(00:00:00) From Minnesota Public Radio. I'm Greta Cunningham Ridgefield based Best Buy has found investors to take over its money-losing musicland business. Musicland runs the Sam Goody's media play and Suncoast video chains a company. Spokeswoman says it is on track to lose 85 million dollars this year some Capital partners of Florida is acquiring Music Land and taking over all of the company's liabilities. No cash will change hands in the deals Best Buy says in March that it planned to sell Music Land a river cleanup effort aimed at removing 100 tons of trash from the Twin Cities portion of the Mississippi and its banks moves to st. Paul today. The project called the Big River cleanup started in Hastings over the weekend and we'll move Upstream before concluding on Sunday, Joe. Beatty of Hastings was among dozens of volunteers who helped during the first day of the cleanup. I picked out whatever we could and could have been small things like plastic pot models to great (00:00:54) big things. Like I helped out with a group of people that took out a great big Hundred pound Bowie. We took out a refrigerator. We took out a pretty huge chunk of Styrofoam that goes underneath floating (00:01:09) dock organizers. Hope 1500 volunteers will take part in the cleanup a similar effort last year involved 1,200 People Who removed 92 tons of trash authorities are Fanning out again this morning and search for a missing five year old Chisholm girl. Lyanna. Marie Warner was last seen walking out of the door of her family's home in downtown Chisholm late Saturday afternoon the forecast for Minnesota calls for partly cloudy skies for most of the state a cool front will move in from the northern to West Central portions of the state highs today from 78 in the north to near 88 in the South right now the Twin Cities mostly sunny skies with a temperature of 80 degrees from Minnesota Public Radio news. I'm Greta Cunningham. All right. Thanks Greta. It's six minutes now past eleven and good morning. Welcome to midday on Minnesota Public Radio. Gary eichten glad you could join us. Tim pawlenty has had a very good year when you think about it one year ago back in June of 2002 then House Majority Leader Tim pawlenty won a marathon battle for the Republican party's endorsement for governor in November. He won the four-way race for governor it by a surprisingly wide margin and then this spring legislators largely accepted intact his plan to balance the state budget all in all when you think about it quite a year and Governor Tim pawlenty has joined us this morning to talk about this past year. Look ahead to what may be coming up in the next year and take your questions as well. Today is ask the governor day on midday. And if you have a question for governor pawlenty, give us a call or Twin City area number is 6512276 thousand 6512276 thousand or toll-free line is 1-800-222-8477 6,000 or 1-800 to for to to 828 by the way. We'd also like to Include some questions from our website if that's easier for you so might want to try our web address, which is Minnesota Public Radio dot org and a sort of public radio dot-org Governor. Thanks for coming over today. My pleasure gear even wonderful day to be here really is you have been going pretty much non-stop for I guess at least a year and a half now when you think about last year's legislative session and all the rest of you get to get any kind of vacation now. Well, I'm hoping to get some vacation this summer and we spend some time with my family but you're right if you had in the campaign year year and a half and then the legislative session and my roles Majority Leader. It's been a very long and busy road but you know as my wife says nobody made you do this. So you chose to do it you keep smiling and it's a privilege and honor to have the position. We want to try to make Every Day Count. What was the toughest thing to get done when the endorsement last last year get elected in November or convince the legislature? Make sure that your budget plan was the best available plan. Well, that's probably like trying to figure out whether it be easier to beat Hulk Hogan or Triple H or the rock unrest lie there all three were big obstacles big hurdles and each were different had their own characteristics to them. But if I had to pick one that was probably most difficult Gary dealing with his budget deficit really is probably the most difficult and getting that through the legislature so many impacts so many concerns lots of great very emotional debate and certainly respect all the inputs. But this has been a hard hard time for Minnesota financially and politically and getting that through the legislative session in some kind of cohesive fashion was probably the toughest of the three we were supposed to find out today about the third of the bond rating agencies to of the agencies last week so that Minnesota would be able to retain its AAA rating Moody's was supposed to speak today have heard. Well, we did receive word. I think I'm not talking out of school because there were supposed to release it at 11:00. So hopefully I'm not Violating any rules or expectations they have they are going to remove Minnesota from their credit watches a good thing, but they are going to take us from AAA to double-a one, which is the next level down. So we'll have 2 rating agencies at AAA maintaining our AAA rage agent rating and then one agency going from AAA down to double-a one that will still put us in the top 10 We Believe States in terms of the rating evaluations of the state's we were probably 7th or 8th before that the net effect of that isn't huge financially, but it's more of a gold standard or a Good Housekeeping seal of approval that you try to want to get you can keep for your state. So two out of three isn't bad under the circumstances with this enormous historic deficit and it still leaves us in relatively good shape compared to most other states. What was Moody's primary concern? Well, I think they would say two things one is that the just the overall size of the deficit was so large in per capita compared to the other states that they think are deserving of a AAA rating and number two. They wanted to see a more stable Outlook in terms of the way that with the deficit was handled relative to one time fixes versus permanent fixes. They weren't overly troubled by what we did but they don't think it was at the same level as their other AAA states. Does that concern you because about half of the overall deficit was dealt with in terms of shifts and one time money and the rest so that if things don't pick up a lot are we not going to be right back in the soup now not necessarily and I'm very mindful of it. I don't take it lightly, but people what they don't report is they got a 4.2 billion dollar deficit and we used about 1.8 million in one-time items or shifts or monies, but that what that's appropriate because it's proportionate to the one-time nature of the deficit in other words of the 4.2 billion dollar deficit only 2.4 of it is scheduled to be your predicted to be permanent or recurring and so a chunk of it 1.8 1.7. The scheduled to be non-recurring and we use one-time Monies to address the non-recurring portion of it and most of the other two rating agencies. I don't want to speak for them. But I thought they they believed that that was roughly proportionate and and to the recurring or