Gov. Pawlenty is exercising executive power to unilaterally unallot and solve the budget shortfall himself. The biggest chunk of cash comes in education where he plans to delay nearly $2 billion of payments to K-12 schools. The deepest direct cut of $300 million comes to aid to local governments. Health and human services closely follows with a $236 million cut. General Assistance Medical Care is eliminated in March, earlier than originally planned. Pawlenty was most passionate in talking about unsustainable growth in health care saying "we have sounded the alarm for years, now we have their attention."
The mayor of the state's largest city stood outside the governor's office afterwards and had a strong reaction. Minneapolis Mayor R.T. Rybak said it's "time for the governor to stop throwing bombs on his way in and out of visits to primary states and sit down and bring people to the table and get to work." He said the governor is not focused on Minnesota, but running for president. Rybak said he budgeted worse numbers so the impact for his city is less than expected. The Coalition of Greater Minnesota Cities told mayors to "brace for deep cuts and significant property tax increases."
The only lawmaker to schedule a press conference to react to the budget cuts was Assistant Majority Leader Tarryl Clark. She said Minnesotans should be concerned about their democracy with the unprecdented executive action and added Gov. Pawlenty is "not a czar, not an emperor, not a grand poobah, he's a governor, unallotment is meant to be a scalpel, not an ax and what we say today is an ax falling." Clark said his moves will result in tens of thousands of job losses, the state employee union said there will be about 3,000 private sector jobs lost at the state, local and educational level. And afterwards Clark told us she is "interested in running for governor" and many people have talked to her about it and most candidates will have to decide by the end of summer.
GOP candidate for governor and Minority Leader (for another week) Marty Seifert sent out a supportive press release saying "unallotment is not anyone’s ideal solution, but it’s what the session came to when the other side proved they could not set priorities or embrace reform." DFL candidates a 'plenty jumped on Pawlenty including Marty, Thissen, Gaertner. Potential candidate and still House Speaker Margaret Anderson Kelliher also issued a statement saying "in just under an hour today, Governor Pawlenty has done more damage to the Minnesota than he has throughout his entire career."