Daily Digest: Budget standoff ahead?
Good morning and welcome to Thursday. Here's the Digest.
1. DFL Gov. Mark Dayton’s top financial aide accused Republican leaders of using “fuzzy math, phony savings” and delayed payments to finance a large tax cut bill. Minnesota Management and Budget commissioner Myron Frans suggested many of the GOP-backed budget bills could be headed for vetoes if not altered. “The Legislature’s math just does not add up,” Frans said. House Speaker Kurt Daudt, R-Zimmerman, took issue with the administration’s analysis and countered with his own criticism of Dayton, who he accused of being “out of touch” with most Minnesotans. (MPR News)
2. After a last minute collapse last year, a public works bonding bill was a top priority for some lawmakers this year. But the bill has yet to emerge at the Minnesota Capitol. Last year a bonding plan emerged in the last hours of the last day of the session. It failed to reach the governor’s desk after a volley between the House and Senate caused lawmakers to run out of time. So, on the second day of this year’s session, Gov. Mark Dayton released his list of more than 240 projects. The DFLer sought $1.5 billion through a bond sale to make them happen. Republican House Speaker Kurt Daudt says a bonding proposal is likely to be one piece in a bigger puzzle of end-of-session negotiations. (MPR News)
3. The fund that pays for fish and wildlife management in Minnesota has fallen from more than $20 million a few years ago to less than $10 million. Next year, it will be half that. By 2019, it'll be gone, says Department of Natural Resources Commissioner Tom Landwehr, who's pressing the Legislature now for a series of price increases to close a long-standing funding gap. Under DFL Gov. Mark Dayton's budget proposal, a deer hunting tag would go from $30, to about $34. A fishing license would be $25, $3 more than it is now. The cost of a state park pass would also go up, by $1 per day. The last time that fee saw an increase was more than a decade ago. The fee hikes, however, are largely absent from the bills up for debate this week in Minnesota's Republican-controlled House and Senate. (MPR News)
4. You don't often hear people who want to head a political party say they don't want to unify it. But that's what happened at a forum this week in Little Falls. The people competing to chair the Republican Party of Minnesota were there, including current Deputy Chair Chris Fields, former Minnesota Senate Minority Leader David Hann, Republican National Committeeman Rick Rice and Jennifer Carnahan, who owns businesses in the Nisswa area. The candidates were mostly congenial but there was a brief moment of fireworks over the question of party unity. "I do not believe in unifying this party," Fields said. "I don't. I don't think it's possible." (Brainerd Dispatch)
5. The DFL caucuses in Minneapolis this week drew twice as many people as the last city election four years ago, but no candidate for mayor emerged as a dominant favorite. That makes a DFL endorsement in the race less likely, setting up a wide-open race for the city’s top political job. Caucus results haven’t been tallied and will only be partial even once completed. But reports from about 20 DFL insiders across the city point to a three-way endorsement race involving Mayor Betsy Hodges, Council Member Jacob Frey and state Rep. Raymond Dehn at the Minneapolis DFL convention on July 8. (Star Tribune)
6. President Trump said on Wednesday that this week’s chemical weapons attack in Syria had changed his view of the civil war in that country, though he declined to say how the United States would respond. Trump said the images of death inside Syria in the aftermath of the chemical attacks “crosses many lines, beyond a red line, many many lines.” And he said that the death of “innocent children, innocent babies, little babies” has made him reassess the situation and Syria’s president, Bashar al-Assad. (New York Times)
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