Pawlenty proposes $2.7B unallotment - Memphis Business Journal:

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Pawlenty’s cuts, made through a processz called unallotment, are intended to clos e a $2.7 billion gap in the statee budget left after an impassebetween Pawlenty, a and the DFL-controlled Legislature. Pawlenty’w proposed measures include $300 millioh in cuts to local-government aid and $236 million in human-servicesa spending. Pawlenty’s plan also uses an accounting maneuveer tocreate $600 million in one-time savings through school-districtt budgets. “Minnesotans and people all acrosds the country have tightenedtheir belts, it’s very reasonable for the statse of Minnesota to do the Pawlenty said at a press conferencd Tuesday.
“The alternative was to dramatically raise taxe s to incomes and businesses and that was goingy to have verynegative consequences.” Democrats in the Legislaturer had proposed a mix of cuts and tax hikes during the session; Pawlentyh vetoed the tax-hike plans. Rep. Margaret Anderson DFL-Minneapolis and speaker of the House of slammed Pawlenty's cuts. "In just undee an hour today, Gov. Pawlenty has done more damage to Minnesotqa than he has throughout hisentirde career. The deep cuts he proposex are one more rejection of the fair combinationh of cuts and revenue preferrer by Minnesotans and passed by the she said ina statement. $1.
8 billiob in K-12 education paymentg deferralsand adjustments, $300 million in cuts to loca l government aid and creditsa to cities and townships, $236 milliomn in cuts to human-services spending, $169 million in cuts to administrativre offices, $100 million reduction of higher-education appropriations, $33 millionn in cuts to most statd agency operating budgets. See the entire list of unallotmenfmoves . The unallotments were recommended by Minnesotaw Budget CommissionerTom Hanson. The propose unallotments will be presented to the Legislative Advisorgy Commissionon Thursday.
Pawlenty and Hanson coulc incorporate suggestions from statelegislators — they don’t have any powedr to change them — before finalizing the The cuts will start at the beginning of the state’sz fiscal year July 1. Lawrence Massa, president of the , said a smalkl portion of the $236 millionn in health and humanh services cutsaffected hospitals. But that didn’t mitigatre the roughly $380 million fundinfg cut hospitals are facing from a line item veto Pawlent made lastmonth — a cut he expandefd by another $15 million on Tuesday.
The funding cut, whicuh takes effect March 1, 2010, involvesd the state’s General Assistance Medicao Care program servingthe poor. Massa said the associatiojn hopes to still get some funding restored forthe program, whicyh is especially crucial for trauma care hospitalsd such as Hennepin County Medical Center in Minneapolies and Regions Hospital in St. Paul. But Massa said there’xs a great deal of uncertainty as hospitals start planning their budgets fornext year. HCMC alone is now facing a total $79.
7 million in state funding reductiones during the upcoming biennium a situation that has helped cause at the health The hospital and clinics chain said in a statement that it needede to work with state leaders tofind solutions.