That came as a surprise to State Rep. Alice Hausman, who chairs the House Capital Investment Finance Division. She said she understood from legislative leaders that Pawlenty would be willing to sign a bonding bill soon.

Hausman told reporters after Pawlenty’s presentation that she saw “cynicism” in his take on bonding-bill dynamics, in which DFLers in the Legislature propose bonding they know he’ll excise.

“That is not why I’m here,” Hausman said.

In proposing what he acknowledged some would call a “Spartan” level of bonding, she added, Pawlenty is missing the “one positive” of the poor economy: “bids come in low, and low interest rates.”

DFLers have advocated early passage of a bonding bill to get dollars flowing into the state’s economy.

But Pawlenty painted a different picture, in which government spending provides not a gain but simply a shift of money within the economy.

“Net that out,” he said.

He showed special disdain for state bonding for projects that he said had only local significance. “Some of them are kind of ludicrous. … Government at all levels is out of money. You’ve got to be willing to say no.”

On that point Hausman also took issue, saying that she and other legislators do say no, and that funded projects get screened for regional impact.

Palwenty also predicted that higher education was on the verge of technological transformation — “the equivalent of iTunes for higher ed” — that those pushing higher-ed projects don’t see.

Higher ed comprises 30 percent of Pawlenty’s proposed bonding, followed by transportation (19 percent).

The bulk of the bonding for public safety and corrections (16 percent) is for an $89 million expansion of the sex-offender facility at Moose Lake.

The remaining projects are for flood mitigation, natural resources and the environment (14 percent); economic development (11 percent);  and veterans and the military (4 percent). Miscellaneous projects, including $21 million for the Minnesota Zoo, accounted for 6 percent.

Pawlenty also announced a deal with U.S. Steel for land that would create a state park at Lake Vermillion — a pet project of his. Minnesota will pay $18 million, and U.S. Steel will count $2.3 million of land value as a gift to the state.

That’s contingent on the Legislature removing a $14 million spending cap, without which Pawlenty predicted bulldozers would roll next summer to build residences instead of the park he envisions where average-income Minnesotans could enjoy the outdoors.

Stargazing of the indoor kind won’t be an option again in Minneapolis anytime soon under Pawlenty’s proposal: he’s calling in $22 million in bonding for a new planetarium there, saying the project hasn’t gotten off the ground.

Pawlenty criticized increased pay for teachers, saying that “the general goal should be for our public employees to be held flat.”

Asked whether that philosophy held for financial-industry CEOs, whose compensation President Obama wants to limit due to the federal bailout, Pawlenty said he disagreed with the bailout in the first place: “They shouldn’t have done that.”

Ominous news about job losses and financial woes at Minnesota hospitals over the last week coincide with Gov. Tim Pawlenty’s line-item veto of $381 million in General Assistance Medical Care (GAMC) grants and his vow to make even more cuts by unallotment. But as bad as the doomsday scenarios are, they shouldn’t include St. Paul’s Regions Hospital closing — a prospect that the DFL warned of over the weekend.

Here are some headlines from the last week that, to some at least, read like plot lines for a series-ending episode of TV’s “House” doctor drama, if not a medical prequel to the post-apocalyptic “Mad Max” movies.

» Hennepin County Medical Center (HCMC) in Minneapolis will lay off 100 staffers.

» Park Nicollet Health Services lays off 240 and closes a clinic in Hopkins. The owner of Methodist Hospital in St. Louis Park has already laid off more than twice that number over the last six months.

» Willmar’s Rice Memorial Hospital continues to shed staff. Layoffs have left the city-owned hospital with its smallest workforce in a decade.

» In rural areas of the state, doctors are scarce. Health care organizations must dangle bonuses to attract debt-laden med school grads to the hinterlands.

» St. Peter bucked the trend by expanding a local clinic of Mayo Health System, but Mayo’s flagship facility in Rochester will lose $30 million from Pawlenty’s GAMC veto alone.

» Losing patients, North Memorial Health Care is cutting 100 jobs. A 6-percent decline in stays at the Robbinsdale hospital hides one area in which business is up by 22 percent: charity care.

» Two metro hospitals that care for the poor — Regions in St. Paul and HCMC in Minneapolis — will make deep cuts. HCMC Medical Director Michael Belzer says revisiting state cuts during the 2010 Legislative session will be too late, as hospitals will have set budgets and take actions necessary to meet them by then.

But Regions is not in danger of closing its doors, contrary to a DFL Party announcement (see below) from the closing days of the legislative session.

“That’s not going to happen,” Regions spokesman Vince Rivard told the Minnesota Independent on Monday, adding that a hospital expansion financed with St. Paul municipal bonds is still set to open this summer.

Still a variety of program cuts at Regions and even imposition of new, restrictive geographical boundaries are possible, Rivard said. The hospital sees patients from as far away as Montana but is only obligated to provide Ramsey County residents with non-emergency services.

And Rivard agreed with HCMC’s Belzer that fixes the Legislature next year makes to the governor’s vetos would come too late to forestall drastic cutbacks.

Here’s the press release from the DFL House DFL Caucus that asserted that Regions Hospital could close. It was sent out Saturday, midway between Pawlenty’s Thursday night line-item veto of GAMC and the end of the Legislative session Monday night.

