Sturdevant: May the pending special session be one that inspires trust

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Another special session. Ho-hum.

You’re on rational ground if that’s your reaction to Monday night’s word from the State Capitol. Midnight arrived (yawn!) with the Legislature’s budget-setting work incomplete.

The Legislature has become habitually tardy in meeting the state Constitution’s deadline for wrapping up regular-session work before midnight on “the first Monday following the third Saturday in May.” In the past quarter-century, authorizing the next biennial budget has required an overtime session in eight odd-numbered years.

Two of those episodes — 2005 and 2011 — featured government shutdowns beginning July 1, the date on which old budgets expire. Fierce as this year’s disputes have been, they don’t seem likely to pitch state government into that abyss.

Still, I was rooting hard for a timely finish. And — since that was evidently asking too much — I’m hoping now for a tidy, trust-inspiring special session.

That’s because this isn’t a ho-hum season for representative democracy, federal or state.

The context in which the sharply divided 2025 Legislature has operated is far from ordinary. It’s not typical for the federal government to be undergoing radical surgery by executive fiat on nearly a daily basis, as has been happening for the past four months.

The Trump/Musk chainsaw is powered by disdain for government work and workers. Congressional gridlock helped create that attitude. Legislative gridlock fuels a similar frustration here — and here, it could do grave damage to Minnesotans’ quality of life. Over the past half-century, Minnesotans have built a state that, more than most, relies on state-level government for fundamentals such as education, public safety and health care.

That damage would be felt by residents statewide. But politically, it would fall harder on the party perceived as defenders of government, the DFL.

Prolonged gridlock in St. Paul would be uncomfortable for DFLers for other reasons, too. It’s already giving Republicans fresh license to fault DFLers for the slow start to the 2025 session. That was caused by House DFLers’ refusal to take their seats while Republicans threatened to deny a seat to Rep. Brad Tabke, a Shakopee DFLer elected by a spare 14 votes.

And it would give Republicans more ammo with which to accuse Gov. Tim Walz of neglecting his gubernatorial duties as he traveled to Democratic events as far-flung as Iowa, Montana and Texas. (Minnesotans have always felt a mixture of pride and possessiveness when state politicians play in the presidential arena.)

But Walz secured a credible counterargument when he agreed last week to a bipartisan budget deal that defunded health insurance subsidies for undocumented immigrant adults, thereby angering his party’s left flank.

And DFLers showed Monday that they can play the blame game, too. They charged that 11th-hour GOP insistence on cuts in the state’s still-developing paid family and medical leave program was impeding legislative action.

They were referring to an imperative of divided government, which has been what Minnesota voters have sent to St. Paul in all but four of the past 35 years. Governing means knowing both how and when to make a deal with one’s political opponents, then standing by that deal in the face of unhappiness from one’s own allies.

I’ll invoke a sainted name in legislative annals — Martin Olav Sabo — to help me make the point. He was DFL House minority leader in 1971 when the state endured its longest-ever special session — from May 25 to Oct. 30. It shifted significant funding responsibilities from local to state government in exchange for lower property taxes. (See “Minnesota Miracle.”)

Late in life, Sabo described a final deal that raised fewer dollars and relied less on the income tax than his caucus wanted. Yet — though they were in the minority — 47 of 65 DFLers voted for it.

“That was when I thought that we knew how to be a majority in the future,” Sabo said.

That’s the test both parties now have before them.

Lori Sturdevant is a retired Star Tribune editorial writer and the author of “Martin Sabo: Making the Modern Legislature,” due for release by Minnesota Historical Society Press this fall.