permanent nature of the the deficit the revenue department reported the other day that income tax collections or tax collections in general. We're up slightly over February forecast. Is this a sign that the worst is over. Well, I think people who try to speculate or guess about where this economy is headed. You know, anybody can give their opinion, but the reality is I think people don't really know, you know, we have a mildly improving situation where little bit ahead of forecast in a couple of categories were behind in some other categories. I think the general consensus is the business investment is not where it needs to be to try to stimulate a recovery. There's been a lot of consumer spending. There's been a lot of low interest carbine. There's been a lot of house refinancing Some of those activities has contributed to our Outlook. I think the economy is stabilized and maybe beginning to improve but one or two bad pieces of news could put us right back in the soup again Gary for example, if we had one act of domestic terrorism that could Royal the markets again, and so we certainly aren't going around and beating our chest and saying we solve the problem. Everything's fine. We're in a very delicate situation. We realize that we're hoping for and planning for some economic recovery, but we want to be modest in those projections for all those reasons one more question and I'm going to get the listener questions for you the president and most of his Democratic Challengers are all coming to Minnesota this week when all is said and done. Next year is President Bush going to carry Minnesota First Republic and he would be the first Republican in what would then be 32 years to do. So, I think he's got a good shot. I know Minnesota traditionally has been a very liberal State and has pretty much belong politically to the That has changed over the last five ten fifteen years slowly but the pendulum is swinging slowly and I'm not saying it's going to be or is a Republican state now, but I think what you're seeing in Minnesota is you got a about a third or less of the people in the state who are strongly affiliated with the Democrats you got about a third a little less where strongly affiliated with the Republicans and you now have a plurality of minnesotans who don't officially or formally affiliated with either party. So there's a there's a state that's in transition and it's a plurality around this kind of middle chunk of folks and they could kind of trend towards the Republicans or the Democrats depending on the issue the day the times the economy, but clearly this is not the kind of liberal epicenter that it used to be and that's not to mean it's going to become a you know, a strong Conservative Republican state either. It's just becoming more of a mainstream or swing state. I think that bodes well for President Bush, I mean, he enjoys broad support and we may not get all these support of the the Liberals but he's getting a good chunk of the independent support and obviously gets most of the Book and support and with those numbers that puts him in position to win the state in the presidential election. Next year Governor. Tim pawlenty is our guest this hour and if you have a question for the governor, give us a call here at 6512276 thousand 6512276 thousand. Our toll-free line is 1-800-222-8477. (00:10:22) Thank you for your unwavering commitment to Minnesota taxpayers Governor pawlenty. I think you gave voice to our concerns about Minnesota's high taxes and spending and you promised the to produce a state budget with no new taxes and you delivered and we are very very grateful to you. I want to say that first because I don't want to start complaining about some some of where the money went. I know that a massive, you know, 4.2 billion dollar shortfall was not easy to avert with no new taxes and really truly. I really appreciate what you did in that area if you hadn't have stopped With it. I don't think it would have passed the way it did but we've had 32 years of liberal domination in Minnesota politics. And I really frankly I'm glad it's ended and I would just want to quote something. I read in the Wall Street Journal recently. It said conservatism may be about to get the upper hand in one of the original welfare states of Minnesota. But you know, our Department of Human Services budget is still very very high. It didn't really shrink that much and I guess that's one disappointment that I saw this time around and also the 25 million to the Guthrie bothered me a great deal yesterday in the st. Paul Pioneer Press. There were there was a big article on the front page saying that state jobs are being lost and then when you read the article, it was a couple of state jobs at the historical society, which is that expensive marble edifice that was built a while back and in the article it said that there were 25 people working there and I got to thinking what do those people all do? (00:12:05) All right, Alice, let's listen to the governor. Okay. Thank you Alice. First of all for those kind comments and certainly this has been a real tough session for Minnesota because we've had to do some searching about how do you solve this problem? And there's obviously been a big debate about whether your raise taxes or don't raise taxes and I encourage people to put it in context. This is not a state that's been a low tax low government service state. It may be the solution or the pathway would be different if we were in a state like that but Minnesota is traditionally a very high tax High government service High government spending State. What doesn't get reported very often is that our revenues even without tax increases in other words, if you just leave our taxes the way they are our revenues were projected to grow by six percent for the upcoming biennium. The reason we had a budget deficit is because while our revenues were growing growing by 6% are spending was scheduled to grow by 14.4% And so it just doesn't make sense. You can't have money coming. The door growing at 6% money going out the door growing at 14% And when you talk to people about war and recession and mass layoffs and historic budget deficits not many people's paychecks are grown by 14% And they believed I think most minnesotans that we should be able to live within a six percent growth in our revenues other people just don't realize it but it didn't it doesn't get reported much but our budget is still growing, you know, I've increased as a result of this legislative session the budget by one point six billion dollars. It's about a five point eight percent increase in spending for the upcoming biennium. And that's about I think reflective of the time there's a lot of people say it should have been held flat or cut in real terms. So overall our budgets not being reduced and you hit the nail on the head the untold story largely. Is there certain parts of our budget that are growing so explosively and it's normally are typically in the healthcare areas that in order to accommodate that growth some other things had to be slow down Health and Human Services budget was scheduled to go up 22 percent. We reduce the growth rate down to 10% and you would have thought given some of the hysteria that's out there that we you know have turned the state back 50 years. In fact, I won't go into it in great detail, but the Health and Human Services budget