COVERITLIVE.COM

9:02

News Cut (Bob) - Good morning, everyone! I'm live-blogging Midmorning with Kerri Miller this morning, with guests: R.T. Rybak, the mayor of Minneapolis and Chris Coleman, the mayor of St. Paul. The discussion will focus on the economy in both cities, but I presume Kerri will ask about their political ambitions (and they'll both say they're only focused on being mayors, of course). Both reportedly have gubernatorial ambitions.

I'm not in the studio, so our discussion is among ourselves.

9:04

News Cut (Bob) - Here's Kerri's open:

Red ink...rising taxes...and wrangles with the governor. Makes you wonder who in this winter of discontent...would even want the job that my guests have! And yet--both Mayors Rybak and Coleman are running again! More about that later.
In the meantime...they're spending a lot of time at the capitol trying to persuade lawmakers to cut their cities some slack...when it comes to cuts. If the governor's budget holds...Saint Paul stands to lose more than $23 million. And Minneapolis..even more at $65 million
Remember, those cuts are on top of the cuts that the governor made late last year to cover an eleventh hour budget deficit.
So...how are they making their arguments...when so many others are trying to cover their own budget bottom lines too? And what of Governor Pawlenty's allegations that "certain" big city mayors haven't been as wise with their budgets as they could've been?
Mayor Rybak decided those were "fightin' words." We'll explain.

9:07	News Cut (Bob) - We're underway.

9:08	News Cut (Bob) - Coleman: Cuts in Pawlenty's budget are "catastrophic." That's on top of 2003 "very significant cuts in local government aid (LGA). It was always predictable, and you knew how to budget based on that.

9:09	News Cut (Bob) - 80% of St. Paul's costs are personnel. "We could close every library, every rec center, and close down the city attorney's office and we still wouldn't save enough."

9:10

News Cut (Bob) - Rybak: "We're in tough times; we have to make sacrifices. But let's do it in a way that's structurally going to fix the problem." Says in '03, the city merged the library, paid down debt. "We sacrificed but we came out better. Meanwhile, the state used budget gimmicks, not even factoring in inflation."

9:12

News Cut (Bob) - Rybak: We need a "different kind of leadership out of the governor. With this issue of doing short-term gimmicks, we're goign to be back in this in a couple of years, good times or bad." he says it's not just the governor. We need leadership all around. (The leadership at the Cap is mostly Mpls legislators, what's the problem here?)

9:13	News Cut (Bob) - Coleman lets local lawmakers off the hook by saying "the rest of the team may be part of the game but the governor sets the tone." Important note here: The DFL still hasn't proposed an alternative to the governor's budget.

9:13	News Cut (Bob) - Coleman refuses to answer Miller's question on what taxes should be raised at the Capitol.

9:15	News Cut (Bob) - Coleman: "the state has multiple options" for raising revenue. But he doesn't say the words. "I'm sensing a dodge here," Miller says, to which Coleman says "corporate income taxes." That idea? Dead on arrival.

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