Pawlenty Axes The Bonding Bill by More than $300 Million Dollars

March 15, 2010
State Capitol - By Marty Owings

Governor Pawlenty kept his promise to Law Makers and used his veto authority to slash hundreds of millions of dollars from the Bonding Bill. Pawlenty stated in a letter to Legislators that, “As usual, I have been left to reduce spending within the bill to an affordable level. The DFL-controlled legislature seems incapable of prioritizing projects or simply saying no. So, I have again done it for you.”

Some of the areas the Governor cut:

$43.5 million - Transit Capital Improvement
$42.3 million - St. Cloud State University
$28 million - Mayo Civic Center
$25 million - RIM Conservation Reserve

DFL Legislators including Representative Tom Rukavina, criticized the Governors cuts saying, "His (Pawlenty's) cuts eliminate money for higher education when many Minnesotans are heading back to school during this recession." St.Paul Representative Tim Mahoney (DFL) said that, "He vetoed projects that would have put people to work...he also killed off about $20 million in trails projects. Mahoney said he estimates the cuts eliminated about 6000 jobs.

Minorty Leader Kurt Zellers (R) said that, "One of the things we were asking from the Governor was a little bit of fiscal sanity, so before we spend a billion dollars of the tax payers money, figure out how we're going to balance the billion dollars that we already owe."

The Governor's letter below lists all of his cuts with a short added explanation for each.