is still growing by 10% by the upcoming biennium. Is there a way we do hear a lot of stories though governor and you've certainly heard him and you've acknowledged them in a past. I mean, there are people who are genuinely going to be hurt by the cuts that are going to be made. Is there a way longer term to more directly Target State spending State services so that the people who really do need the services don't suffer and the people may be on the margins, you know, who well they can get along without these services so that down the road when adjustments are made they can be more more specifically targeted. I think there is Gary and that's something we have to do. We made some progress on that this year, but you know just to focus for example on the Health crisis. There's roughly 38 Thousand people who are going to be now not receiving public health care assistance as a result of this budget when they were scheduled to receive it under the old forecast now 38,000 people sounds like a lot of folks, but that's in the context of 650,000 people being under Public Health Assistance programs. And those programs are not going backwards. The number of people being served as actually going to go up from 650,000 to 700,000 in the coming few years. It's just going to grow more slowly than it would have under these adjustments of the 38,000. There's people who are going to become ineligible because we're doing a part of that is because we're going to be checking their eligibility more frequently than we would have in the past. And so they're going to fall off the roll so to speak just because we're doing better enforcement and compliance is about seven or eight thousand of those folks and they wouldn't have been eligible under the old system had we had these new tougher enforcement or compliance systems. We also have some Health Care programs in Minnesota that other states don't even have we have eligibility the other It's don't even have so as we try to slow down or contain these health care costs. We will remain Nation leading in almost every category and this allegation that somehow we're throwing Minnesota into the stone age's I just don't think it's very fair and not reflective of the actual fact. Some programs are indeed being caught I don't deny that in real terms. But that is to accommodate explosive growth. In other areas. The caller was also upset about money going to the Guthrie. Yes. I'm sorry. I did you. Why did you approve that given the tough times that we face? Well, first of all, I was part of the bonding project. So it's not cash now, it's money paid over 15 or 20 year period we have extremely low interest rates, but more importantly than all of that if you're going to have a quality of life State we know we're still a small population cold temperature State and so he got to have some amenities if you're going to have people like it here and stay here and be attracted here and the Guthrie is our one of our Flagship Arts and Cultural institutions. It adds a great deal to our quality of life, and there was about 82% of the He or more raised privately and they were looking for about 20 to 25 percent contribution from the government. It was part of a compromise, but I'm not overly troubled by it because I think it's a it's a positive step forward for our quality of life in Minnesota can people assume that next year. You'll get behind an effort to build a stadium for the Twins then well, I think we got to have proper priorities in proper context. I want to keep the twins here. I want to keep the Vikings here and I will definitely roll up my sleeves and find ways to make that happen, but it has to be in the right time and in the right context and when we're having these extraordinary economic difficulties with lots of people losing their jobs or their government benefits, you know, putting a lot of resources or time against a Twins or Viking Stadium is misplaced priorities, but if the economy stabilizes or we begin to get back to a little more positive footing I will lead discussions in efforts to try to keep the Twins and Vikings here. I have not been a supporter of money for stadiums general fund money, but I think there are some Of ways to try to solve this problem without putting the state's general funds at risk Travis your question, (00:18:05) please yes, good morning Governor pawlenty. Good morning. You had a question for you during the campaign meeting up to your eventual winners the governor one of the reasons that was cited as well as Senator Coleman as reasons to definitely go with Republican party was that you had very close ties with the White House and certainly those have proven to be beneficial to Minnesotan minnesotans as a whole. But the question I have is one point that really stands out my mind as a contrast between the policies at the federal level to the White House and to the state specifically regards domestic partner benefits. The New York Times had an article fact this last week it was Friday where President Bush actually broke with more conservative ranks, the Republican party to endorse domestic partner benefits, whereas it's been a bone of contention in our legislature until this year when it was finally just thrown out all together and it was wondering where does the difference Line and this is a speak to I don't know just sort of a fracture between the the state Republican party and the federal Republican party. (00:19:07) I wasn't aware that President Bush had come out in support of domestic partner benefits. So that's news to me. I guess I'll be anxious to see the news account or that story. But if that's the case that certainly would be a new development that I wasn't previously aware of in terms of the issues of human rights for Gay and Lesbian individuals in Minnesota, you know, where one of nine or ten states that have some Protections in our state anti-discrimination laws for sexual orientation. That's a piece of legislation that has been controversial Minnesota, but I think it's been an on the books now for nearly a decade and there are some efforts this year to repeal some are all of that bill by representative Lindner. I said that we should not repeal that statute and so I've been somewhat supportive of that perspective but not I've not been a supporter of domestic partner benefits at the in the legislature had a chance to vote on those issues. I won't give you the long version but the short version is I don't think that all domestic relationships are the equivalent of marriage. I think marriage in my opinion is special. It should be kept on an elevated platform. I don't think I'm at the point where I'm comfortable saying all domestic arrangements are the same as marriage for purposes of benefits or legal recognition or whatever and the that doesn't just apply to domestic Partners who may be gay or lesbian. It applies to people who would be heterosexual and unmarried as well Legend with so your question, please (00:20:38) oh hi, I'm one of those swing voters you were talking about. I don't consider myself democrat or republican I go by what they're offering any weight my questions relate to Transportation. I'm very concerned about all the congestion on the freeways and I mean, it just takes forever to get any And I don't like that and I am pleased that you're opening up that 394 for a toll road. It doesn't help me here in Bloomington, but at least