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Tuesday, May 08, 2007

Governor said he would VETO more spending.

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posted by Bob at Tuesday, May 08, 2007

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Minnesota Legislature / Lawmakers OK more care spending
Under veto threat, both chambers approve massive health and human services budget bill
BY RACHEL E. STASSEN-BERGER
Pioneer Press
Article Last Updated: 05/08/2007 06:34:14 AM CDT


Lawmakers on Monday sent Gov. Tim Pawlenty a measure to spend more than a quarter of the state's budget on health and human services.

The Senate passed the bill 47-19, and the House 82-44.

The $9.8 billion budget for the next two years would spend $588 million more than the state spent on health and welfare programs in the current two-year budget period. About $233 million of that increased spending pays for the increased cost of health care and automatic enrollment increases.

The budget would help pay for health care coverage for 72,000 more people - about half of them children - than state programs currently cover.

If the budget became law, workers in nursing homes and other long-term care facilities would get 3 percent pay increases in each of the next two years.

But the budget is unlikely to become law. Pawlenty believes the budget spends too much money, and he will veto it.

"It's not even the same fiscal galaxy that we're operating in," the governor said Monday. "It is going to be vetoed as soon as I get it."

His proposed budget would spend $9.5 billion on health and human services.

The health and human services measure would become the fourth major spending bill Pawlenty has rejected with a veto stamp this year.

On Monday, he vetoed lawmakers' economic development and state government operations budget bills. Last week, he vetoed lawmakers' $334 million borrowing measure to fund state building projects.

Although budget measures
have been moving through the Legislature to the governor, much is left to be done before the constitutionally mandated end of the session, May 21.
The Democrats who control the House and Senate have pledged to provide more money for K-12 schools and property tax relief for the state's homeowners.

They've paid for those promises by raising income taxes - something Pawlenty ardently opposes.

Legislators aren't close to sending those measures to the governor.

Neither are they set to send the governor a transportation budget for the next two years. That budget includes a gas tax increase, which Pawlenty has vowed to veto, to pay for road and transit projects.

Although lawmakers haven't caved on their push for those tax increases, they have relinquished other hot-button issues Pawlenty opposes.

They dropped:

Letting some illegal immigrants attend public colleges and universities at in-state tuition rates. That's been removed from a higher education budget slated to receive votes in the House and Senate today.

Making it easier for consumers to sue insurance companies and requiring companies to act in good faith when handling claims. That provision had been in a public safety budget bill Pawlenty signed Monday. The insurance measure now is moving separately through the Legislature.

Allowing state employees to cover their same-sex partners under their employee health benefits. That move had been in the state agency budget measure, which Pawlenty vetoed Monday for other reasons.

Cutting a grant program for nonprofit organizations that help pregnant women but don't directly back abortions. The Senate health and human services budget had trimmed that program by half. The bill going to the governor has restored it in full.
Sen. Linda Berglin, DFL-Minneapolis, stressed to her colleagues Monday that the program, called Positive Alternatives, was fully funded in the health and human services budget measure.

"The Positive Alternatives funding was left intact in the bill. So those of you that voted against it last time because of that provision should now be able to vote for the bill," Berglin said.

The budget measure also makes it easier for children to get into - and stay in - state-subsidized health insurance programs.

Within the next four years, between 30,000 and 40,000 more children would be eligible for state coverage under the measure, at a cost of $8 million in the next two years and $74 million in the 2010-2011 budget.

More farmers, workers in small businesses, people on Medicare and adults without kids also would have more access to state health care programs under the lawmakers' proposed budget.

"Remember that every uninsured person in the state of Minnesota is adding to our health care costs. They end up in emergency rooms, the most expensive place they can receive care, oftentimes from there they go to a hospital bed they wouldn't have needed," said Berglin, the Senate health care expert.

About $47 million of the measure's spending would fund fixes to the state's mental health care system, including help for children with mental health problems and for schools serving those children. Many of those changes sprang from Pawlenty's mental health care initiative.

Rachel E. Stassen-Berger can be reached at rstassenberger@pioneerpress.com.

9:42 AM  

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