Read the latest update from the Capitol on funding to protect and restore Minnesota's Great Outdoors.
MEP has been working to ensure that accounts dedicated for conservation and environmental protection are not raided to fix the short-term budget deficit. We are still working on the overall analysis, but generally the Legislature has been careful to honor the voters’ intent in creating the dedicated lottery proceeds and sales tax proceeds to go to the Great Outdoors. There are two bills still moving through the process that we are watching. First, the conference committee on the LCCMR bill (HF2624) appropriating the lottery proceeds finished its work Monday afternoon. This is the bill in which Rep. Tom Rukavina diverted over $4 million intended for land purchases to preserve important environmental lands to go instead to state park maintenance, for the purpose of creating more jobs. As a compromise, the conference committee reduced that to $850,000 and agreed to some language requiring the Department of Natural Resources to review all land purchases to make sure that they are of the highest priority for conservation. The final report now goes to the full bodies for approval in the next couple days. There is still no word on whether the Governor will sign the bill or possibly use some line-item vetoes. The Governor did identify seven projects of concern, but with no direct threat to veto.
The second major bill on environmental financing is the Omnibus Environment, Energy and Natural Resources Policy and Finance Bill; Outdoor Heritage Appropriations (SF3275). As the tortured title of the bill indicates, it is a mixture of the Legacy sales tax appropriations and the remaining environmental and energy appropriations from other dedicated accounts, i.e., Game and Fish Fund and Environmental Fund – essentially the non-general fund appropriations. A conference committee was appointed and met over the weekend without reaching a compromise. Most of the funding provisions in the bill have been agreed to by the conference committee members and most MEP members are satisfied with the direction that the Legislature has taken with the dedicated accounts. The issues tying up the conference committee have to do with policy provisions in the bill. One of the biggest issues is the legislative definitions of the words “protect, enhance and restore” in the constitutional amendment. There is also language in the bill creating a moratorium on hazardous waste incinerators that would affect a project 3M would like to move forward with and that the Governor has indicated would result in his veto of the legislation. Therefore, there is still a great deal of uncertainty regarding the important appropriations contained within this bill being approved because of these policy language disputes. The legislators would likely have to reach resolution in the next three days in order to have a realistic chance of passage. Unfortunately, it has become a tradition that the Legacy funding issues are one of the last to be resolved in the legislative session, a tradition we should be working on reversing in the near future.
It has been reported that there is an additional $43 million in environment cuts in the latest recommendation by the Legislature after the landmark Supreme Court case on unallotments. This is somewhat deceptive. The Legislature has recommended authorizing a little over $3 million in the Governor’s unallotments in the environment area. The remaining $40 million comes from reserves in the closed landfill account. In April, the Legislature approved a one-time transfer of $8 million from an investment account that has been put into place to address the environmental impacts of closing our state’s landfills and placed the money in the general fund to lessen the deficit. It’s sort of like raiding your children’s college fund to pay for an unexpected car repair. That was only a portion of what was in that account, and now the Legislature is recommending using the full account to solve their short-term problems. The Legislature did include language in the bill that would require them to pay back this raid starting in 2014, with interest, from the general fund when there are future needs to pay for the closed landfill program. I would guess there have been several personal bankruptcies in our country that were paved with these types of good intentions to pay back raided accounts.
Read the rest of John Tuma's Capitol Update for May 11, 2010
