Pawlenty's budget revised

Prefacing his revised 2010-2011 biennial budget as containing “some good news,” Gov. Tim Pawlenty laid out changes reflecting more than a $1 billion decrease in revenue and expenditures from his January proposal.

Unveiled March 17, the budget change is in response to the state’s February Forecast that foretells of a more than $6 billion deficit for the upcoming biennium. But it also takes into account $2.6 billion in one-time federal stimulus funds the state expects to receive.

The governor’s spending plan comes in at $32.4 billion over the biennium, which begins July 1, 2009. It reflects a decrease from the $33.9 billion in General Fund expenditures in the current budget.

His new budget would:

• increase by $27 million K-12 education funding beyond what was previously proposed;

• restore $304 million in cuts he had proposed to higher education;

• exempt from state taxes up to $2,400 in unemployment insurance benefits per individual;

• provide an additional $10 million for operation of state courts;

• move short-term offenders from county facilities to state prisons;

• provide more than $10 million for a contingency fund to ensure state match for federal stimulus fund grants; and

• reconfigure the General Assistance Medical Care program, eliminating hospital and emergency care coverage.

Counties would see an $8 million benefit from moving short-term offenders convicted of misdemeanors or gross misdemeanors to state prisons, Pawlenty said. The option of being incarcerated at a local facility versus a state prison has become a plea-bargain ploy, he said, resulting in an increased population at county jails.

His proposal to remove hospital and emergency care coverage for those on GAMC is intended to help redirect patients to clinics and boost preventive care. He would establish a fund for hospitals could tap to cover this care, when needed.

The governor’s revised budget still relies on no new taxes, but retains use of one-time funds gained through the sale of “tobacco appropriation bonds,” that would essentially bond for half of 20 years’ worth of future revenues from the state’s decade-old tobacco settlement. Previously proposed accounting shifts and cuts to local government aid are still part of the plan.