NEWS STATEMENT
Minnesota House of Representatives

May 16, 2009

PAWLENTY VETO MAY RESULT IN FULL OR PARTIAL CLOSURE OF REGIONS HOSPITAL

Local lawmakers speak out against Governor Pawlenty’s deep cuts to
Regions Hospital

After announcing Thursday he plans to make billions of dollars in
budget cuts alone without public or legislative input, Governor Tim
Pawlenty eliminated General Assistance Medical Care (GAMC) in Minnesota.
With one line item veto late Thursday night, the governor cut $381
million that was dedicated exclusively to treat the poorest people in
the state – including veterans, senior citizens, and the mentally ill.

Those cuts may result in the full or partial closure of Regions
Hospital in St. Paul. By eliminating GAMC, the hospital will face a $46
million budget cut – 10% of its gross revenue. Regions Hospital employs
roughly 5,000 people and serves nearly 23,000 patients every year.

The following is a statement from local state lawmakers deeply
concerned about these devastating cuts to Regions Hospital and the
potential impact on residents of St. Paul and the surrounding suburbs:

“Governor Pawlenty’s veto pen single-handedly put Regions Hospital in
St. Paul at serious risk of significantly cutting back critical services
or potentially closing its doors. This is a devastating blow to tens of
thousands of citizens in St. Paul and the surrounding communities who
rely on Regions Hospital for quality, expert medical care. It has
threatened thousands of jobs, and the health and safety of our
communities.

This deep and devastating cut could have been avoided. Lawmakers
offered a responsible alternative that would have cut Regions Hospital
only $5.7 million – a budget reduction the hospital could have sustained
without significantly drawing back critical medical services to our
community.

By eliminating GAMC, Governor Pawlenty has cut 30,000 of Minnesota’s
poorest, sickest citizens off health care. Many are veterans, senior
citizens, people with mentally illness, or those who are homeless. 70%
have expensive mental health or chemical dependency challenges, and 40%
have chronic disease that leads to frequent hospitalization. Without
care, these Minnesotans will be at risk of devastating health
implications.

Finally, these cuts have made the state’s budget shortfall even
worse. Eliminating GAMC in Minnesota costs the state $100 million in
federal matching funds. It also requires that inmates in county jails
and sex offenders who are constitutionally required access to medical
care must now be paid for in general fund dollars.

We are deeply disappointed in Governor Pawlenty’s decision to balance
the budget with jobs and deep cuts to hospitals. In the final days of
session, we’ll keep fighting to protect jobs and keep Minnesota’s
hospitals whole.”

Officials whose names appeared at the top of the release are State Reps. Joe Atkins, John Lesch, Karla Bigham, Leon Lillie, Paul Gardner, Tim Mahoney, Mindy Greiling, Carlos Mariani, Rick Hansen, Erin Murphy, Alice Hausman, Michael Paymar, Sheldon Johnson, Bev Scalze, Kate Knuth and Cy Thao.

Governor: You know how this is going to turn out, don’t you?
Legislature: Nope.
Governor: I think you do.

Once he had killed $100 million in spending from the bill, Pawlenty just kept killing. His vetoes mowed down $208 million in 52 line item cuts until $717 million was all that was left to be signed. The governor reserved the biggest single cut — $70 million — for the Central Corridor light rail transit line between St. Paul and Minneapolis, a project he had included in his own bonding proposal. Capitol observers as well as legislators themselves were stunned. With $450 million in federal funds and what St. Paul Mayor Chris Coleman called “the largest economic development opportunity in our region’s history” at stake, it seemed almost random to kill something that only weeks ago you wanted alive.

Continued: Click “Read more”

Governor: What’s the most you ever lost on a coin toss?
Legislature: Sir?
Governor: The most. You ever lost. On a coin toss.

When Pawlenty struck with his veto pen, it didn’t matter if you were dead or alive: Como Zoo’s gorillas won’t get new habitats, but neither will the stuffed mountain goats, beavers and lynx at the Bell Museum of Natural History, now stuck in front of painted dioramas on the University of Minnesota’s East Bank campus since the cutting of funds for their migration to new digs in St. Paul. Thirteen people may have died nine months ago when the I-35W span fell, but the governor didn’t shirk from cutting down bonding projects that would have replaced two other aging bridges, including one (St. Anthony Parkway in Minneapolis) that, were it to fall, would land on the Northstar Commuter Rail line, another transit project that Pawlenty has both supported and opposed. But beyond arbitrary havoc, most see the line item cuts as payback for the Legislature’s override of Pawlenty’s transportation bill veto, with special venom for state Rep. Alice Hausman (DFL-St. Paul), co-chair of conference committee that agreed on the $925 million bill and a leading transportation bill veto-overrider, whose city the governor’s veto pen slashed most cruelly.

Pawlenty Chief of Staff Matt Kramer: Call me when you’ve had enough. I can even let you keep a little of the money.
Hausman: If I was cuttin’ deals, why wouldn’t I go deal with this guy Pawlenty?
Kramer: No no. No. You don’t understand. You can’t make a deal with him. Even if you gave him the money he’d still kill you. He’s a peculiar man. You could even say that he has principles. Principles that transcend money or drugs or anything like that. He’s not like you. He’s not even like me.

Well, maybe Pawlenty is not such an indiscriminate killer after all: As Andy Birkey noted here earlier, most of the district-specific cuts occurred in Democratic districts.

Monday’s lesson: Don’t cross the Gov, or he’ll cross you out.