it's some relief. I'm wondering if you're going to do more toll roads because I think there are wonderful idea and I lived in Illinois years ago. They had them. All right, and then the second thing is what are you doing with the LRT or we still going to get three stops in Bloomington or what's happening with (00:21:24) that? Okay. Thank you for asking. And this whole Transportation issue is again a percolating crisis in the Twin Cities were 15 or 20 years behind there's a lot of people who criticize our transportation initiative this year. But what they won't say is that it's the biggest largest piece of progress in transportation in the last 15 years. And so you can say well we didn't go far enough or we didn't allocate it properly, but the bottom line is we got something done and that couldn't can't be said for the administration's of legislature over the last 10 or 15 years. So I encourage people not to let the perfect get in the way of the good in. This is one example of the good It's a good piece of work happening this session. It includes significant new monies or accelerated monies for Road and Bridge construction, which are going to bring new projects online in the next five years that will be about a nine hundred million dollar package. In addition to that. We have some Innovative new things that will be taking place one is we're going to open up the high occupancy vehicle Lanes on 394 and 35W. There's some federal limitations about how we can do that. But we're going to have high tech toll roads. We can't just open them up to General use because the federal government won't let us but it won't be the old-fashioned necessarily booths with people in it with arms going up and down. We believe there's a way using technology and microchips and cars where people can use the lane without much hassle or inconvenience and then be electronically billed for It On a related note. We're also hoping to deploy what's called Fast Lanes. We can't again do these on federal roads yet without their approval but on state highways we may be able to get private Contractors Road contractors to Old extra Lanes on their dime and then we they would be able to collect on electronic very user friendly basis a fee for people to use these Lanes other states have done this their statistics show. It's not just a rich versus poor thing. People are using it for convenience and the profile the people who use it. It is not segregated by socioeconomic means but then the better news is once the road is paid for it gets reverts back to General use so everybody can use it. And in the meantime, it takes some of the congestion off the current Lane. So it's a potential win-win for everybody and we're going to be trying to deploy that in Minnesota as well. We're also looking for Effective Transit Solutions transits taken a bit of a hit in terms of funding this year. But a lot of that is part of that is because there's been so many Transit dollars diverted to the light rail in Hiawatha quarter. That would have been my first place to put a light rail, but it's there so we have to fund it that's going to cost some money, but we're also deploying some good. I think new effective Transit. Is that will hopefully help alleviate some of the traffic congestion as well. But this is a big issue in terms of time away from family time away from work. It's frustrating it's unproductive sitting in traffic. But the good news is we made the most progress of anybody in the last 10 or 15 years. So some relief should be forthcoming. She wanted to know do you know how many stops there would be in Lovington with the how that's going to play out if well, the one recent issue that's come up is the stop whether the build a light rail station initially to go out to the Mall of America, but it doesn't really go to the Mall of America. It stops a few blocks away from the mall. So it's kind of a bizarre design and there's reasons for that. But now there's a potential where we could get Federal money to relocate or I should say redesign. So the train actually goes to the Mall of America. So people would have to park and then walk or bus three or four blocks to get to the mall that would certainly be one Bloomington stop. There's another Bloomington stop at closer to the Minneapolis border. That's 2 would be 2 and there may be a third that I'm not Membrane, so I'm afraid I can't give you a reliable exact count of the number of Bloomington stops One Transportation question came in on our website. Noting that there was during the session no increase in state taxes, but you cede our user fees were increased in many cases. The questioner wants to know why the gas tax the usage fee that affects most people wasn't raised will couple of things one is we said during the campaign and I made it clear throughout that we would be open to using some fee increases if there is a program that was being supported by fees, but the fees weren't paying for it that we would be open to some fee increases but that we wouldn't use fees to try to balance a 4.2 billion dollar deficit as it turns out the fee increases were a very Modest part of the solution depending on who's Matthew use somewhere between I think 200 and 400 million dollars of fees. Now my friends on the Democratic party want to add tuition and a bunch of others. If that technically it was strictly hasn't been counted as fees, but roughly two to four hundred million dollars in fee increases with a 400 4 billion. I should say dollar deficit. So it's we thought that was a Modest part of the solution and an appropriate one and one that I disclosed ahead of time in terms of what's the difference between a fee and attacks. We've said look, there's no perfect definition. But if it's traditionally been called a tax and treated in-laws attacks will treat it as a tax of it's traditionally been called a fee will treat it as a fee. The gas tax is called a tax in law. It's not a fee. It's a tax and so we treated that as a tax and said we're not in favor of raising that and people should also know that even though the gas tax itself hasn't been increased with the number of miles of going up the number of drivers going up the number amount of money coming into the road fund on average over the years tends to still increase and as we look to alternative fuels in the future fuel additives hydrogen fuel changing technology and cars. We may need to Look beyond the gas tax for source of revenues. And so we did not support the gas tax because it is a tax. Are you concerned a longer-term? You've got some bonding money going out for the road construction projects. You talked about going to accelerate federal spending good big bump in in construction projects right now, but longer term, of course the critics say, well you've spent all the money that will need for five years from now. Well, actually the money that we're getting to service the debt on these bonds is from the Department of transportation's bureaucracy and they've been immune from any budget pressures because or many budget pressures because they're not in our general fund their install these special funds. So we're taking money that's currently used for kind of administration and using it now for road construction, so it's largely self funding but I think the point of your question Gary is beyond that we need a permanent long-term Revenue increase for transportation. I think