Senate Majority Leader Tom Bakk, acknowledging Wednesday that a bonding bill may prove difficult to pass this session, outlined Senate Democrats’ new plan to pay for Capitol renovations.
The new approach calls for using funds from the tax bill, rather than state bonding legislation.
Sen. Ann Rest, a lead Democrat who works on tax issues, included an amendment that would fund the roughly $200 million project.
Earlier, Gov. Mark Dayton and the House outlined bonding plans that included $109 million that would fund the first stage of the Capitol restoration.
The Capitol renovation has enjoyed wide support from leaders in both parties, but the project hasn’t been enough to push Republicans into publicly supporting a full bonding bill.
Bakk acknowledged that it could be difficult for the House to secure enough Republican votes to reach the 60 percent support required for bonding bills.
Even with support from every Democrat, the majority would need to persuade two Senate Republicans and eight House Republicans to vote for the measure.
“I’ve always from the beginning … said bonding bills are hard to pass,” Bakk said.
House Republicans have so far been vague on whether they’ll support bonding legislation, but Minority Leader Kurt Daudt has said he’d prefer to push it off till next year. Borrowing for state infrastructure is traditionally done during non-budget years.
Rep. Alice Hausman, who oversees bonding in the House, said she supports a traditional bonding bill. The Democrat from St. Paul said she’s “comfortable” with the number of votes behind her $800 million bill and called on Dayton and the legislative leaders to start negotiating over the borrowing legislation.
Dayton, when he announced his bonding plan earlier this month, told reporters that he didn’t want to tie negotiations over his $750 million infrastructure wish list to his $1.8 billion tax hike proposal, which would give bargaining power to the GOP minorities.
Bakk echoed that sentiment on Wednesday when he talked animatedly about the Capitol project.
“What this does is make sure the Capitol doesn’t get held hostage in those end-of- session negotiations where the bonding bill always gets used as some kind of bargaining chip,” he said. “This takes it out of play and says, ‘The Capitol is more important than partisan maneuvering around here at the end of session.’ ”
It’s unclear how this new development will play during negotiations with Democrats. House Speaker Paul Thissen was cool to the plan when reporters brought it up Wednesday morning.
“I think that the right answer is what we’ve talked about for two years now, that Sen. Bakk has supported for two years, which is to bond for that proposal,” he said.
Hausman, who has been crafting her bonding proposal all session, was also displeased with the development, which she called “a total surprise.”
“I don’t like surprises at this point in the session,” she said, adding that using cash to pay for long-term bonding projects is “really just irresponsible.”
Rather than making contingency plans for the Capitol project, she said, the DFL leadership should be working with the governor to get a bonding bill moving.
“My message over and over is ‘Let’s work together'– it’s too late in the process,” Hausman said. “Governor, House and Senate should be sitting down right now.”
She said she met Tuesday with Sen. LeRoy Stumpf, who runs bonding in the Senate, and with the governor’s office on Wednesday. Stumpf’s committee is meeting Wednesday afternoon to continue hashing out Senate bonding projects.
Bakk also outlined some of the plans he’s worked out with architects for the refurbished Capitol area. He said the renovated Capitol building, under the current plan, would likely house about 30 senators, including all of the committee chairs and their staff, plus between six and eight members of the minority party.
But Hausman took issue with the process, as well. Provisions in the amendment specify that final planning and construction can’t start until everything is approved by the Senate Rules Committee. There’s no mention of the House.
“It’s kind of like the Senate taking over the restoration issue,” she said. “[There are] just a lot of reasons to be offended by it, particularly at this point.”
Construction on a new building -- price tag underdetermined -- to the north would begin as soon as possible, using bonds issued from a tax-exempt entity, such as the city of St. Paul or the St. Paul Port Authority. The state would pay the debt service. The amendment includes $3 million for fiscal year 2014 from the state general fund for predesign work on the new facility, and Bakk said he asked the architect to come up with a cost estimate for the new offices about a month ago.
The other 37 members of the Senate would have offices there, similar to state representatives in the State Office Building, Bakk said.
“They’d share the same water coolers, you might say, the same sinks, the same bathrooms, and I think over there, the newer members of the Senate … would develop good bipartisan relationships with each other,” he added.
An underground parking garage under the new building would offer much-needed space while construction on the Capitol got under way, said Bakk, who predicted that the sprawling Capitol lawn would be unusable for four or five years.
Under the amendment’s funding mechanism, $30 million would be available in fiscal year 2015, and $173.6 million would be available in fiscal year 2016.
It’s unclear whether the Capitol project would be on hold until that funding started flowing. Proponents have noted that the $109 million in this year’s bonding proposals is necessary to keep the project moving.
“$30 million wouldn’t get you very far,” Hausman said.