Governor Mark Dayton's vetoes of this year's major tax and spending bills will mark this legislative session as one of least productive in many years. The Republican controlled legislature put together a very important tax conformity bill and a relatively modest supplemental budget bill totaling $131 million in new state spending. However, they did so without the usual face-to-face private meetings with the governor that has been the norm during the waning days of the legislative session. In lieu of these high stakes meetings, Dayton consistently expressed his rejection of major provisions in these bills and probable vetoes through correspondence to legislators.
Passing these two major bills without "compromise" (a word that seems to be lost in our current political discourse) shouldn't surprise anyone who was paying attention to the Governor and the MN Legislature. Their vows of bipartisan cooperation dwindled almost immediately once the session began.
