Kelliher picked up the endorsements from the International Union of Operating Engineers Local 49 (yesterday) and the Minnesota Association of Professional Employees (last week).

How important are such endorsements?

“[B]ecause of changing demographics, union political endorsements may not move the rank-and-file members, whose interests may not be the same as the union leadership, the way they used to be,” Hamline University professor David Schultz told the St. Paul Legal Ledger.

AFSCME Council 5’s executive director disputed that.

“[O]ur members are incredibly motivated to elect a new governor who will promote public services, rebuild the economy of the state and deal with the budget crisis in a way that asks the wealthiest people in the state to pay their fair share of taxes,” Eliot Seide said.

Photo: TarrylClark.com

State Sen. Tarryl Clark has picked up another endorsement from organized labor for her congressional bid. Yesterday, Teamsters Joint Council 32 officially gave the St. Cloud Democrat the nod in her challenge to 6th district incumbent Rep. Michele Bachmann. Joint Council 32 has 62,000 members, many in Bachmann’s district.

“We will reach out to our members in the district and show them the facts as to how they have been ignored by the current congressional representative,” said Sue Mauren, Teamsters Joint Council 32 president. “She has been an absolute disappointment and, in many cases, an embarrassment to voters in the area.”

The endorsement follows that of AFSCME Council 5, which represents some 5,000 government employees of voting age in the 6th district, in early August. AFSCME Council 65 threw its support behind Clark, who is the state Senate’s Assistant Majority Leader, a week later.

Here are excerpts from statements issue Tuesday afternoon, mainly by DFLers.

Associate DFL Party Chair Donna Cassutt:

…Governor Pawlenty and the Republicans failed Minnesota — and today, Minnesota’s working families are paying the price of their failure. In slavish adherence to the same failed philosophy that drove America into recession — not to mention his own ambition — Pawlenty and the Republicans have embarked on the arrogant, reckless, and potentially illegal path of unallotment that will hurt hundreds of thousands of Minnesotans — and drive Minnesota’s economy even further into a hole. In the middle of the deepest recession in three decades, it is unconscionable that Governor Pawlenty and the Republicans would cut Minnesotans’ police and fire protection, damage our hospitals, kick Minnesotans off healthcare, and further dim our children’s future rather than do their jobs and negotiate in good faith with the legislative majority.

The governor admits his cuts and deferrals were ‘targeted’—sadly, those targeted clearly include our most vulnerable: those living in poverty, the disabled, children, and seniors. And Pawlenty knows it.

State Senate Assistant Majority Leader Tarryl Clark, DFL-St. Cloud:

The governor is cutting jobs and increasing taxes for renters and property tax payers. For the first time this year, Minnesotans are paying more in property taxes than income taxes, and it is going to get worse. We offered a fair and balanced solution and the governor decided he didn’t want to do his job and negotiate a common-sense budget, so now he’s continuing his attack on the things that make our state great.

The governor made a decision to raise property taxes, cut local public safety, and put our schools at risk because he wasn’t willing to do his job. Instead of working with the Legislature, he and his Republican legislator enablers have chosen to put more Minnesotans out of work. The governor has continued to attack the things that make our state great and put his own political ambitions ahead of the needs of Minnesotans.

St. Paul Mayor Chris Coleman:

Minnesota communities were critically hurt today by the governor’s action, and nearly every Minnesotan will personally be affected. It could be in the form of no cop in their kid’s school, higher property taxes, or a local library that is no longer open. Many Minnesotans will think in the coming year that this is not the state they knew, or the state they want it to be.

Over the past six years, Minnesota cities have lost $750 million in local government aid, and as a result property taxes have increased over 65% statewide. This increase in property taxes, however, has fallen short of replacing the lost aid, so essential city services have also been cut back.

Former U.S. Sen. Mark Dayton:

Governor Pawlenty’s drastic unallotments show his  willingness to again sacrifice the best interests of Minnesota on the altar of his presidential ambitions.  Once again, he has chosen to shelter our state’s wealthiest citizens from paying their fair share of taxes, at the expense of schoolchildren, police  officers and firefighters, people without health insurance, hospital and nursing home patients, and others in need.

