Governor's bonding bill short

By Judy Erickson, government relations director

The capital budget, or bonding bill, is an important funding source for acquisition and development of Minnesota’s parks and trails. The process for assembling the bonding bill is for agencies to make requests to Minnesota Management and Budget, the governor reviews the requests and then makes recommendations to the Legislature. 

The Department of Natural Resources submitted $70 million in bonding requests to the Minnesota Management and Budget (MMB) for state parks and trails. The governor, in his bonding proposal, has requested $6 million plus an additional $7.5 million in asset preservation that in large part would be used for park rehabilitation projects.

The governor proposed what he calls a financially responsible bonding plan. The Legislature is talking about a bonding bill in the range of a billion dollars. There were over $3 billion in bonding requests.

Under Gov. Pawlenty’s recommendations, the state would issue $685 million in general obligation bonds; however, the actual price tag rises to $815 million when trunk highway bonds and other funding sources are included.

The governor warned lawmakers against passing a larger bonding bill, and said that if they did he might veto the entire bill as opposed to trimming it with line-item vetoes.

Both the House and Senate expect to put their bonding bills together during the first two weeks of the session.