Yesterday, I fisked a Lori Sturdevant column. Not for the first time, and not for the last time.
But I missed something.
Among Sturdevant’s pleas – a bit from a group calling itself the “Civic Caucus” – demanding that the GOP-controlled legislature get its budget and revenue proposals in front of the Governor (and, naturally, the media that put him there) bright and early in the session.
Sturdevant called “Civic Caucus” a “non-partisan” group of “Seasoned Policy Wonks”. I took the liberty of checking; they are no more “non-partisan” than I am, only pretty universally either DFLers or Carlson-era RINOs.
Still, that doesn’t in and of itself invalidate them.
Nonetheless, since it was Sturdevant doing the writing, it did in fact occur to me – if Lori Sturdevant wants the GOP majority to put in a budget by April 1 – or March 1, or whenever – that strikes me as a prima facie reason to get it to the governor along about May 20 or so. To provide it any earlier would merely give the DFL’s retainers and henchpeople in the media time to try to fight the PR war against the budget, on the DFL’s behalf. Why give the DFL and media (pardon the redundancy) seven to eleven weeks of lead time?
I’m not sure when the GOP majority had it in mind to produce a budget. But I’m thinking if Sturdevant wants it sooner, then “later” is a fine plan.
Mitch, I recall Ms. Sturdevant’s voice being particularly missing from the 2009 budget debate, which I wrote about here. At the time, Tom Emmer challenged Speaker Kelliher about why the DFL hadn’t issued their budget…in February. Here’s Kelliher’s no-responsive response:
Says it all, doesn’t it???
I started getting emails from Civic Caucus during the campaign. I was usually too busy to respond, but did get the impression that they were definitely left of center.
And Ms Sturdevant missed an important bit of context; according to the email I got, CC has over 2000 people on their email list, and about 1200 that they send surveys to for feedback. So the fact that only 130 signed on to the letter means it was far from overwhelming agreement with the statement.