Legally right, morally right aren’t the same

The Minnesota Supreme court ruled last week that Gov. Mark Dayton was within his legal rights to line-item veto funding for the state Legislature at the end of this year’s session.
According to news reports from the Capitol, the Supreme Court also said that despite the cut in funding, the Legislature has enough money to continue to function, and that the judicial branch has no constitutional authority to order more funding for the Legislature. The court came to the conclusion that the Legislature has at least $26 million and up to $40 million to operate.
Because the Legislature still has access to funds, the court declined to rule on whether or not Dayton’s veto was a coercive act that violated the state constitution.
Regardless of whether there is, indeed, funding for the Legislature, there is no doubt that Dayton’s veto was intended to coerce the Legislature into coming back to the table and tweak the budget — the same budget, we remind you, that Dayton and the Legislature came to a bipartisan agreement upon. Dayton signed off on that agreement, and he should have stuck to it.
That agreement, whether one agrees with all its stipulations or not, came on the heels of a legislative session in which there was a failure to pass a bonding bill and a budget.
The fact that the Legislature and the governor came together in 2017 to reach an agreement gave many of us hope that a new era of bipartisan politics was in its dawning age, and that it would be a trend that would continue into the future.
That hope was dashed when Dayton pulled his veto stunt, which jeopardized the balance of powers between the three branches of government.
And have no doubt, the repercussions of Dayton’s veto and the ruling by the Supreme Court will have reverbations well into the future. It’s created a further chasm between the two main pollitical parties in the state, and legislators are already prepping for a battle in the 2018 session.
This is Dayton’s last term. It’s too bad his tenure in office has been marred by his bonehead veto.
Along with impacting the 2018 legislative session, the veto will have an impact on the governor’s race. Any DFL candidates will need to cleanly dissociate themselves from Dayton’s maneuvering tactics, and promise to be more bipartisan.
Let’s hope that whoever Dayton’s successor may be, that he or she respect the balance of powers provided by the state constitution, respect the function of the office of governor, and honor any agreements that he or she may enter into.