It’s a tough job being governor. You hold a news conference and all the cameras and mics show up. Journalists are poised to poke you. The event is streamed on the UpTake worldwide. The stage is large.

You proceed today to announce hundreds of millions of dollars in cuts from the state budget, including to cities and counties, health and human services and higher education -- as hot a grouping of funding buttons as it gets.

Jobs are sure to be eliminated, up to 3,400, said the head of the state employees’ union. And that could be just the start, others say.

You master the intricacies of the numbers, even if the opposition soon challenges your mastery. You even get passionate about the rate of the growth of state spending and about the refusal of DFL legislators to work with you.

When asked by a reporter about his cuts to General Assistance Medical Care to the state’s poorest, Pawlenty, otherwise cool throughout this afternoon’s 45-minute news conference, turned animated.

“Over the years, we have proposed, we have pleaded, we have begged the Legislature,” Pawlenty said, his voice rising in anger and frustration, “to change these programs to slow them down. In the area of publicly subsidized health care, [the programs] are out of control, unsustainable, irresponsible and they could not continue on the trajectory that they were on.”

He said GAMC has grown at rates of 36 percent over a budget period.

“We got stiff-armed ... so now the day of reckoning comes,” he said. “It is challenging, it is difficult ... We’ve been sounding the alarm for years. Now I think we might have their attention.”

All that work, all that energy, what does it get the governor?

Their attention.

Opposition fierce, swift
Lots of it, rolled into a thunderstorm of reaction this afternoon that included the call for a special session from the DFL’s assistant majority leader, Tarryl Clark. And an angry -- and somewhat personal -- reaction from Minneapolis Mayor R.T. Rybak, as well as pointed words from Eliot Seide, executive director of the AFSCME public employees union, and a no-holds-barred statement from DFL House Speaker Margaret Anderson Kelliher.

“In just one day, Governor Pawlenty has done more damage to Minnesota than he has throughout his entire career,” said Kelliher, a probable candidate for governor. “The deep cuts he proposes are one more rejection of the balanced approach of both cuts and revenue preferred by Minnesotans and passed by the Legislature.”

Her comments were gas on the fiery and instant rhetoric at the Capitol after the governor’s announcement, in which he and Tom Hanson, his commissioner of management and budget, laid out enough cuts to plug a $2.7 billion hole in the state budget, a hole that Pawlenty and DFL legislative leaders couldn’t fix together last month.

His plan -- available in its entirety at the state’s Management and Budget website -- sets the stage for what’s sure to be a doozy of a hearing Thursday of the Legislative Advisory Commission (LAC). The session will be chaired by Hanson.

Kelliher and Senate Majority Leader Larry Pogemiller -- no bosom buddy of Pawlenty’s -- sit on the commission, which really has no power other than to attempt to point out what they believe is the error of the governor’s ways.

Pawlenty said the group can recommend changes to his unallotment plan, that what he announced today isn’t final.

But Sen. Clark, of St. Cloud -- another possible candidate for governor -- said that’s a bunch of baloney.

“We don’t have a say,” she said, adding that his cuts won’t be permanent but are one-time trims, and it will be up to the Legislature and, perhaps, the next governor to address structural budget issues down the road.

Cuts hit health, human services, local aid hard
Pawlenty announced today that he plans to cut about $236 million from health and human services programs and another $300 million of aid to city and county governments as part of his unilateral "unallotment" in an effort to balance the state's budget for the new biennium.

The University of Minnesota and the MNSCU system will take a combined $100 million whack. Another $1.77 billion in “payment deferrals and adjustments” to K-12 education begin to close a budget gap of nearly $2.7 billion.

According to St. Paul Mayor Chris Coleman’s office, the governor’s unallotments will cut $192 million to the state’s cities that could affect public safety, libraries, parks and other public services.

Over the past six years, Minnesota cities have lost $750 million in local government aid and, as a result, property taxes have increased over 65 percent statewide. This increase in property taxes, hasn’t replaced the lost state aid, so essential city services have been cut, according to the Coalition of Greater Minnesota Cities.

Rybak leads way in taking on Pawlenty
Rybak was, in some ways, the most assertive. He conducted his briefing with the news media about 20 feet from the door to the governor’s office and barely five minutes after Pawlenty completed his session.
It was almost as if he wanted to wrassle with the guv ... but that would have been a better fit with the last governor.

