He He ... well they backed down on the Racino and this may finally be over

Budget deal appears close, Racino dead


An agreement to end Minnesota's week-old government shutdown seemed within reach Friday as Gov. Tim Pawlenty and legislative leaders resumed talks just hours after a marathon session that ended shortly before dawn.

Both sides said an agreement to end the six-week-old special session was tantalizingly close, but that last-minute disputes had cropped up on questions of funding and policy reforms for K-12 education.

"Hopefully we can get this thing wrapped up and get these 9,000 employees back to work and get the state functioning," Pawlenty said on his weekly radio show on WCCO Radio. "We'll give it another run this morning."

Senate Majority Leader Dean Johnson, DFL-Willmar, said, "There is definitely light at the end of the tunnel."



http://www.kare11.com/news/news_article.aspx?storyid=102041

We've got nothing but a skeleton crew in my agency. They need to make a budget deal, ASAP.

If a deal is not reached by Tuesday, the ±9,000 furloughed employees will be officially "laid off". That means the state will have to pay them severance and any accumulated vacation pay-- which will be millions of unbudgeted dollars.

Not only that, but those workers will then qualify for unemployment-- the only problem is, there's not enough workforce left over at unemployment to process the requests!!! Plus, they also have a relatively new system there (about 1 year old) and it may not be able to handle the massive amounts of claims coming in at the same time.

That and it already costs the state $4 million/day to keep the government closed-- another collossal waste of taxpayer $$$.

This is GREAT news! Thank you Dean Johnson and the DFL for JUST SAYING NO to that cockamamie racino plan!

:toast:

I'm really glad things are going to get better for all those workers.

"Hopefully we can get this thing wrapped up and get these 9,000 employees back to work and get the state functioning," Pawlenty said...

Uh, the state won't be functioning until you are voted out of office.

I spoke to one of my coworkers, who had lunch with somebody in HR yesterday. On July 1, many of the furloughed employees filed for unemployment, as instructed by their unions (MAPE, AFSMCE).

Apparently, there's a whole stack of unemployment forms that have come into our HR division-- and there's nobody around to do the paperwork. If this thing is not settled by the end of the current pay period (next Tuesday, 7/12), the state will have to fork out millions in owed vacation pay and severance.

Also, Phil "over my dead body" Krinke (R-Shoreview) resigned as co-chair of the taxes working committee-- apparently because he couldn't stomach a racino or cig fee hike-- which was one of the chief obstacles to a settlement.

I'd be willing to wager that this thing is settled this weekend, or by Tuesday at the latest. The last thing the state can afford to do is process benefits for those 9,000 laid-off workers-- especially when there's nobody there to process the paperwork!

And I saw on TV that Savoy's was hurting for business. I guess alot of you from right there keep that place going. Which makes sense since there's not much else around.

And yes, I'd believe they're hurting. Subway is pretty quiet, too, at lunchtime, since they also get the DNR and MPCA folks, too.

I'm really hoping for a settlement soon. This is just pathetic. It's hard to do your job when so many of your coworkers can't. ;(