Special Session Today to Address Flood Relief
Governor Tim Pawlenty has called for a special session to be held today at 5pm for the purpose of passing $150 to $160 million in relief funds aimed at easing the plight of flood victims in southeastern Minnesota.
Under the Minnesota constitution, the Governor alone holds the power to call a special session “on extraordinary occasions.” Though the Governor is required to inform the legislature of the purpose for the meeting, once underway, the agenda and length of the special session is at the discretion of the legislature. The floods that ravished southeastern Minnesota three weeks ago seems to satisfy the “extraordinary” element for the special session, as many Minnesota communities are reeling from the economic toll the floods damage inflicted. House Speaker Margaret Anderson Kelliher, DFL-Minneapolis, told the Star Tribune,
“Folks have homes and businesses that are gutted to the studs. They don't have heating. They have issues with employment. We don't want to make that any worse.”Past special sessions dealing with flood relief took months to be called after floods, leaving many Minnesotans upset with the lack of government response in the face of crisis. Governor Pawlenty recounted today,
“'I know there has been some concern about timing, but the fact of the matter is that those two other floods, the special session was three months later. We've moved this up for understandable and good reasons and it needs to be moved up.”Though there is general agreement in St. Paul on the urgency and need for a special session aimed at providing flood relief, recent calls for special sessions to address transportation finance packages, a tax bill to grant local governments aid, and funding for the Interstate-35W bridge collapse recovery have gone unanswered by the Governor.
Though the DFL has been frustrated with Governor for saving these issues for the regular session, a compromise leading to today’s special session has made some room on the agenda for a few issues outside of flood relief. According to the Star Tribune, the agenda will include approval to release about $57 million in federal disaster money tied to the 35W bridge and appropriations from various state agencies, including money to repair state and local highways and bridges, property-tax abatements, grants to address anticipated drops in school enrollments in cities such as Rushford, and money for child care and nursing homes.
Though there is some disagreement of whether this emergency spending should come out of the state surplus or instead should be covered by long term loans, it is likely that the special session will be short and to the point with little fireworks. That said, the DFL controlled House and Senate get to decide when the party is over and will certainly have to deal with the temptation of delving deeper into some of the issues they have been clamoring to get a special session for.
Enjoy the Law and Politics Blog? Subscribe to our RSS Feed
1 comments:
What do bridges, schools, health care, and safe city streets have in common?
Minneapolis City Pages September 5th Economy in Freefall article quoted Minnesota Governor Tim Pawlenty as estimating the additional costs of gas and extra miles due to the bridge collapse at $400,000 per day, or $146,000,000 over the next year.
Any accurate calculation of additional costs to drivers must include at least a fair minimum amount for the 144,000 cars per day that used this bridge each day that now must find other routes.
Forty eight cents per mile is the IRS allowance for automobile deductions and this does not include the headache factor of clogged traffic and longer commutes that I seem to be experiencing.
Assuming an average of ten additional miles for each car each way (some of us take the longer 694/494 route around town (which is depending on east or west between thirteen and eighteen additional miles bypassing the city on freeways, others drive fewer extra miles through downtown city streets or the 280 detour).
Multiplying an average ten miles each way for 144,000 cars per day equals 2.8 million miles per day times the IRS 48 cents equals $1,382,000 per day, or almost four times the governor's estimate.
Hoping that it only takes one year to finish the bridge, multiply 1.382,000 times 365 and it adds to a little over five hundred million dollars in hard costs to drivers for these detours. Eighteen months bridge construction time would equal over seven hundred and fifty million dollars in hard driver costs.
With no extra consideration for the extra ten to twenty minutes at each end of our commute we can honestly call this the hard cost of the bridge collapse.
Add this to the approximately two hundred million dollar estimated cost of a new bridge, and the sure to be substantial lawsuit settlements for wrongful death and injury from the victims of this disaster, and some minimal value for the businesses that are failing because of their new inaccessibility, and a billion dollars becomes a realistic estimate of the total hard costs of not maintaining our bridge.
New York's 20 year veteran bridge engineer Samuel Schwartz (NYT OP-ED 8.13.07) estimated that 178,000 dollars annual maintainance per year per bridge would keep all of his states bridges in pristine condition ("all bridges guaranteed never to collapse", MINE).
Compare 178,000 dollars to the one billion dollars price tag of not maintaining this bridge and you can begin to see the actual cost of our anti tax policymaking that has won the hearts and minds of so many Minnesotans.
It appears to be up to five hundred times more expensive to ignore the advice of qualified people (real engineering experts paid high salaries) than it was to gamble on the small savings to be gained by ignoring their advice.
Even if we had spent $178,000 each year for twenty years, the total is $3,560,000 (996 million dollars less than a billion dollars).
Similarly, in the case of human beings it is much more cost effective to attend to the needs of a child than waiting until disaster strikes.
Trying to resurrect a criminalized juvenile or adult with ten to twenty years of serious mental health problems is extremely difficult.
I make a very similar financial calculation for failing to help children in child protection systems to receive the help they need to make it in public schools. Traumatized children cost our community a fortune when we ignore them and wait until they are mentally unstable adults to deal with them.
Experts will tell you that the time to help abused and neglected (traumatized) children is when you first have the opportunity. It is exponentially less expensive than waiting until they hurt someone.
Our bridge failed the majority of its safety inspections over the last twenty years. Early and sustained annual maintenance would have been the way to save money, lives, and trauma.
Bridges are designed to a factor of ten times their estimated strength needs. Ask any engineer about the significance of a bridge falling down. The Minneapolis bridge collapse was a monstrous failure.
It is not the engineers that ruined the bridge. It's not the teachers that wrecked the schools, or social workers that are not taking care of children in child protection. These are the people doing their jobs with the resources and support at their disposal.
The bridge collapse was the direct result of people ignoring the engineers and the experts that know what was needed for systems and infrastructure to stay in working order.
These are the same policy makers that are responsible for the declining conditions of our schools, transportation, courts, bridges, child protection systems and safe city streets.
Policy makers that point fingers and blame others instead of admitting their own failures and especially those that are not working for long term workable solutions to our infrastructure problems should be tarred and feathered.
Would someone please print a large "YOUR GOVERNMENT AT WORK" sign and post it on the tenth avenue bridge to be seen by the thousands of us poor dumb saps as we drive by the billion dollar fiasco that to this point hasn't been any policymaker's fault?
We are not saving any money by letting bridges fall into the river and at risk children fall into our courts and justice system. It costs exponentially more money to let things disintegrate than it does to take care of them.
www.invisiblechildren.org/weblog
Post a Comment