Rybak was loaded with ammunition to respond to a Pawlenty assertion that Minneapolis needs to cut its budget more, that property taxes have been raised uncontrollably in the state’s largest city and that Rybak should set priorities and not fund “$50,000 artistic drinking fountains.”

With no more than 3 percent cuts to cities, Pawlenty said, Rybak and others “need to get their heads out of the clouds and get into the real economic circumstances that are the worst since World War II ... my message to [Rybak] is to reduce.”

Rybak jabbed back in the hallway within eyeshot of the name tag that said Pawlenty. Rybak said Pawlenty should balance state budgets the way Rybak has in Minneapolis. Rybak said his budgets have been long-term plans, not one-year, one-time budgets.

“The governor is the one who is incapable of delivering a balanced budget,” Rybak said, “not Minneapolis ... Instead of getting into this locker-room talk that the governor likes to, I’m about solving problems.” He added there was no job creation in Pawlenty’s budget recommendations.

Then Rybak threw a roundhouse to Pawlenty’s gut.

“It’s fine for the governor to stop throwing bombs on his way in and out of business to primary states and instead sit down, bring people to the table and let’s get to work,” Rybak said, a reference to Pawlenty’s alleged presidential ambitions. “If he wants to stick around long enough to have a conversation, I’d love to do it. But Tim Pawlenty is increasingly, seemingly, not focused on Minnesota, and Minnesotans need to be focused on their future.”

Rybak seems to be running for governor. Kelliher seems to be running for governor. Pawlenty isn’t.

Saying the unallotment budgeting happened “behind closed doors,” Sen. Clark said of Pawlenty: “He’s not a czar, he’s not an emperor, he’s not a grand poobah,” she said, adding that he’s “using his unallotment powers improperly.”

Minnesotans, she said, “should be concerned about our democracy right now.”

A one-day session to work things out?
Perhaps her most eyebrow-raising suggestion was that rather than settle on his unallotment plan, Pawlenty should call a “one-day special session” to resolve the budget impasse between the governor and the Legislature.

She predicted “tens of thousands” of job losses would result from the unallotments.

As previously reported, there is discussion about lawsuits from various quarters, perhaps AFSCME, perhaps people who suffer from service cuts.

AFSCME Council 5 director Seide wouldn’t commit to that but said he is considering “every tool in our tool box.”

Said Pawlenty: “Anybody can file a lawsuit. That doesn’t mean they’re going to win.”

Countered Seide: “This governor has decided to wear unallotment as a badge of honor. The legislators who supported him and decided not to make taxes fair should be wearing it as a badge of shame.”

He called for the Legislature to come back in session and override Pawlenty’s veto of the budget. That can’t happen until February, however, unless Pawlenty calls lawmakers back.

St. Paul Mayor Chris Coleman: “Minnesota communities were critically hurt today by the governor’s action, and nearly every Minnesotan will personally be affected. It could be in the form of no cop in their kid’s school, higher property taxes, or a local library that is no longer open. Many Minnesotans will think in the coming year that this is not the state they knew, or the state they want it to be.”

He seems to be running for governor, too.

Meanwhile, Pawlenty received some support.

Outgoing Republican Party Chairman Ron Carey said: “The Democrat legislators’ insatiable appetite for expansion of government programs and stubborn refusal to give up on billions of dollars of tax increases on working Minnesota families and businesses left Gov. Pawlenty with no option but to make the tough choices the Democrats refused to make. While these weren’t easy reductions to make, Minnesotans can rest easy knowing for the first time since Minnesota became a state the government will not be asking for more of their hard-earned money to fund a government on autopilot.”

Phil Krinke, president of the Taxpayers League of Minnesota: “The State Legislature was in session for five months and the Governor had said from the beginning that he would oppose resolving the deficit by raising taxes in a struggling economy. The failure of the DFL leadership to find compromise has forced the Governor to solve the state budget. We applaud the Governor’s position against tax increases and hope legislative leaders will cooperate with the administration.”

On Thursday, however, when the LAC meets, the war of words and values will resume.

“We expect that the governor’s administration will be fully prepared” to discuss details of the unallotment then, Kelliher said. Could be a meeting worth watching, even if nothing will change.

Jay Weiner can be reached at jweiner [at] minnpost [dot] com.