we do I'm not ready to say that's the guy Stacks necessarily, but I think we do and we're trying to work on some ways to find new revenues. Maybe these Fast Lanes and maybe the more version updated version of toll Lanes. There may be some other ideas and I will share those down the road, but we need more revenues for transportation. There's no question about that our guest. This hour is Minnesota Governor Tim pawlenty lots of callers with questions for the governor, and we'll get to more questions in just a couple of minutes programming is supported by Haskell's wine and spirit shops featuring an Eclectic assortment of fine summer wines for your enjoyment now, it has killed seven Twin Cities locations and Haskell's.com Haskell's the wine people Excuse me. Yes, and we also like to remind you that today's programming is sponsored in part by Joe Duffy wishing his wife Lois a happy birthday and one quick reminder. If you got a membership renewal notice in the mail. If you would please take a moment to fill it out. We depend on people like you to support the programs that you listen to every day. Thank you in advance. (00:28:59) All (00:28:59) right news headlines now and here's got a Cunningham Greta. Thank you Gary. Good morning. The US Supreme Court has ruled there have to be limits on when prosecutors can give drugs to defendants. So they'll be fit to stand trial on nonviolent charges. The majority opinion says individual courts have to decide when it's necessary. The government Medicaid's hundreds of defendants each year to make them competent for trial in non violent crime cases. Another US Supreme Court ruling has given public housing operators more power to cut down on crime a unanimous high court has ruled people who trespass in some crime-filled neighborhoods can be prosecuted. It ruled last year that entire families can be kicked out of public housing. If one member uses drugs, the military says for American troops in Iraq were hurt yesterday in a pair of attacks. The ambushes came as troops continued moving through some Iraqi towns arresting suspected resistance leaders, at least nine men were arrested today in Regional news. A man wanted in the killings of three people near Pillager has apparently killed himself Cass County Sheriff. Randy Fisher says, Man believed to be 29 year-old Benjamin Kennedy of Brainerd apparently stabbed himself as authorities approached his Las Vegas hotel room. The three victims were found dead May 29th, the Minnesota State Historical Society has announced it will close a living history Village in Forestville State Park in Southeastern Minnesota at the end of this month because of State funding cutbacks a group called The friends of Forestville says if it can raise $50,000 by June 23 historic Forestville will remain open for one more season while they seek private funds to protect its future the forecast for Minnesota today calls for partly cloudy skies Statewide with a cool front moving from North to West Central Minnesota highs today ranging from 78 in the north to near 88 in the South right now in Sioux Falls. It's sunny and 83 degrees Rochester Port sunshine and seventy seven skies are Sunny Duluth and 76 and in the Twin Cities, mostly sunny skies with a temperature of 81 degrees Gary. That's a look at the latest news. All right. Thank you Greta and I happy birthday to you. Got a Cunningham. Enjoying a birthday today Governor. Tim pawlenty is our guest this our lots of callers on the line on ask the governor day here on midday. So let's get back to the phones Cliff your next go ahead, please (00:31:10) thank you quick response to previous call a comment and then a question some well about ten years ago. There was a two studies done and they found that public money for Art's returns more to a community than public money for sports and that's comparing dollar-for-dollar not you know total okay or anything. But anyhow, though we don't want to go down that path. You're really okay. Anyhow, the well my comment is that I don't mind paying taxes in Minnesota, and I'm not by any means wealthy to professional incomes. Totaling well under a hundred thousand a year, you know, we're comfortable but not wealthy. I'm pleased with all the things that Taxes doing Minnesota. I'm amazed sometimes at all that they do. Okay, and I think one indication of that is the recent study that said that you know children have It Best in Minnesota compared to any other state. I think that's a good indicator and something that we ought to use, you know as a benchmark and I that was before governor pawlenty and this legislature. All right, so we get the governor to comment on Melon No. Well, okay. Let's question is relates to the dfl seems to have not held the governor responsible for his part in our two recent rebates. And so I'd like him to explain his part in that and then okay. Well, let's we got a (00:32:47) full plate there. Okay. First of all going backwards order Gary the from the rebates, there's a lot of people run around the state and say, oh, you know, if we hadn't given out those rebates we wouldn't be in this mess that we're in now, you know, we hadn't done cut Axes back in the late 90s and we wouldn't be in this mess that assumes that the choice back then was between cutting taxes or giving out rebates and saving the money and putting four billion dollars on the shelf. That was never The Proposal there were some modest proposals to save some money and put him in reserves but the counter proposal to giving out rebates and or cutting taxes was to put it into more government spending permanent structural government spending and the analysts that we use both inside and outside. The government will tell you flat out that other choice of increasing government spending even more would have put us at least in as bad of position. We're in now if not worse than the tax cut. So this this idea of had we not cut taxes or not given a rebates that we wouldn't be in this mess is just not realistic. What about revisionism? What about the charge though that both you and Roger Mo was the Senate majority leader last year and was your opponent in the race for governor both of you deserve. A lot of criticism for not having address this budget problem in 2002 critics would say well both of you duck the issue so you could get elected one of you could get elected. Well, we had everybody has the benefit of hindsight and say no if you would have known then what you know, now would you have done things some things differently sure, you know, no question the economy has deteriorated dramatically, but this is not the result of some unique decisions in Minnesota. There's over 40 other states that are in the same stew more or less. This is largely the result of a national recession. Minnesota was hit even harder than many other states in terms of the impacts of the recession. So had we had the benefit of hindsight perhaps we've done some things differently. But you know again this this notion that had we not cut taxes or not given out rebates we wouldn't be in this mess is just not accurate as to the tax burdens in Minnesota, which was kind of the caller second point, you know, again, we have a state that has some of the highest taxes in the nation and People say well raise taxes. The question is for what the answer was to keep our current or what was our level of spending that was going to be a 