Leadership Summit Update
It's time for another update on the DFL's 'Leadership Summit'. First, let's just drop all pretenses. While it's being billed as a conversation amongst leaders about how to dig Minnesota out of its current economic difficulties, it's really nothing more than the DFL's attempt to beat up on Gov. Tim Pawlenty.
That's why he isn't attending the event.
This Pi-Press article, combined with a question on the 2009 Minnesota House of Representatives State Fair Poll offers a confusing set of principles:
Former governors, legislative leaders and state finance experts have been invited to a "Minnesota Leadership Summit" at the Capitol on Tuesday to discuss ways to solve the state's recurring budget crises.
They will talk about the public's money, but they're shutting out the public.
The meeting's sponsors, Senate Majority Leader Larry Pogemiller and House Speaker Margaret Anderson Kelliher, notified reporters Thursday that the meeting will be closed to the public and the press. A spokesman for Pogemiller said the meeting was closed at the request of some of the participants, whom he did not name.
That's confusing considering this question on the Legislative Poll:
6. Should bill and budget negotiations between the governor and legislative leaders be required to be open to the public?
The fact that the meeting is closed proves that this will be nothing more than another Bash Pawlenty session. Why is the meeting closed to the public? Why shouldn't we hear everything that's said during this event? Shouldn't we know which politicians took cheapshots at Gov. Pawlenty? If legislators think it's important to have open negotiations on the budget, then shouldn't they insist that this meeting be open to the public, too?
Sen. John Marty (DFL-Roseville) offered an amendment requiring all conference committee negotiations to be open to the public. In addition, the amendment requires meetings between legislative leadership or staff and the governor to be open to the public. Marty offered an amendment to the amendment, clarifying that explaining a bill or provision is not negotiation. The amendment to the amendment was adopted. Sen. Dick Day (R-Owatonna) said the amendment requiring negotiations with the governor is unworkable. Pogemiller said the change would not be adopted by the other body. Marty said, "It is the public's business and negotiations should be open to the public." The amendment was not adopted on a 24-36 roll call vote.
I said in this post that this meeting is a travesty. I reached that conclusion when I found out that there wasn't a set agenda for the meeting. If these leaders wanted to accomplish something meaningful, then there has to be some structure to the meeting. Otherwise, it's just a bunch of windbags getting together to whine about how things aren't like the good old days when they were the rulers.
Why shouldn't I believe that Sen. Pogemiller will cheapshot Gov. Pawlenty? It's obvious to anyone who's followed Minnesota politics the past 5 years that Gov. Pawlenty outsmarted Sen. Pogemiller and made him look like an idiot more than once.
That still bothers Sen. Pogemiller.
Another thing that I don't see the usefulness of is having a group of has been officials from a totally different era in politics pontificate about what's broken with the system. What's broken is the fact that the DFL is short on new ideas and long on attitude-laced replies. If we want to fix government, we need serious policymakers. We don't have that right now.
Gov. Pawlenty is right in not attending this event because it isn't a serious event. If it were a serious event, it would be held at the Humphrey Institute with a serious moderator like Tom Hauser. That way, Minnesotans could judge each participant's answers on the merits.
Comments welcome at LFR.
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