Memo: Pawlenty Lays Groundwork for Massive Budget Cuts

[a kennedy]

By Conrad deFiebre
Minnesota 2020 Fellow

Facing "gloomier" economic prospects over the next three years, Gov. Tim Pawlenty's budget chief has directed every state agency to plan for a broad 5 percent spending cut in the next fiscal biennium. Click here to read the memo (PDF).

This would produce reductions in state payrolls and other expenditures of at least $1.8 billion, according to the Minnesota Budget Project. That would come on the heels of a 7.8 percent cut in real per capita state general fund spending since 2003 under Pawlenty, which left the current two-year state budget $2.6 billion short of the one enacted before he took office.

This persistent disinvestment in Minnesota's public sector has coincided with the state's sagging performance compared with other states in personal income, employment and school quality. But the Pawlenty administration has continued to place cutting government among its highest priorities.

"Growth in the overall size and cost of government must be reduced," said an Aug. 19 memo to state agency heads from Jim Schowalter, Pawlenty's state budget director.

"What growth?" anyone who looks at the real numbers, adjusted for inflation and population increases, should ask.

Schowalter's latest directive to state agency commissioners was dated Oct. 14 in the midst of a continuing world financial crisis. It calls for "preliminary" budget options due Monday at the governor's office to "result in a 5 percent reduction in your total general fund base as well as your direct appropriated other funds base for Fiscal Years 2010-11 (excluding federal funds and internal service funds). Unless otherwise directed by Finance Commissioner Tom Hanson, any proposed increases should be factored in so that the net impact results in the overall reduction target."

Full article: http://www.mn2020.org/index.asp?Type=B_BASIC&SEC={1163D3B0-AF4E-437E-95D9-30D79650CC95}&DE= (Sorry don't know how to do a shorter version of the title.)