14.4 percent increase and I don't think in these times of mass layoffs when lots and lots of people are having their wages Frozen or reduced the largest budget deficit in the history of State wore a knee recessionary economy that our state government should be growing by 14.4% All I did was slow down the rate of growth to essentially match our rate of growth in our revenues. Most people particularly ones who are paying the bills would say no that's a reasonable thing to do in these times. It's not an abandonment of Minnesota's tradition of high, you know, government service or continued growth in our budget. It's a reasonable step in a times of crisis in a time of Crisis. So raise taxes so we can continue to spend in double digits. I don't think that's reflective of responsible the times then lastly on the Guthrie one other quick thing is, you know at the Guthrie unlike baseball or football. Or professional sports. There aren't billionaire owners the actors and actresses aren't making millions and millions of dollars. It's just it's comparing the Guthrie to professional sports just for starters isn't a fair comparison shared sacrifice. Most of the people who will be affected. I think it's fair to say by the budget cuts are people as you pointed out in your Administration is point on them been dependent on government services. So they obviously would bear more of the burden. What about the argument of Allah that being the case they're going to suffer from the budget cuts in one way or another maybe the wealthier folks who don't really depend all that much on Government Services should share the sacrifice put a few bucks in to the kitty there to help alleviate the worst of those budget cuts. Yeah. Well, that's really interesting. That was the dfl S argument. So if you now you look at what their solution was, they had a relatively three pieces to a tax increase one small piece of it was tax increases On the wealthy that wasn't where the bulk of the money was that there was coming from they increased wanted to increase taxes on cigarettes or smokers and then they had some business tax increases. If you looked at their package in total, it was significantly regressive in other words the effects of it were to hit modest and low-income people the hardest so their rhetoric in their proposal didn't match up, you know, they're going to hit smokers and they were going to hit businesses in which the studies would show business is pass it on and it tends to hit consumers the hardest particularly the taxes they propose so that was their rhetoric but their solution was they were going to hit low and middle income or modest income people the hardest but if you look at the impacts, it is hard to reduce government spending or slow down the growth of government spending without disproportionately impacting the largest users of government. It's hard to get at folks who have a less of a demand or less of a use for it unless you want to raise taxes and I wasn't willing to do that for the reasons I mentioned Ali your next good (00:38:00) place. Yes, thank you. I would like to ask Governor pawlenty about the air transportation for the state of Minnesota and this region in particular that you have your Mac commissioner. Now that you appointed is a very much a pro Northwest and you've made decisions to help Northwest Airlines be more profitable, you know, you're very much Pro Northwest now as a small business owner and even I think for large businesses, we really suffer with the high Northwest airfares and the Monopoly that they dominate this market and I would like to know why you wouldn't Court a company such as Southwest Airlines that has proven track record. They've been profitable their low cost Airline and this will help bring competition for Northwest which might change its business practices and also for people who visit Minnesota and for us business owners that need to travel and we are really at a disadvantage with Northwest monopolizing about And some of the flights from here (00:39:00) which Decisions by the Mac. Would you describe as Pro Northwest so far (00:39:05) they have with the cost of you know, they had the janitorial service companies Northwest got rid of them to bring the cheaper type of cleaning for the airport and there have been other decisions that I don't know offhand, but there's nothing really done and I've inquired about the Southwest coming and they've said that well Southwest might not get proper Gates here and they might end up in Humphrey. All right. And so thank you. (00:39:30) Yeah. Well, thank you. Then. That's a issue in a topic that gets a lot of discussion in Minnesota because sometimes people feel at Northwest isn't providing the right service at the right price and they want more competition. I do know the airports commission over the years a headed by Geoff hammil the lead staff person. There have tried to have discussions and negotiations with other airlines to bring other are options here. I think they've had some success with that. Although not a great deal as evidence by the statistics that you cite. Do have the Humphrey terminal out there? It's a beautiful new terminal the public put a lot of money into remodeling it. There's new runways nearby and it's largely underutilized. So we have some capacity at Twin Cities international airport. It's not as if there aren't some gates available or some infrastructure available if another airline wanted to come and I think the Mac would say they're open to and willing to have people come at the Humphrey terminal. If you haven't been out there recently is a new state-of-the-art facility and there's also as I understand it some gates potentially available at the main terminal as well so that I think the Mac would say it's not a matter of Turning Away potential suitors it just the potential suitors haven't found this Market interesting enough yet to come and greater amounts. But the other thing with respect to the Northwest is having a hub here is pretty significant in terms of ease of travel convenience of travel non-stop opportunities for travel and so while there may be some disadvantages in terms of market dominance or Attrition, there's also some significant advantages compared to other cities who don't have a hub Airline situated in their City higher education University president. Robert bruininks said last week that you know, he clearly there is diminished public support for higher education same comments. Basically that Mark yudof. His predecessor had indicated is it time given the fact that the higher ed institutions seem to be on the top of the hit list of Hit List each time budget cuts need to be made is it time to consolidate shut some campuses down so that the schools that are left have have enough money in their mind to operate properly. I don't think we have to go down the path of shutting campuses down Gary, but I do think we need significant reform in the higher education infrastructure and we're working as we speak on some proposals that it maybe will help bring that along but here's a fundamental reality and all of our government institutions higher ed k12 and others and that is a lot of the operating. Particularly as educational institutions are in people. It's in salaries and benefits the cost of running. For example, a K12 school about 80 to 85 percent of it on average goes right into salaries and benefits