Compromise In Minnesota Is Quick Fix On Budget
For days, the Democratic governor of Minnesota watched his state’s shutdown drag on, but insisted that, on principle, he could not go along with Republican lawmakers’ plans for the state’s budget.
But by Wednesday night, Mark Dayton, the governor, was huddling privately with 20 advisers and allies, assessing what he saw as a growing public impatience with the longest shutdown in state history. And by Thursday morning, Mr. Dayton announced he supported a compromise, the outlines of which had been suggested two weeks earlier by the Republicans, signaling what seems likely to be the reopening of state government sometime next week.
“Public sentiment was shifting to ‘Let’s get this over with, regardless of what it takes,’ ” Mr. Dayton said Friday in an interview, as state officials raced to draft details of the spending bills that are expected to be voted on Monday in a special legislative session in St. Paul.
“I just felt that it was going to be needed to be done — and better sooner than later,” he added. “If they can get this agreement now hammered out and passed, I’ll feel that we got the best possible deal, the best for the people of Minnesota, given very difficult circumstances.”
Still, the solution was, in the eyes of many Minnesotans, more of a short-term fix — a borrowing measure to get the state’s parks and rest stops open again — than an answer to the central question that has divided the two parties that control St. Paul: Should the state raise taxes on the rich to pay for services or should it cut spending on those services?
That question seems certain to emerge once more when the state writes its next two-year budget plan two years from now. By then, though, Minnesotans will have voted once more on the makeup of the Legislature, which is dominated by Republicans in both chambers for the first time in about 40 years.
nytimes.com