Does he or doesn’t he? Pawlenty claims unallottment authority, but school districts not sure

Norman Draper’s piece on the $1.75 billion education accounting shift, in today’s Star Tribune, points out that while Pawlenty may claim the authority to shift payments without legislative approval, this is by no means accepted.  

What, wondered [Peggy Ingison, Minneapolis Public Schools' Chief Financial Officer], happens if the Legislature decides not to approve such shifts?

“It puts us out on a limb,” she said. A big funding shift, she said, merely compounds the problem of schools getting no new money while facing increased costs due to inflation.

Most of the Capitol press corps seems to accept that Pawlenty will get his way somehow, particularly since there will probably be no special legislative session this year.

Filed under: Minneapolis, Budget Crisis, Minnesota, Tim Pawlenty, Unallotments

Eating a bit of Crow: T-Paw’s Human Services Unallotments didn’t actually hit the poor as hard as I thought.

 

Photo: Flickr user Klinslys. Image published under Creative Commons.

The week before Christmas, I wrote a story for the Daily Planet that called the unallotments “balancing the budget on the backs of the underclass,” in the words of Minneapolis School Board member Chris Stewart.  To some extent this is true – millions were cut from a fund that compensated hospitals, via Medicare, when they provided care to those unable to pay, and many millions more were cut from city and county budgets, who also run a great deal of social service programs.  After spending much of the last two weeks chasing down the specifics (and dodging officials’ vacations), it seems that my reaction was a little off the mark.

 

Filed under: Minnesota, Achievement Gap, Budget Crisis, Chris Stewart, Corrections, DHS, Education, Minnesota, Poverty, Social Services, Unallotments