Skip to main content

Governor Dayton's veto letter

It's been a busy week of planting here at Maple Hill Garden. As a result, there has been little time to study the news coming out of St. Paul. It did seem, however, that whenever I turned on the radio in the pick-up, as I moved  between field and house, I heard either Paul Gazelka or Kurt Daudt berating Governor Dayton for his thoughtless vetoes. In one greasy moment I heard Senator Gazelka chortling about getting the Senate's work done four minutes before the legislature was required to close. He thought it was funny!

 Planting is dirty work but I felt particularly soiled by Paul Gazelka in that radio moment. 

 I need to get back to planting but I wanted to give voice to Mark Dayton's reasoning for vetoing much of the work product of the 2018 Legislative session. I encourage you to read it.

 Tim
------------------

 May 23, 2018


The Honorable Michelle Fischbach President ofthe Senate
2113 Minnesota Senate Building 95 University Avenue West
St. Paul, Minnesota 55155

Dear Madame President: 

 I have vetoed and am returning Chapter 201, SF 3656, the omnibus supplemental budget bill.

Repeatedly over the past several months, I implored the Legislature to send separate bills on Minnesotans' most urgent priorities. We agreed that we must reform elder care, address the opioid epidemic, and ensure safe schools for our children. Yet instead of coming together to find shared solutions to these critical issues, you have deposited them into a 989 page budget bill, with 51 policy provisions, which I oppose. This legislative gamesmanship was tenible, and I will not sign the result.


Despite efforts over the past several months to strengthen existing elder abuse laws, this bill  fails to meet the expectations of a large number of lawmakers and of the coalition of nearly every consumer advocacy organization in the state working to stop elder abuse. This legislation does not ensure that there will ever be licensure or protections  for assisted living or dementia care. It provides no private rights of enforcement for elderly and vulnerable adults who suffer preventable harm or even death at a long-term care facility. It  fails to provide even the basic public right of action protections  for elderly people being evicted from their care setting and residence. In fact, advocacy groups believe changes made in this bill would actually make current law less protective. This failure is unacceptable.


The bill also does far too little to combat the opioid epidemic plaguing our State. Several months ago, I proposed investing over $12 million annually in high impact strategies to treat and prevent opioid abuse, funded through an Opioid Stewardship Fee that would hold partially accountable the pharmaceutical companies, who created this deadly epidemic. Instead, this bill spends only $7million in FY2019 andabout$10 million in FY20/21, entirely from the General Fund. Not one penny is ascribed to the drug companies, through either a "penny-a-pill" or a licensing fee. Evidently, the indushy's 32 lobbyists and whatever promises they made outweighed the interests of the people ofMinnesota.

The bill does not support a comprehensive approach and instead provides one­ time grants and a small rate increase to providers. There is no funding targeted to communities of color or tribal communities that have been devastated by this crisis. The disparities between tribal communities and communities of color and white residents are the highest in the United States. You could have and should have done more.

Included in this enormous bill are workable responses to problems that I sincerely hoped would becomelaw: school safety and HAVA funds. I was sincere in my oft-stated desire to work with you and make these provisions become law. However, you knowingly prevented their enactment by inserting them into a bill, containing policies and agency budget cuts that I had said I would not sign.

I made my objections to this bill very clear throughout the Session. My Administration sent you over 100 detailed letters throughout the session, carefully explaining my concerns with each of the proposals.

This terrible bill and the resulting veto are your creations. Never have I seen a legislative session so badly mismanaged, less transparent, and more beholden to monied special interests.

For the above reasons, I have vetoed this bill.

Sincerely,

Mark Dayton

Governor

cc: Senator Paul E. Gazelka, Senate Majority Leader
Senator Thomas Bakk, Senate Minority Leader
Senator Julie Rosen, Chief Senate Author
Speaker Kmi Daudt, Speaker of the House Representatives 
Melissa Hortman, House Minority Leader 
Representative Jim Knoblach, Chief House Author
The Honorable Steve Simon, Secretaty of the State
Mr. Cal Ludeman, Secretary of the Senate
Mr. Patrick Murphy, Chief Clerk of the House of Representatives 
Mr. Paul Marinac, Revisor of Statutes 

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Let us all walk in the foot steps of John Lewis

By John King In Selma, Alabama, on Sunday, March 7, 1965, John Lewis, standing in the lead of a long line of marchers, looked down from the crest of The Edmund Pettus Bridge at the line of police armed with clubs, whips and truncheons and said, “I am going to die here.” Lewis intended to lead the marchers from Selma to the capital Montgomery, to demand access to voting for Black people in Alabama. Sheriff Jim Clark lowered his gas mask and led the deputies, some on horseback and some on foot, into the line of marchers. Under swinging clubs and hooves trampling, Lewis was the first to go down. Women and children were not spared. Choking and blinded by tear gas, they were struck by clubs and truncheons wrapped with barbed wire. Lewis, with a fractured skull and a severe concussion, almost did die. The nearby Good Samaritan Hospital did not have enough beds to care for the injured marchers. A nation watched in horror as news footage of that bloody day appeared on T...
2 comments
Read more

More Republican dirty tricks

  As a Blue Dog Corporate Democrat, 7th District Rep. Collin Peterson’s votes in Congress go against the beliefs and convictions of progressive voters in our district. I’m one of those progressive 7th District voters. Like most average voters I rarely actually encounter my Member of Congress. However, I recall three encounters with Rep. Peterson over the many years I’ve been stuck with him. I met him at Mikey’s Restaurant, on Main Street in Long Prairie, when he was first campaigning for a seat in Congress. We were both young then and he was full of energy and inspired in me a sense of hope for positive change. Besides, I’d met the Republican incumbent. He was an older man who, it seemed, was operating on dead batteries. I was happy to vote for the energetic Peterson. Some years later I was a delegate to the DFL District convention in Bemidji. Peterson opposed a woman’s right to choose abortion. He was being challenged by a woman who supported the right to that choice. I gave...
Post a Comment
Read more

The bible should rule in the MN Senate, says Majority leader Gazelka

“A lot of my job frankly is stopping the onslaught of the left from continually moving us in a way that we know is contrary to the Bible,” Gazelka told the extremist Christian evangelical leader Andrew Wommack during an interview in November on Truth & Liberty, a weekly extreme right Christian on-line broadcast. Gazelka told Wommack that he is engaged in a spiritual battle as leader of the Minnesota Senate. Wommack in turn told Gazelka that opponents of conservative Christians are with “the spirit of Antichrist. What they call political correctness is nothing but demonic inspired and so … I can get by with stuff maybe you can’t.”  Gazelka didn’t disagree with the extremist opinion that opponents of conservative Christians are with the spirit of the Antichrist. He merely dissembled and claimed he was like Jesus who went among the sinners to convert them. Gazelka has always seen himself as a minister who intends to convert Jews, Muslims, Catholics, Sikhs, Bahai, ...
1 comment
Read more