Ramsey County Attorney Susan Gaertner:

Today’s action by Governor Pawlenty … is clearly a seminal moment in our state’s history. Indeed, it is a sad day when Minnesota’s representative government cannot work together to solve one of the most pressing economic and fiscal disasters our state has ever faced. For anyone to call the governor’s action “strong leadership” would belie the essential meaning of good government and principled service to its constituents.

Clearly, these are difficult times that require difficult decisions, but those decisions are best made after a meaningful debate and within a spirit of compromise. The process we have witnessed was neither.

Today, I call on Governor Pawlenty to remain open to a truly democratic process and call for a special session…

Minneapolis City Council President Barb Johnson:

It is important for everyone to understand that cuts made by the Governor are massive and will be felt by every Minnesotan, and unfortunately those cuts still will not solve the State’s budget problem. Since 2003 the Governor has cut more than $50 million from the fund Minneapolis uses to pay for police officers and firefighters. The people of Minneapolis contribute much more to the state in taxes than we get back, and once again, the Governor has chosen to take the State’s financial problems and pass them on to cities across Minnesota. As local governments, we provide direct services to our residents and visitors—unlike the State, we can’t pass those cuts on to someone else. That’s means we’ll have to continue to make tough choices.

House Speaker Margaret Anderson Kelliher, DFL-Minneapolis:

In just under an hour today, Gov. Pawlenty has done more damage to Minnesota than he has throughout his entire career. The deep cuts he proposes are one more rejection of the fair combination of cuts and revenue preferred by Minnesotans and passed by the Legislature.

State Sen. John Marty, DFL-Roseville:

The governor’s action is in line with his recent veto of the anti-bullying bill. Tim Pawlenty has become the schoolyard bully; he is picking on the sickest, most vulnerable people in our state.

While the governor tried to minimize the impact of his cuts on cities, schools and hospitals, those cuts will cause real harm to real people. But the unallotments where the governor showed the least compassion were in the cuts to health and human services. He used a long string of adjectives to decry the rapid growth of General Assistance Medical Care — even though this growth is caused by more adults losing their jobs and their health care, and in desperation are turning to GAMC.

As his own HHS Commissioner acknowledged, the people Pawlenty hits hardest are the ’sickest of the sick and the poorest of the poor’.

Minneapolis Mayor R.T. Rybak:

Today Governor Pawlenty has made his choices about how to cut the state budget. I deeply disagree with the governor because his choices will hurt many people. The governor has offered no plan for putting people to work, only for cutting jobs during a tough economy, and has offered no strategy for fixing a broken state budget that continues to lurch from deficit to deficit.

House Minority Leader Marty Seifert, R-Marshall:

Governor Pawlenty today did what Minnesota Democrats cannot: He made government live within its means. Unallotment is not anyone’s ideal solution, but it’s what the session came to when the other side proved they could not set priorities or embrace reform.

Democrats who condemn the governor’s actions seem to forget they had more than five months to find a solution. Had they spent more time working with us on reforms and efficiencies, and less time in committees that produced no results, this day would have been avoided.

Government employees’ unions also weighed in. Here’s what Eliot Seide, director of AFSCME Council 5, had to say:

Governor Pawlenty is wearing unallotment like a badge of honor. It’s a badge of shame that should be worn by every legislator who refused to make taxes fair. They’re willing to wreck Minnesota to protect the wealthy.

We’re the blue-collar workers who take care of South St. Paul, while Pawlenty cuts his hometown. We feed grandma, while they force her nursing home to close. We staff the emergency rooms, while they cut hospitals to the bone. We help minds soar, while they crowd classrooms and hike tuition. We need the Legislature to come back, get the job done, and help us protect strong communities where everyone can thrive.

Jim Monroe of MAPE, the Minnesota Association of Professional Employees:

Governor Pawlenty’s unallotment priorities speak volumes to the fact he has turned his back on Minnesotans while turning his attention to the national spotlight. While he cuts local government aid to communities which will delay hiring police and firefighters, or lay them off, Governor Pawlenty would rather threaten the safety of Minnesotans than lay off members of his full-time security detail who travel all over the country with him.

