The special session, that is. Starts tomorrow night, 5pm, expected to be for one day. According to the StarTribune report,

Pawlenty's announcement, which came at a quickly-called news conference this afternoon, followed weeks of negotiations in which Pawlenty and legislative leaders dickered over the agenda for a one-day session.

On Monday, flanked by top House DFL and GOP leaders, Pawlenty said the package, which could go as high as $160 million, should be divided between the state�s cash-on-hand and long-term borrowing.

Senate Majority Leader Larry Pogemiller, DFL-Mpls., who has been the hold-out against any special session-borrowing, was absent from this afternoon�s announcement.

Earlier in the day he had sent Pawlenty a frosty letter saying that he would not stand in the way of a special session that included borrowing, but did not see the need for it when the state has more than $300 million in surplus funds.

Attaboy, Larry, peevish to the end. "I won't stand in the way" -- now that's real leadership. I suspect Tom Bakk is measuring curtains for the new office.

Pawlenty split the baby with the DFL on the split between borrowing and drawing down the reserve -- $80 million could be missed come February if the budget forecast comes out as badly as I think it might. But I suspect this was a quick way of solving the impasse, a fig leaf for the DFL that gets nothing on transportation and LGA and has to like it.

The PiPress initial piece says

Most of the relief money will help the August flood victims. A bit of it will help victims of the summer's drought and previous natural disasters.

I'm quite certain that isn't the Rogers tornado from last year, so I can't quite figure out what "previous natural disasters" this refers to.

Labels: Minnesota, Pawlenty, pogemiller, politics