Rep. Dill explains his special session votes

The Minnesota Legislature met Tuesday into Wednesday morning in a special session to pass the budget agreement reached by Governor Dayton and the Republican leadership. The broad agreement was based on a past offer from Republicans that included $700 million from increasing the school shift and $700 million in appropriation bonds backed by future tobacco settlement money.

District 6A Rep. David Dill said there were a couple of measures that got his support.

“I was happy to vote for the Legacy bill. I was lead Democrat on the Legacy bill so I did have a thorough understanding of that. I was also happy to vote for the bonding bill because I thought it was an excellent bill. It was well spread out geographically with some very targeted work in my legislative district up in Northeastern Minnesota.”

Dill, and most DFLers were not happy with some of the compromises crafted by Gov. Mark Dayton, Speaker Kurt Zellers and Senate Majority Leader Amy Koch.

“There are bills I was absolutely dissatisfied with. The first reason is we only had – bills that were hundreds of pages long – only a couple of hours at the most to even try to read them and understand them. So, unilaterally I voted ‘no’ on those bills. I am not willing to mortgage future generations and their incomes to help pay current expenditures today and in the next two years.
 
“I am not willing to continue shifting schools’ funding away from them, which now amounts to about $2.3 billion – which I suspect will never be paid back or could take decades to pay back. I did not feel that was the right approach, so therefore I voted against the tax bill and will be voting against the K-12 bill where those provisions are included. At $2.3 billion, which doesn’t include interest that local school districts will have to pay on borrowed money – that is not a fair way to balance this budget on the backs of future generations.”
Zellers called the budget deal the "essence of compromise," and said it included "some reforms ... that will change our state for a generation."
But House Minority Leader Paul Thissen, called it "the most irresponsible budget in state history. Their budget forces the state to beg from seniors and the disabled with draconian budget cuts, borrow money to temporarily fill the deficit with one-time funds and steal from our children's future by expanding the K-12 school shift."