When it comes to education, Governor Pawlenty turns his back on the public school system and the University of Minnesota which educated him and helped him pull himself up by his bootstraps. Pawlenty’s cuts to state colleges and universities coupled with payment delays to school districts will shred the bootstraps of every high school and potential college student in this state who desires a brighter future.

How can Governor Pawlenty call himself a Sam’s Club Governor when he increases the number of uninsured in this state by 30,000 people knowing full well that every Sam’s Club member and every other Minnesotan will end up paying for our uninsured citizens?

We’ll continue to add reactions here as they come in.

Governing, a trade journal of sorts for the — um, how else to put this? — governing classes, typically puts a person’s face on the cover only twice a year, one of those occasions being its “Public Officials of the Year” issue (which this is not). That should make this a rare honor indeed for hizzoner.

However, Rybak’s star turn marks the fourth month in a row, beginning with November’s “Public Officials of the Year” issue, that an individual’s smiling or near-smiling face has graced the cover of Governing. So is Rybak now the national figure in the field of public governance he seems to be, judging by the cover of Governing, or merely the lucky beneficiary of a new design approach?

By e-mail, Governing Editor John Martin clarifies:

While it’s a bit of a fluke that we’ve had four covers in a row picturing individuals, we do expect to be doing more along those lines. … [W]e are always looking for leaders to profile who are doing things that are of interest to other government people, especially including things that are kind of out there on the edge, pushing the envelope, thinking outside the box (did I leave out any cliches?).

As for the cover story, titled “Radical Renewal,” it’s an interesting read that takes as its theme Rybak’s approach to public involvement with private development:

It’s only a slight exaggeration to say Rybak is trying to rewrite the rules of urban economic development. He is trying to prove that it’s possible to be a left-leaning mayor of a left-leaning city and still be both a fiscal conservative and a friend to business and development.

The profile, by staff writer Josh Goodman, includes comments from the mayor and several others who have good things to say about him. ”He matches Minneapolis’ self-image,” Neighborhood Development Center Director Mike Temali told Goodman. “Fit and hip.” Goodman recounts the many redevelopment sights he saw while on a ride-along with Mike Christenson, Minneapolis’ Community Planning and Economic Development director.

But it’s not all positive. The Midtown Public Market, where the story opens (and which Temali’s nonprofit runs), got ”some of the same kinds of public subsidies Rybak tends to disparage elsewhere,” Goodman writes. “[T]he jury is still out on the Global Market. The number of people visiting the market is exceeding expectations. Sales, though, aren’t.”

One blistering quote comes from former City Council Member Jim Niland, though without noting his critical role in helping Rybak get elected in 2001. Niland, now legislative political action director for the Minnesota Council 5 of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, has nothing good to say: ”He’s definitely not been a friend of organized labor. He hasn’t lifted a finger for union members.” And City Council Member Lisa Goodman succinctly puts Rybak in his place within Minneapolis’ weak-mayor system of goverment: “I love the mayor. I think he’s great. But the people that do the work here are the City Council.”

One thing the article doesn’t get into is Rybak’s political future, from running for re-election this year to his interest in running for governor in 2010 — an ambition that being on the cover of Governing magazine can’t hurt.

For your reference, here’s the company Rybak just joined. Governing’s cover boys and girls in recent years:

North Carolina Speaker of the House Joe Hackney (Jan. 2009)
New Haven, Ct., Mayor John DeStefano Jr. (Dec. 2008)
Dallas County District Attorney Craig Watkins (Nov. 2008)
Former Alabama Gov. Don Siegelman, (July 2008)
Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa (Feb. 2008)
Christine O. Gregoire, governor of Washington state (Nov. 2007)
Massachusetts Chief Information Officer Peter Quinn (May 2006)
Salvatore F. DiMasi, speaker of the Massachusetts House (Nov. 2006)
L. Douglas Wilder, mayor of Richmond, Va., and former governor of the state (June 2005)
Thomas Frieden, MD, New York City health commissioner (Nov. 2005)

Hundreds of clerical, technical and health care workers walked off the job Sept. 5 after their union turned down the university’s two-year contract proposal, which called for a 2.25 percent cost of living increase for clerical and technical workers, and a 2.5 percent increase for health care workers. 