and you know, if you're in a K12 school system historically you'd get every year if your staff member two or three percent cost of living adjustment you get what's called a step and lean adjustment which is kind of a seniority bump on top of your cost of living adjustment and in health care costs are going through the roof, you know, ten fifteen twenty percent a year premium increases. So the cost of running these institutions in many cases are going up 10 percent and we can't keep up, you know, and so people wonder why is tuition going up at the University of Minnesota 10 or 15 percent in parts. That's because we got some budget pressures, but there's also an underline reality which is the cost of running. These institutions is going up 10 percent a year and at that level the state can't keep up particularly in these tough times. And so we've got to start doing some things differently in terms of Reform and efficiency distance learning, maybe some Sizing maybe some reprioritizing you look at the Wisconsin system, for example, not every campus tries to do everything. They have a trend towards a specialization. They have a trend towards finding a niche in the marketplace. You know Madison is their Flagship institution and then their other institutions around the state tend to emphasize or Focus. So I think that there's a great deal of potential in streamlining our higher education system in Minnesota to make it more efficient make it more effective. The reality though, of course is that in certain parts of the state these education institutions. There's a whole other debate and it's not about education. It's about Economic Development. And if you start messing with a college a two-year four-year College in a particular town or city the town or city goes crazy because that's not it's not so much about how we feel about education issues. It's about those are jobs for that community and they desperately cling to him and for understandable reasons Steve your question Place (00:43:55) Governor. I'm a native Minnesotan that but I've taught been a teacher Wisconsin for several years and I've tried to get a position back in Minnesota teaching and have interviewed for several in various parts of the state in recent years. And what I found in every case was that I would have to take a significant cut when the salary and the benefits are added together compared to Wisconsin how I teach in a rural area Wisconsin not a metropolitan area and yet one of the district's I applied to and was offered a position in was one of the Suburban schools. In addition the average salary for minnesotans in general versus Wisconsin is significantly higher and yet the average teacher pay appears to be fairly significantly lower in one case a job which had been very similar to what I'm doing. It would have been about a 10,000 dollar cut in salary and benefits in spite of that or I shouldn't your questionnaires to (00:45:05) Stephen if the point as Minnesota's not leading the nation or more the higher than Wisconsin and teacher salaries. I think that maybe true State Minnesota is not you know, leading the nation in terms of how much we pay our teachers in salary. We do have lots of folks who want to be teachers in some areas limited areas like science and math. There's more pressure a bit of a shortage but overall, we're not wanting for teachers. In fact, there's a lots of people who want jobs who are not getting jobs because we got lots of demand and not as many positions Minnesota it tends to be more Generous with respect to pensions and health care and a lot of the costs in our structure for public employees isn't necessarily in salaries. A lot of it's increasingly in health care and pension. So if you make these kinds of comparisons, you got to look at the whole picture not just the amount of wages, but it is accurate Minnesota's probably not in the top 10 in teacher salaries on salaries alone. And I don't think teachers make too much. You know, it just starting teachers in Twin Cities probably make somewhere in the high 20s. And if you're a senior teacher you make in the mid-50s and granted you only work nine months out of the year and you got a good decent pension and Healthcare benefits, but I don't think that's an overly generous amount of money for the work that they do but we have to live within our means and that means right now we can't afford to have the cost of school districts going up 10% a year. It's just our finances don't allow it in retrospect as you were noting earlier hindsight's always 20/20 in retrospect. It was the state taking Over a virtually all of the basic education expenses in Minnesota. Was that a good idea of putting so much emphasis given the fact that income and sales tax revenues tend to be quite volatile really, especially when you compare and of the property tax was that take over a good idea. I think Gary the property tax reform including the state take over the general education Levy was a good idea in terms of the policy and I still believe that and it was never about are we going to Forever reduce property taxes? Because property taxes tend to go up over time for a whole variety of other reasons, but it was about the reform and bringing accountability and transparency back to somebody raises your property taxes. We want you to be able to tell pretty quickly who's responsible for that decision under the old system. There was this interlocking finger-pointing that went on between the state and the local units of government. We've cleaned it up so that there's more accountability transparency. It was a good reform but you know, everybody based their economic models in the late. He's based on an economy that we now know is overheated. Some would say a mirage, you know, it had to do with the tech boom and it wasn't limited to government. It's not limited to Minnesota. It happened across the nation. It happened in the private sector. It happened in the government sector. We now know that Revenue projections from the late 1990s were not sustainable. Obviously the whole thing imploded and revenues went in the tank and building up a budget model based on those projections was not sustainable. We now know that and and had we known that then obviously we would have been able to take on as many commitments as we did in the late 1990s early 2000s Pete your question, (00:48:15) please yeah, I'd like to challenge the governor to respond to some of the the issues brought up by John gun you the former Minnesota Finance commissioner in a opinion piece Yesterday by the Star Tribune if the governor's not familiar with that I can share some of the details but I did want to say that these are my views. (00:48:36) Mr. Khan, yeah. No, I read it. I read it. I can I can respond to the highlights of it. If you have any there's ten things there. If you haven't a couple in particular you'd like me to focus on be happy to do that. (00:48:45) Well before you focus on them, but I did want to add my own input. Well, why don't do the question very briefly (00:48:52) said we're running out of time here. So why don't you pick one that you think is particularly important for the governor to respond to which place (00:48:59) Okay. The reason I'm doing this as I feel that the the the no tax increase budget plan that the governor put out there was kind of a mirage. I think he realizes that taxes will need to increase over