The DFL majorities’ revenue bills in the House and Senate take substantially different approaches.

A short tour of four potential scenarios as the Dayton administration and the DFL Legislature weigh the next Minnesota budget.

For much of the past decade, state lawmakers have reacted with alarm as volatile financial markets opened up multibillion-dollar shortfalls in the long-term outlook for the state’s pension system.

State lawmakers are mulling a significant change to the state’s pension policy as they prepare for the 2012 legislative session.

As local elected officials prepare their 2012 budgets, they’re feeling the aftermath of a property tax law change by state lawmakers. In order to save about $500 million toward solving a $5 billion state budget deficit, lawmakers killed off the market value homestead credit (MVHC), which had been a product of 2001 property tax reform legislation passed during Gov. Jesse Ventura’s administration.

The exact economic ramifications of the ongoing government shutdown won’t be known for a long time. Too many variables remain unknown in the unprecedented budget impasse.

Though there is still a month left, DFLers and Republicans in the Legislature are showing no signs of moving toward a compromise budget deal to close the projected $5 billion general fund deficit by the constitutionally required May 23 adjournment date. Around the halls of the Capitol, it is increasingly an article of faith that there will be no deal by then.

Mark Haveman, executive director of the Minnesota Taxpayers Association, is just as puzzled as the next fiscal analyst when it comes to figuring out how the conservatives who control the state Legislature can devise a solution to the state's $6.2 billion deficit that Gov. Mark Dayton is willing to sign.

During floor debate on the omnibus pension bill on May 5, state Sen. David Hann, R-Eden Prairie, offered an amendment that proposed to stop offering new employees defined benefit pensions and instead offer to a more market-based form of retirement savings known as defined contribution plans.

On Tuesday afternoon Tom Emmer unveiled the details of his much anticipated plan to close the state's projected $5.8 billion budget deficit. The GOP nominee vowed to cap the state's spending at $32.3 billion in the next biennium and enact more than $600 million in tax cuts designed to spur the state's listless economy.