by Steve Share, Editor, Labor Review

Minnesota Governor Tim Pawlenty announced line item vetoes cutting $208 million from the $925 million bonding bill passed by the state Legislature, cuts that labor leaders say also vetoed jobs and opportunity. The bonding bill authorizes the state to borrow funds for capital improvements to public infrastructure throughout the state.

One project -- the Central Corridor light rail line linking downtown Minneapolis and downtown St. Paul -- totaled $70 million of the $208 million in line-item vetoes.

"The Central Corridor is the major one that had labor support that had a line-item veto," said Steve Hunter, secretary-treasurer of the Minnesota AFL-CIO.

"We're disappointed that he's vetoed projects like the Central Corridor, not just to get people back to work, but to help the Twin Cities develop as a major metropolitan area."

Dick Anfang, president of the Minnesota State Building & Construction Trades Council, said he was "very disappointed" in the governor's announced list of line-item vetoes. "This will negatively affect Minnesota's ability to come back from the recession," he said.

"This negatively affects Building Trades workers from the northern border to the southern border and the eastern border to the western border," he added.

Anfang said singling out any one project that represented an especially important loss was hard to do. For workers in the Mankato area, for example, $975,000 vetoed for expansion of the Mankato Civic Center would be bad news. "If it's your job, it's important," Anfang said.

Anfang said the $70 million veto for the Central Corridor also would stop as much as $230 million in other development that would have accompanied that project. "That's huge," he said. "It's a big loss."

Anfang also noted that some of the line-item vetoes -- such as $500,000 for the Red Rock corridor transit way -- would cut funds for planning, disrupting timelines and delaying needed projects further into the future.

Nearly $103 million of the $208 million in line-item vetoes blocked funding for transportation projects. Pawlenty's line-item vetoes targeting transportation, Anfang said, "probably" was pay-back for the Legislature's successful effort earlier in the session to override the governor's veto of the transportation bill.

Pawlenty also vetoed funding for these projects:

• $70 million for various University of Minnesota and Minnesota State Colleges and Universities system projects, including $24 million for a new Bell Museum of Natural History on the St. Paul campus;
• $18.5 million for improvements to various metropolitan area parks and trails, including $11 million for improvements to the polar bear and gorilla exhibits at St. Paul’s Como Zoo;
• $13.7 million for proposed rail and transit projects, including $4 million for planning of a high-speed rail line connecting St. Paul to Chicago; and
• $7.7 million for various sports centers proposed through the Amateur Sports Commission.

At a news conference announcing the line-item vetoes, Pawlenty said "the bill reflected a number of misplaced priorities" and exceeded the $885 million in bonding he was prepared to support. He charged that the Legislature was "unwilling to prioritize."

"We have line-item vetoed the bill to improve the bill," he said.

Pawlenty said partisan support for particular projects did not factor into his decisions about the 52 line-item vetoes. "We're going to have disappointed Republicans and disappointed Democrats."

"We are pulling into the maintenance shed for further inspection the Central Corridor project," Pawlenty said. "This is a very large project that still has a lot of unanswered questions."

One project backed by Minnesota unions that survived a line-item veto: $40 million for expansion of the Duluth Entertainment Convention Center.

House Majority Leader Tony Sertich, DFL-Chisholm, said no decision has been made about whether to attempt to override the vetoed items, each of which much be voted on separately.

Steve Share edits the Labor Review, the official publication of the Minneapolis Central Labor Union Council. Visit the CLUC website, www.minneapolisunions.org

Reprinted from WorkdayMinnesota.org