{"id":2979,"date":"2011-07-14T14:27:05","date_gmt":"2011-07-14T14:27:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/the19thfloor.net\/?p=2979"},"modified":"2011-07-14T14:27:05","modified_gmt":"2011-07-14T14:27:05","slug":"concessions","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/the19thfloor.net\/?p=2979","title":{"rendered":"Concessions"},"content":{"rendered":"

One of the advantages of being a Humphrey Policy Fellows alumni is that I get invited to events like today’s appearance by Governor Dayton. I was in the audience when he announced his conditional acceptance of the last GOP offer<\/a>. That offer would have closed the budget gap with borrowing against the state’s tobacco settlement fund, yet another delay of school funding, and additional accounting gimmickry. In addition, Dayton wants all social policy riders and a 15% cut to the state workforce removed, as well as a $500 million bonding bill. No word on whether the Republicans will take this deal.  <\/p>\n

As you might expect, I have mixed feelings about this proposal. Dayton is trying to be the grown-up in the room and bring an end to a shutdown that is making life difficult for more people each day. The zealots who control the Republican Party have made good-faith negotiations impossible and Dayton probably figured that prolonging the shutdown will only deepen the pain for ordinary citizens. He’s still got another three and a half years and will have additional opportunities to push his agenda in the future. <\/p>\n

But unless the economy roars back to life, Minnesota is likely to face another deficit in two years. And if we still have a divided state government, state leaders will get to fight this battle all over again. This deal does absolutely nothing to address the state’s structural budget problems. Perhaps I should start tucking away money for the next layoff.<\/p>\n

A lot of people will see this as a cave on the part of the governor. While I can understand that perspective, I’m not sure he had many options. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

One of the advantages of being a Humphrey Policy Fellows alumni is that I get invited to events like today’s appearance by Governor Dayton. I was in the audience when he announced his conditional acceptance of the last GOP offer. That offer would have closed the budget gap with borrowing against the state’s tobacco settlement […]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"sfsi_plus_gutenberg_text_before_share":"","sfsi_plus_gutenberg_show_text_before_share":"","sfsi_plus_gutenberg_icon_type":"","sfsi_plus_gutenberg_icon_alignemt":"","sfsi_plus_gutenburg_max_per_row":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2979","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","category-1-id","post-seq-1","post-parity-odd","meta-position-corners","fix"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p9Iwau-M3","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/the19thfloor.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2979","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/the19thfloor.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/the19thfloor.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/the19thfloor.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/the19thfloor.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2979"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/the19thfloor.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2979\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/the19thfloor.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2979"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/the19thfloor.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2979"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/the19thfloor.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2979"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}