King Banaian’s Sunset Commission<\/a> made it into the final cut. \u00a0 The commission – which will shut down government agencies that have outlived their usefulness (or, initially, never had any) is now law.<\/p>\nNews on other reforms later today and\/or tomorrow.<\/p>\n
The Tax Conveyor Belt Is Closed<\/strong>: The DFL banked on being able to browbeat the GOP into keeping “Business as Usual”. \u00a0 The idea that government must be kept fat and happy at all costs<\/em>, no matter how the rest of us are doing, was finally blunted. \u00a0Not defeated – it would have been better to have gotten a $32 billion budget with no shifting and no borrowing from the Tobacco blackmail fund – but blunted. \u00a0The bureaucracy had best learn that the DFL’s browbeating is obsolete.<\/p>\nThe HHS Budget Elevator Is Closed<\/strong>: \u00a0Health and Human Services spending has had one of the most corrosive features in state politics; an automatic increase in funding. \u00a0If anyone suggested reducing the increase<\/em>, the DFL immediately trotted out single mothers and homeless people to attack the “decrease”<\/em>, which was in fact merely a smaller increase than the automatic increase formula. \u00a0That automatic increase has been repealed.<\/p>\nOutstate Gets It<\/strong>: The metro base that put Dayton in office is in full dudgeon – what else? \u00a0 But Governor Dayton’s abrupt switch on the budget last week shows, I think, that outstate, even key DFL constituencies were un-thrilled with the DFL’s case. \u00a0 While some DFLers are saying this shutdown will lead to a return of the Legislature to DFL control, I’m thinking it’ll be neutral at worst and – given that redistricting will favor the GOP as well – maybe a slight gain. \u00a0To sum it up – it was the people who voted for Dayton who for the most part even noticed the shutdown. \u00a0 At worst, they will vote even more vigorously DFL in the next elections.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Legislature and the Governor passed a budget last night. Downsides The K12 Budget Shift: \u00a0The budget “borrows” \u00a0money from the next year’s K12 budget. \u00a0It’s just plain bad policy – but such was the price of “compromise”. \u00a0 Naturally, the GOP’s good faith is met by DFL perfidy; though they and the governor demanded, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[144,2],"tags":[115,186],"class_list":["post-21183","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-governor","category-minnesota-politics","tag-abm","tag-shutdownpocalypse-2011"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21183","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=21183"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21183\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":47833,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21183\/revisions\/47833"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=21183"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=21183"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=21183"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}