In addition, the university offered annual step raises for experience and a $300 lump sum each year. Workers who are not eligible for step increases were offered an additional $300 each year.

But the union, the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, demanded a 3.25 percent raise-the amount allocated by the state Legislature for workers at the university. The university has contended that the step raises for experience make up the additional cost of living increase workers wanted.

Read moreAfter picketing for 16 days, some workers were finding it difficult to make ends meet because of the loss of pay. The strike ended Sept. 21 in favor of the university’s proposal.

“We couldn’t sustain the strike because our average worker supports his or her family with a mere $34,000 a year-an amount that qualifies him or her for food stamps,” said Jennifer Lovaasen, a spokeswoman for AFSCME.

More than 1,000 of the union’s 43,000 members are participating in their annual convention in Duluth this week. They are exploring ways to “work with legislators to hold the university accountable for impoverishing some of its works,” said Lovaasen. “We have to bite back-in a way.”

AFSCME has a powerful legislative lobby. Though she wouldn’t delve into details, Lovaasen said the union is prepared to employ the in-house lobby team when the next session starts early next year.

Technically, the Legislature can’t force the university to spend the funds appropriated for its workers in a certain way, said Sen. John Marty, DFL-Roseville.

“But we have to do something about this grossly unfair situation,” he said.

He and Lovaasen emphasize that they respect the university as an institution, but that their frustration is toward the administration.

“President [Robert] Bruininks’ pay increase alone this year was $64,000-almost twice as much as the average worker makes. That’s just wrong,” Marty said. “The appropriate thing to do is try and get the university to do the right thing-not punish it.”

“Union-busting.” An “insulting settlement.” Even some tears. The UpTake’s Noah Kunin and Charles Gearin captured reactions by members of the University of Minnesota’s AFSCME union as they found out about a settlement with management. The responses ranged from surprise to anger, and a prediction from one member that the settlement — which will send workers back to their jobs on Saturday — will result in the departure of some staff.

Isaack Mola, a graduate instructor in the political science department and a participant in the recent hunger strike, says management is wrongly making salary comparisons with private sector counterparts, instead of workers at other state agencies.

“This administration sees this university as… nothing more than a private corporation,” he said. “The fact that they’re not willing to pay their workers what other state workers are earning and are comparing themselves to the private sector. This is a public institution; it’s a land-grand institution and we need to fight to ensure that it remains a public institution. It’s part of the commons. It belongs to the people.”

“While rank-and-file members are unified that this is bad deal for AFSCME they are divided on whether or not AFSCME is stronger as a result of the strike,” writes Kunin. “Older members tended to be pessimistic on future collective bargaining with the University of Minnesota while younger workers were optimistic that increased collaboration with other unions and greater public support would make the University ‘think twice’ the next time.”

“Financially, I’m not doing well. I’m borrowing money from friends,” said Carhert, who, like Gamble, is a clerical worker at the University’s Minnesota Population Center. “Still, I’m feeling good about picketing.”

The two workers are among an estimated 3,500 clerical, technical and health care workers who walked off the job nine days ago over a wage-increase dispute. The workers, who are represented by the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, or AFCSME, want more than the 2.25 to 2.5 percent increase offered by the university.

They demand a 3.25 percent increase-the amount allocated by the state legislature for the university workers.

“What the university is doing is not about pay,” said Carhert, “It’s about busting the union. Therefore, we have to take a stand.”

This strike is only the second at the university in more than 60 years. Wielding his “On Strike” placard, Gamble said it’s a victory for him and others to stand up for what they deserve.

“It’s kind of a hard to be standing here all day, knowing that I didn’t gain anything, but I realize that it’s the ethical thing to do,” he said. “We’ve no hostility against the university. In fact, we want to make the university a better place.”

