Sullivan agreed, though he suggested that very risk could put additional pressure on policymakers to reach an accord.

Yet another problem for potential supporters is that the bill might not work quite as advertised.

Bill Marx, the committee’s fiscal analyst, noted that, under the bill’s language, both “statutory” and “forecasted” appropriations are off limits to Jessup’s 10 percent cut. Those two categories include general obligation bond payments, medical assistance, human resources appropriations, education aids and many other forms of spending. Taken together, they constitute about 80 percent of the $46 billion 2018-19 state budget.

Jessup’s language applies only to “direct appropriations” — a 20 percent slice of the budget. In effect, the bill would cut just 10 percent out of a 20 percent chunk of total spending — a maximum real spending cut of about 2 percent.

At one point Thursday, Rep. Rod Hamilton, R-Mountain Lake, pitched an entirely different idea. A way to prevent government shutdowns, he said, might be to replicate — each biennium — the tactic used last year that prompted Dayton’s veto.

Last year, GOP leaders put a provision in the State Government Operations bill triggering layoffs at the Revenue Department should Dayton veto the Republicans’ prized tax package. That so-called “poison pill” infuriated Dayton, who vetoed lawmakers’ entire budget in response, landing him in court.

Hamilton’s idea would put that tactic on steroids. It would tie together all operating budgets so that if any one item were vetoed, all would lose their funding. “What I am saying is that if you are going to take down one segment of government, you are going to take down all of them,” he said.

Rep. Tina Liebling, DFL-Rochester, praised Hamilton’s creativity but said the tactic likely would violate the constitution’s single-subject rule.

That constitutional provision ostensibly requires each bill to tackle a single topic, but it has been construed liberally for decades. An increasing number of constituents are growing impatient with the Legislature’s massive, chaotically written and passed budget bills, said Liebling, who is a Democrat running for governor.

Knoblach told Hamilton a governor would not likely sign such a bill. Nonetheless, after the hearing, Knoblach expects to see a lot more linkage between legislative and executive branch funding bills in the future.

“I think you are going to see language from now on, forevermore, tying the legislative funding to the governor’s funding,” Knoblach said. “It would basically be saying that if the legislature is line-item vetoed, the governor is going to be vetoed, too.”