In today's McLeod County Chronicle, Minnesota House Speaker Paul Thissen (DFL-Minneapolis) responds to a claim made by Representative Glenn Gruenhagen (R-Glencoe) made at a town hall and repeated in an editorial published earlier in the paper.
In Read article, editorial in disbelief, Thissen writes:
I read your recent article, “Legislators Warn of Big Spending” (June 4) and the accompanying editorial “Remember What Legislators Did in 2013 ...” with disbelief.
Rep. Glenn Gruenhagen claimed at his town meeting, and the editorial repeated without any basic fact-checking, that there is a $2.5 billion budget deficit facing the state of Minnesota.
On the other hand, perhaps I should not be surprised that a legislator like Rep. Gruenhagen, who in 2011 (after shutting down state government) voted to borrow over $2 billion from our schools and issue $700 million in bonds to cover one-time expenses in order to “balance” the budget should not be trusted to do budget math correctly.
The facts are these: The 2013-14 Legislature for the first time in over a decade balanced the budget in a structurally sound way without budget gimmicks. Where Rep.Gruenhagen gets his wild $2.5 billion number is beyond me.
Rather, there is a $600 million budget surplus next year. In addition, the Legislature added $150 million to the budget reserve. . . . .
Read the whole letter at the Chronicle.
Elsewhere in the issue, the paper reports that GSL to get $111,118 more in aid due to ‘unsession.’
The paper's explanation focuses on the "unsession" as not doing much, but we suspect that Speaker Thissen's party holding the reins of power might have something to do with the Glencoe Silver Lake schools, and other schools across Greater Minnesota, receiving more aid.
Photo: Speaker Paul Thissen. Via Star Tribune.
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