Government Reform (MN Governor's Race)

Government reform could cover a lot of different issues. Basically, anything that changes the way government is structured or does business is government reform. For this post, I’m going to focus on three issues: term limits, omnibus bills, and politician pay.

Term Limits
In Minnesota, the governor is elected every four years, but can serve an unlimited amount of terms. Term limits limit the amount of time an elected official can hold office. Maine was the first state to adopt legislative term limits in 1996. Since then, 15 states have followed suit. Minnesota is not one of them.

The Minnesota state legislature also has no term limits. In 2017, senator Rich Draheim (R) of Madison Lake, Minnesota was set to introduce a bill to tackle term limits in 2018. However, I couldn’t find any follow up on that. Under his bill, lawmakers wouldn’t be able to serve more than 20 consecutive terms in the legislature. He said, “If you really want citizen legislators, after 20 years, you're no longer a citizen, you're a politician.” In our current state legislature, 18 out of the 201 lawmakers have served more than 20 consecutive years.

One of the biggest arguments in favor of term limits is to reduce the amount of lobby influence on lawmakers. Draheim says, "When we have such a big outside influence of money from other groups, the longer you've been there the more money rolls in. I think it'll give people more of a voice in the Legislature." According to the Mankato Free Press, “Several studies done in the mid-2000s from the National Conference of State Legislatures have shown mixed benefits for states with legislative term limits. Some states felt more power went to lobbyists and staff to make up for the loss of legislative institutional knowledge. Others felt term limits made it harder for lobbyists to work with rotating 

Reviews from politicians are mixed. Republican Representative, Tony Cornish (who has since resigned due to sexual harassment allegations) was in his 15th year last year when he said, "I've never been a big fan of term limits. I think there's a reason that people are in there a long time, and it's that because people must like them." He said he really didn’t feel like he knew what he was doing until his fourth year and having more experience makes for a better lawmaker. His argument was that the public can always vote them out of they aren’t satisfied.

Omnibus Bills
Omnibus is a word derived from Latin meaning “for everything.” An omnibus bill is a bill that packages many issues into one bill, making it difficult to debate. Omnibus bills are often used to pass controversial amendments.

They are very popular in the Minnesota state legislature and in most states. The Minnesota constitution requires that omnibus only addresses a single subject, such is taxes. In that case, it could encompass corporate, sales, income, and property taxes, but lump it all together. However, not all omnibus bills are so clear in their focus, so the title of the bill becomes very important, allowing lawmakers to fit many, often controversial, issues together.

For example, in 1997, thrown into a tax policy bill was a provision that Minnesota schools would have to pay prevailing wages on construction projects over $100,000. It was thrown in under a miscellaneous category, but had nothing to do with taxes. It’s a labor issue. Many groups sued and won declaring it unconstitutional because it violated the single subject rule.

On omnibus bills, current governor Mark Dayton has said he doesn’t want policy measures tucked away in omnibus budget bills. According to MinnPost, “He was particularly miffed that a large omnibus bill funding environmental programs also included policy provisions to delay deadlines to comply with his proposal to create water buffer protection on state waterways.” In his own words, “They think they can ram them down my throat, these policy measures that are bad for Minnesota and that I’ll accept them by tying them to appropriation bills which eventually have to be signed. Well, I've told them before and I keep saying it, policy measures don’t belong in budget bills, budgets belong in budget bills. If they want to send all of these other policy measures to me, we can deal with them separately.

Politician Pay
Withholding politician’s pay during shutdowns or when they are deemed “not doing their jobs” gets a lot of chatter, but from what I can tell, there haven’t been any federal or state bills that actually turn this chatter into policy.

Here is where the candidates stand on the above government reform issues:

Jeff Johnson (R): Candidate Johnson vows to, in his first 50 days, push for term limit legislation for all legislators and executive officeholders including governor, veto omnibus bills that don’t comply with the constitutions single subject rule, and advocate for a law that if the governor and legislatures can’t agree on a budget bill, they will forfeit their pay until a budget is signed. In addition, all of his department heads will have measurable performance goals to meet in order to receive their full salary.

Erin Murphy (D): Candidate Murphy does not have a public position on any of the above issues that I could find.

Tim Pawlenty (R): Candidate Pawlenty pursued term limits as a member of the Minnesota House of Representatives in the 90’s. He proposed 10 year term limits on state legislature, 12 year term limits on congress, and and 2 term limit on governors by saying that term limits would ensure that ”there would be less focus on re-election and more on policy.” The bill failed to pass a House subcommittee on election law with a 5-5 vote. It would have been a question for voters in 1996 otherwise. I couldn’t find any public position on the other 2 issues.

Tim Walz (D): Candidate Walz was asked about term limits at a debate in Winona when he was running for Congress in 2016. He said this. “Well, I’m not for ‘em. I think you do this. You do nonpartisan judicial redistricting to get these districts as close as you can to being fair. And then you get the money out of politics, or make it fair and transparent in what you would get, is a whole bunch of people running. In states that do something similar to that, incumbents get re-elected 56% of the time. In states that don’t, it’s 90%. And there you make sure if you have a good legislator, doing good work, they can continue on. If they’re not, you can remove them.” I couldn’t find any public position on the other 2 issues.