The following article by Rachel E. Stassen-Berger was posted on the Pioneer Press website September 8, 2017:
The Minnesota Supreme Court on Friday decided that Gov. Mark Dayton’s veto of the House and Senate budgets earlier this year was constitutional.
“We hold that the governor’s exercise of his line item veto authority … was constitutional,” Supreme Court Chief Justice Lorie Gildea wrote. “This conclusion, however, does not end the matter.”
The justice wrote that the court does not believe it has the authority to order the Legislature funded, as did a previous district court, while the dispute goes on. Therefore it ordered Dayton, a Democrat, and the Republican Legislature back into talks with a mediator.
The order temporarily resolves the constitutional showdown over Dayton’s line-item veto of $130 million worth of legislative funding. But the case is still ongoing; the high court did not order the case remanded back to the Ramsey Court District Court that decided Dayton’s veto was unconstitutional.
Still, Dayton said he was vindicated.
“I am very pleased that my constitutional right to line-item veto certain appropriations for the Minnesota House and Senate … was upheld by the Minnesota Supreme Court,” he said.
Gildea, like one other member of the court that issued the ruling, is a Republican appointee. The rest were appointed by Dayton. Justice David Stras, another Republican member of the court, recused himself in the case.
There were no dissents listed in the six-page order.
Republican legislative leaders said they were pleased that the court acknowledged that the Legislature must function and cited a 1955 case in its order that concluded that constitutional powers cannot be used “to accomplish an unconstitutional result.”
CONSTITUTION AND BUDGETS
The Minnesota Constitution, in what the court called its “plain language,” gives governors the power to veto lines of appropriation. Dayton, the court said in its Friday decision, was within his constitutional right to use that power over the House and Senate budgets.
But the Supreme Court order shows the next steps are more complicated.
The constitution also requires the state to have legislative, executive and judicial branches. But the veto, plus Dayton and the Legislature’s lack of a political solution, may put the legislative branch at risk.
“Minnesotans may soon be deprived of their constitutional right to three independent branches of government,” the court wrote.
The Legislature has continued to be funded since June despite Dayton’s veto. That’s because Ramsey County District Judge John Guthmann, at the request of the governor and the Legislature, ordered funds to keep flowing.
But the high court cast doubt on any court’s ability to order the state to fund any branch of government, even if both sides “asked a court to do so,” Gildea wrote on behalf of the court.
Ramsey County courts have ordered funding for government functions before. It did so in 2011 and 2005 when the government shut down and when it threatened to shut down in 2001.
Dayton’s attorney, former Supreme Court justice Sam Hanson, said the system of courts ordering funding has become “the law of Ramsey County.” But the high court has never put its signature on such funding, and justices made clear last month they were reticent to do so.
“The order shows that the court is not done with the case yet,” said Peter Wattson, a former longtime state Senate counsel who briefly worked for Dayton. “They haven’t sent it back to the lower courts; they’re going to find out a little bit more about this before they make a final ruling.”
The court ordered both the governor and the Legislature to write memos that address “the constitutionality of the judicial branch ordering funding to the Legislature.” It also demanded the House and Senate report on how much money they have in reserves and how long that would last if funding were cut off.
Senate officials have previously said they have about one month of funding in their savings account. House officials have at least twice that.
WHAT’S NEXT?
The governor and the Legislature must go back into talks, the court ordered, so they can solve their own budget problems.
Dayton said in May when he made the veto that he wanted the Republican Legislature to agree to reverse itself on several tax cuts, as well as some controversial policy matters, before he would be willing to call them back into special session. Republican leaders said they would not budge on those issues.
Therefore, the order demanded the parties find a mediator to resolve their differences by next week. The mediator is not optional, the court said.
“If the parties are unable to agree on a mediator, we will designate one,” the order said.
Dayton said he was happy to begin mediation with the Legislature, blaming lawmakers for bringing the issue to court rather than the bargaining table.
“I remain ready and very willing to engage in those negotiations immediately. I have asked my legal team to contact their legislative counterparts to begin to resolve this matter,” the governor said.
Democratic and Republican leaders echoed that.
“We are ready to go to mediation to secure funding for the legislative branch of government,” House Speaker Kurt Daudt, R-Crown, and Senate Majority Leader Paul Gazelka, R-Nisswa, said in a joint statement. “We worked in good faith in the past to attempt to breach this impasse, and will work in good faith again as we look ahead to the mediation process.”
David Montgomery contributed to this report.
View the post here, which contains the court order.