the long (00:49:16) run. Is there one particular one in the article. You want me to focus on kazoos Gary's running out of time before he has to go to the news break. Okay, (00:49:25) the I guess the the bigger ones I are the ones I'd like you to focus on the fact that the coin is the K-12 education and And Healthcare are the only things that actually get more money in this current budget. Everything else has absolute Cuts. I'm not talking about or he's not talking about Cuts in okay projected growth. Well just True Cuts in dollars. Alright, that's P. (00:49:48) The the gun you article was in the Minneapolis paper yesterday and for the listeners John gun use a former Finance director and the Carlson years and 1990s. And by the way the state budget in the last 10 years doubled and so as people talk about what's responsible. And what's appropriate. Please know that we took the state's general fund budget in fiscal year 92 93 20203 2002-2003 it grew by over a hundred percent at a time when the population in the state Group by 12% So the folks who were running the show in the 1990s from a who are now kind of commentators need to put that in the proper context. They ran up the budget by a hundred percent in 10 years. And so as we talk about how do we get in this mess some Attention should be paid to that as to the budget, you know, mr. Gunn you who not works. By the way for the City of Minnetonka and is part of this group that's concerned about budget cuts. He makes really good points insightful points like the cost of healthcare still going up. Well, no kidding. The cost of Health Care is still going up. We took the increase from 22 percent to 10 percent. He makes the point that the there's one time fixes in this budget. Yes there is but it's not beyond the one-time nature of the deficit in other words 2.4 is structural we had about 2.4 of structural fixes. The rest of it is one time and we tried to fix the rest of it one time fixes, so I could go through each of his on his list, but the points that he makes are first of all not new and many of them I think are not a very complete telling or in terms of the context of the budget the point the caller makes about health and human services and education going up. Like I said before Health and Human Services is going up 10% K-12. Station is going up modestly. But when you try to hold it harmless and say we're not going to cut it. That's 43 percent of our budget. So by not cutting K-12 education that shifts the cuts on to everything else, but we were willing to do that because we thought K-12 education was our number one priority many other areas of the budget most other areas of budget as a category are being reduced in real terms that's accurate gun laws are wanted to ask you about that before we wrap up here several local governments judicial districts in the rest a banning guns from their property. Now the opponents say that's that's against state law. They can't do that. What do you think about that? Well, first of all, it's another example of muddled thinking and in frankly muddled reporting under current law. It's a felony to bring a gun onto the courts premises crime and unless you tell the sheriff that you're coming under the courts premises. It's my opinion that that Law is still in effect. And so this notion that you know, you you can bring a gun onto current under the courts premises and it somehow going to be altered by the fact that the court puts up a notice or not is much to do about nothing in other words under current law before we ever made any changes you could bring if you were a permit holder you could bring a gun under these County premises if you told the sheriff you were coming or the courts premises of you told the sheriff you were coming he or she then could make a judgment about whether you could stay or not that law in my opinion is still in effect, but you know the courts I think are trying to assert their judicial Independence there trying to make a statement but I think as will be shown over time this whole law including this concern. There's been a lot of Hysteria built up about the impacts of it, but it's in two or three years from now people going to look back and say what was the big deal in do you think that laws going to need some more tweaking to clarify some some gray? Is the law in its current form is workable. There were a few modest adjustments that we suggested that the be made the Democrats didn't want to make them because they want to preserve the political point. But for example the law right now requires that you post or tell if you want to keep people out of your business premise it should say post and tell to keep people out of your premises. We wanted to change that to post or tell it's a kind of at the margins of the bill. It's not at the heart of the bill. We thought that would be a good Improvement. They were unwilling to make that but yet the short answer gear. Yes a few minor tweaks, but that doesn't mean the bill fundamentally is flawed. It just means we could make it more convenient or user-friendly for places like businesses and churches Governor. We're out of time, but I appreciate your coming by and hopefully you'll get some rest here. You're welcome. Thank you for having me. Appreciate it our guest today Governor Tim pawlenty joining us during our midday program first our going to take a short break here after the news speaking of Faith documentary on Theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer programming is supported by Till college of law making legal education available for full and part-time students for more than 100 years committed to developing leaders through programs combining Theory and practical training. Wwww Mitchell dot EDU. (00:54:53) Amid, the repeated shocks of violence in the Middle East exhaustion weariness and frustration erode the daily lives of millions of people. I'm Neal Conan living through conflict and hanging onto hopes for peace. Join us next Talk of the Nation from NPR news (00:55:12) one o'clock this afternoon here on Minnesota Public (00:55:14) Radio (00:55:17) your to 91.1 caner wfm Minneapolis. And st. Paul Sunny Sky 80 degrees currently in the Twin Cities. We can expect a high today in the upper 80s. No talk of rain today tonight partly cloudy, maybe some showers and thunder showers after midnight with an overnight low in the low 60s then tomorrow 30% chance for a shower or thundershower in the Twin Cities with a high temperature in the mid 80s more rain tomorrow night and maybe rain on Wednesday as well. I'm Krista Tippett and this is speaking of faith today. We'll explore the life and thought of Dietrich Bonhoeffer the German Theologian who was executed by the Nazis in 1945 for his role in a conspiracy to assassinate Hitler director, Martin Daleville Meyer has just completed a new documentary on Bonhoeffer who lived in an extreme historical moment yet continues to influence many into the present Bonhoeffer saw the gospel at risk and what he said is there is no way to peace along the way of safety piece is the Great Adventure this man constantly was looking for the will of God and accepting the fact that the will of God may not lead you to self-preservation. It may call you to do things that you would normally want to do and that the call to follow Jesus Christ is often the downward path stay with us for the legacy of Dietrich Bonhoeffer.