After chaotic end to session, legislators look to election season

It was a midnight meltdown at the state Capitol — and that could have implications for legislators seeking re-election in November.

A combination transportation funding and general construction borrowing bill failed to pass when procrastinating lawmakers just ran out of time.

Gov. Mark Dayton could be asked to call a special session to give them another chance. If he doesn't, the Legislature will take an incomplete record into the fall campaign.

The Legislature's messy session ending went from confusion to finger-pointing in a flash. Republican Senate Minority Leader David Hann put blame at the feet of Democrats.

"The Senate majority, didn't do their job," he said.

DFL Senate Majority Leader Tom Bakk said House Republicans were culpable.

"What I'm most disappointed about is the House went home early," he said.

Similar partisan crossfire consumed House Republicans and House DFLers. In some ways, it captured was has been a rocky two years in divided Minnesota government.

A staredown over the budget last year nearly took government into a partial shutdown. What seemed like an easy lift to provide Iron Range unemployment assistance this March stretched over three weeks. Every major bill toward the end of this session was negotiated largely in private with only short public hearings for ratification.

Republican House Speaker Kurt Daudt was among the leaders not ready to declare the Legislature's work finished and suggested Dayton could call lawmakers back in a special session. Bakk and Hann said they'd be open to it.

"It was obviously a session that was supposed to be about transportation and was supposed to be about investing in our infrastructure," Daudt said. "This bill would have invested more than $700 million into our road and bridge infrastructure into one year. This would have been the largest infusion of dollars into our road and bridge infrastructure across the state ever."

Earlier in the day, Bakk was cool to the temporary transportation measure. He says that would take the pressure off the effort to secure a long-term solution while only giving incumbents political cover.

"To pass something that will misrepresent itself as us accomplishing the job is inaccurate," Bakk said. "And I think it's misleading the public. Would it be good for the campaign? Likely, likely would be. But it wouldn't be honest."

State senators haven't faced voters since 2012, so the political ammunition against them has been stocking up even before this session started.

Hann says those first three years will be as important to his caucus's election message as the last one.

"You've spent a lot of money, you've turned over a lot more resources to state government," Hann said. "But have they really used resources effectively? I think that is the question we want to bring to voters, with Democratic policies and Democratic legislation being passed in the Senate."

The House majority flipped from DFL to Republican two years ago, largely on strength of their victories in greater Minnesota districts. So the session leaned heavy on issues of big rural concern: Ways to speed Internet connections, to control rising farm land property taxes and to repair worn roads.

The first two were addressed with millions of dollars doled out in tax and spending bills, although not as robustly as some had hoped.

House Minority Leader Paul Thissen of Minneapolis drew on Republican goals for giant tax cuts as a reason for voters to worry. While the compromise proposal was scaled back from a sizable package the House passed a year ago, he argues Republican priorities haven't aligned with middle-class voters.

"Minnesotans should beware if Republicans come back in charge next year," Thissen said. "That Republican special interest favoritism is going to return bigger and better than ever."

Republican Rep. Steve Drazkowski of Mazeppa welcomed the chance to make the fall campaign about taxes.

"It really is a sharp contrast to what Minnesotans saw the last two years of full-throttled Democratic control of the Minnesota Legislature and the governor's office," Drazkowski said. "Huge, unbridled tax increases is what we saw the last time the Democrats were in control. And Minnesotans are longing for government to finally find the presence to yield to them instead of to its own interests."

The competing messages might not be enough to break through the thunderous noise at the top of the ticket. Donald Trump's likely presidential matchup with Hillary Clinton will surely dominate the political conversation and send ripples down the ballot.