Legislative Briefing.

This morning I reviewed my work from yesterday and found that two e-mails I had sent out had not gone through. I then went to work (at my Job). After work I went to a Minnesota Legislative Briefing.

When I was researching my NPOs, reading everything I could find about them on the Internet, I found that most of them had legislative up dates on their web sites. If what is going on at the Legislature is so important to my NPOs that they post up dates on their web sites, then it better be important to me if I want to be able to talk to them about what matters to them. I felt it was important enough to miss the Boot Campers call. I gave a lot of thought to missing the call. It is the only daily call I have missed since Boot Camp started.

What did I learn at this briefing? Our state, like 45 other states is experiencing a budget short fall again this year. The Minnesota constitution calls for a balanced budget. In short that means the Legislators MUST come up with a way to cover the short fall between now and May 18Th. There are two "basic" ways to balance the budget---cut spending or increase revenue. The normal way to increase revenue is by increasing taxes. Our Governor has made it very painfully clear "THERE WILL BE NO NEW TAXES." That leaves the Legislature only one option, cut spending. What does "cut spending" mean? It means the state agencies and NPOs will not get as much money from the state as they got last year.

How much less than last year? We have right now a $5 billion short fall. I am going to use this number even though we know it does not count for inflation or for the fact that many Minnesotans have lost their jobs and are no longer paying taxes. Some of the NPOs I work with deal with health and human services so I attended their legislative briefing. The state currently gives health and human services $11.5 billion. The governor has proposed taking $2.6 billion from their budget, an overall reduction of 23%. I think you can see why what goes on at the legislature is important to my NPOs and ultimately to me.

This is probably already more politics than you wanted to hear about but it does let you know how I spent my time to night and for those of you who are dealing with NPOs, you would do well to find out where your NPOs are getting their funding now and if it is threatened. It gives you more credibility if you know and understand enough about their concerns to have a meaningful discussion.with them.

OK, enough,

Tom