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A Ramsey County judge consented Monday evening to temporarily fund the Minnesota Legislature, while a constitutional dispute is underway.  The funding until Oct. 1 allows legislators and staff to continue to be paid while 


Judge John Guthmann ordered Gov. Mark Dayton's budget director to "take all steps necessary" to provide funding to the Republican-controlled House and Senate until October 1, or until courts render a final decision.

The Legislature's operating expenses total $5.26 million a month, according to the court order. 
 

Guthmann also said the state Senate must pay $669,332 monthly beginning in July to the Minnesota Department of Administration to rent the Senate Office Building.

His order followed a Monday morning hearing on the stopgap funding and the broader challenge to a Dayton decision to veto money for the House and Senate in May.
 


Guthmann pressed attorneys on both sides to defend competing arguments in a case over constitutional powers.
 

Dayton, GOP reach deal to fund Legislature until Oct. 1

Defund House and Senate? 'See you in court,' Daudt tells Dayton

 
The Legislature wants Dayton's veto of House and Senate appropriations nullified on grounds he would be "obliterating" another branch of government; Dayton's attorneys said line-item veto power is clearly granted in the Minnesota Constitution and the court would be going down "not only a slippery slope, but a cliff" if he took the governor's motives into account.
 

 
The Legislature's attorney, Doug Kelley, stretched his arguments back to 1876 when the line-item veto was put into the constitution. He said state leaders at the time couldn't have contemplated that a governor would wipe out money for the House and Senate to prompt new negotiations over a budget he didn't like.
 

Kelley said it has been "141 years and no governor has done it. And that's for very good reason because it so obviously crosses a line."
 


Dayton's attorney Sam Hanson said governors and lawmakers routinely take actions for secondary reasons. In this case, 

 was designed to prompt new negotiations over a tax-cut bill, other budget provisions and some policy changes — all of which the DFLer signed into law.
 


Guthmann posed hypotheticals to both lawyers. He probed Kelley on what ability a governor would have to police legislative spending if his veto was curtailed as the Legislature's lawsuit contemplates. Kelley responded that this veto "is basically saying I am doing this for leverage over you."
 

 
Dayton, Kelley said, "is holding a gun to the head of the Legislature and threatening to obliterate another branch of government."
 

Guthmann said there are multiple kinds of vetoes that might be valid: an "over my dead body veto" and a "let's meet and compromise coercive veto." He also posed the question: "If temporary funding is provided by the courts and the parties can go on and resolve through negotiation their political dispute, why should the courts get involved?"
 
 

To Hanson, he asked if a governor could take a similar swipe at judicial branch funding if he didn't like a ruling or set of rulings. Hanson replied that it was possible, but didn't buy the idea a governor would take such an "unsavory" action.
 

 
 
"Sometimes these principles need to be tested by their extreme," Guthmann said in response.
 
 

Hanson argued repeatedly that the court had the power to authorize funding for core functions in the absence of a full legislative budget. The same could be done in the judicial branch hypothetical, he said.
 
 

Earlier in a companion case, a lawyer for a government watchdog group urged the judge to order that lawmakers be paid no matter what happens in the veto case. That case was also taken under advisement.

Crime, Law and Justice

Politics and Government News

Brian Bakst

Author

A Ramsey County judge consented late Monday to temporary funding to pay to run the Legislature while a dispute over a line-item veto plays out.

A Ramsey County judge left Gov. Mark Dayton and lawmakers in suspense Monday about whether he'll consent to temporary funding to pay to run the Legislature while a dispute over a line-item veto plays out.

Judge OKs fill-in funds for Legislature as legal fight goes on

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