On Monday, strikers were picketing at more than 30 locations around campus. The university said the strike didn’t affect its operations.

Crossing the picket line

Many AFCSME members have crossed the picket line. Gamble and Carhert said they were disappointed with their fellow workers who stayed behind.

“I’ve a mixed feeling about them,” said Carhert of those who crossed the picket line. “I know that how I treat them will change.”

Gamble said though he understands their decision, he still feels a letdown.

With no sight to ending the strike anytime soon, Carhert, a homeowner, said he filed an application with the union for help with paying the mortgage. Gamble said his roommate and girlfriend are coming to his aid.

Most Minnesotans agreed with me, of course, and Swanson became the state’s first female attorney general in January.  Given the recent history of attorneys general in this state, it was certainly reasonable to think that a gubernatorial or senate run might be in Swanson’s future, perhaps as soon as 2010.  Certainly she appeared to have a bright future ahead of her, if nothing else as attorney general for years to come.

But something terrible has happened to Swanson’s once-bright political future: she took office.  Ever since, Swanson has been mired in controversy and rancor that has angered one of the key players in the DFL’s base.  And unless something changes, and quickly, Swanson will be lucky to survive her term. Swanson’s first major misstep was to keep former Attorney General Mike Hatch around the office.  Hatch had eight years of experience as an attorney general, and it wasn’t an obvious mistake at first.  But having Hatch around didn’t help Swanson solidify her control over her office.  In a Pioneer Press article, an unnamed source said, “Hatch looked like he couldn’t let go, and Lori appeared not ready for prime time.”

Swanson and Hatch didn’t work to calm the waters during the transition between attorneys general.  Instead, they reportedly clashed, making the transition all the worse.  Over thirty employees have left the office since Swanson took over from Hatch in January — including Hatch, who left last week. 

But while the Hatch story is embarassing, and didn’t help matters, it is small potatoes compared to the other scandal currently roilling the office of the attorney general.  It ties to those 30-odd employees who have left since Swanson took office, at least one involuntarily.  And it threatens not just Swanson’s future but her present as well.

In April, Swanson’s office fired Assistant Attorney General KariJo Ferguson, a 10-year veteran of the office.  Swanson and her office have yet to give a reason for the firing, but Ferguson and the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME) allege that Ferguson was fired for distributing union cards.

Eliot Seide, executive director of AFSCME Council 5, was blunt in a statement on the firing and turmoil in Swanson’s office.  “I am disgusted to be here today,” he said in a statement, in which he alleged that Swanson has created a climate of “political patronage, fear, intimidation and humiliating working conditions.”

  “You won’t hear from attorneys until they have the protection of a union,” Seide continued.  “An assistant attorney general was fired last week for trying to organize a union of her co-workers. That talented attorney received a commendation and a raise on March 25 and competently argued a case for the attorney general before the Court of Appeals. Then she was fired on April 17. What changed? She collected scores of union sign-up cards and convinced her co-workers that they need the protection of a union.”

To say this allegation is serious is an understatement.  If true, Swanson’s office is guilty of violating federal labor law.  Almost more dangerous is the fact that AFSCME is not a minor, two-bit union.  It is a cornerstone of the DFL, one of the strongest unions in the coalition, and a part of the AFL-CIO.  Moreover, other key DFL union supporters, like Education Minnesota, are unlikely to continue to back Swanson against allegations of union-busting.  While the GOP has, as may be expected, been making the most noise about this scandal, these are charges that the DFL will have no choice but to pursue vigorously.  The DFL party can do without Lori Swanson far more easily than it can do without labor support.

When Matt Entenza was forced from the race last fall, most DFLers were pleased.  Entenza clearly had baggage and wasn’t a paragon of ethics.  Swanson, it was hoped, would be a more stable, ethical, and competent attorney general.

That hope appears to be misplaced.  It is long past time for Swanson to answer these charges — and not simply by attacking the union.  Lori Swanson is attorney general, and she owes her constituents — us — an open and honest explanation.  If there is nothing to these allegations, Swanson needs to make that clear.  If she is unwilling — or unable — to do that, then she should join her former mentor and resign.