Syndicate and Hague

I don’t have much time these days to write long, detailed posts about interesting things (or, at least, interesting to me…), but I wanted to take a moment to comment on the unallotment decision from the MN Supreme Court.

For background reading, I suggest just going over to MPR. Here are most of their stories.

• How the budget may affect legislators
• Graphic: Minnesota’s deficit picture
• State faces unprecedented cash-flow crisis
• A closer look at Gov. Pawlenty’s unallotment cuts

• Explainer: What is unallotment anyway?

What I want to say about this is that I am so furious at Pawlenty right now. He and his legal team knew that what they were pulling had an iffy chance of not being overturned in the courts because the argument that it was not unconstitutional was not terribly convincing.

He used a law meant to bridge gaps to overturn the legislature’s decisions and do exactly what he wanted however he wanted. He passed all the spending, but not the revenue bills, which created the crisis situation that triggered his ability to use unallotment to change the spending bill to whatever he wanted it to be.

And now we’re in for it. Because of his cynical political move, our state is in an absolute fiscal crisis. I want to hammer home that it doesn’t matter where you stand politically - Republicans and Democrats should be outraged that he prioritized a ploy over our security as a state. He knew this was a possible outcome of his decision - even a likely one - and he did it anyway.

He sold us out. And I don’t know if it was to look tough on the national stage or if it was because he doesn’t know how to negotiate or compromise, but he sold us out.

After riding the high that is MinneWebCon, the coming down off that today was more brutal than it has ever been.

Today, two of my 6 coworkers were told that as of July 1, they would be laid off.

While I’m glad I’m not among the casualties, the skill sets that we are going to miss are so profound that it is going to be like losing our eyes and at least one limb.  I reserve a great deal of my vitriol in this for Pawlenty and his absolute hatred for higher education as evidenced in his budgets, but I am truly baffled by the decision-making process going on behind closed doors at the U.

Basically, if you’re at the U, take note: none of your jobs are safe. You may be mission-critical to a department, but that doesn’t matter anymore.  Don’t say I didn’t warn you.