Don't Start the Revolution Without Me! - Jesse Ventura [76]
A few days later, I vetoed the legislature’s budget bill that was still going to leave a deficit of about $400 million. They then overrode my veto. One of their cost-saving items cut the budget for my security detail by $175,000. How did I respond to that? I told reporters it might be a good idea to save that money by shutting down the governor’s mansion, so state troopers wouldn’t need to be paid to guard it. Losing 11 percent of my governor’s budget, I had to keep in place what runs the office efficiently. To me, the mansion was just a showplace where the governor or his family can meet with dignitaries. I was only half-kidding when I said that, instead, “we could have them up to the Capitol and we could order Chinese and Domino’s.”
The mansion is also a huge money pit, because it’s an old residence built back around the turn of the twentieth century. It’s had more than $5 million of renovations through the years, and you’d never know it. I said, “For God’s sake, for $5 million we could go build a state-of-the-art house like Jimmy Jam Harris, the record producer, did on Lake Minnetonka.” The governor’s residence still had lead in the pipes, and my family was drinking water from these! I actually had to go to the Department of Health and get them to fix that, after I had my physical and the doctor found the level of lead in my blood was higher than it should be.
So if the legislature wanted to engage in a power play, I was ready. At the end of April, the moving trucks backed up to the mansion and started taking away the artwork and antique furniture to be put in storage. My family and I moved out.
Headline: MINNESOTA: GOVERNOR SHUTS MANSION
Gov. Jesse Ventura shut down the governor’s mansion, laid off most of the staff and declared it unavailable for all but limited official functions. The governor said lawmakers had left him no choice but to close the 20-room English Tudor-style residence when they cut his spending and reduced his security budget.
—The New York Times, May 1, 2002
Well, I really got hammered for that one. I didn’t realize how an ancient house like that somehow endears itself to people. Of course, the media wouldn’t be clear in telling the public the real reasons. They just said I was being spiteful over the budget. The fact was that the legislature’s budget left me no recourse.
Before they adjourned, the legislature used up what little remained of budget reserves, made their short-term fix, and didn’t raise anybody’s taxes. And they restored the $375,000 for my security and for reopening the mansion. I went and played golf their last day in session, and then vetoed the bill, which I fully expected they would override, and they did.
In the years since I left office, the state of Minnesota has had to live with, and try to recover from, what the legislature did with that last budget. The public is told the story that they were left my mess. They were not. My completely balanced budget would have solved the entire deficit problem.
Messes like that one are the reason why I also pushed for Minnesota to move to a unicameral legislature. I proposed that our House and Senate be combined into a single body of 135 members, down from 201. That way, I believed government would be more accountable and responsible. The state would also save about $20 million a year. I wanted at least to get this on the ballot, so Minnesotans could vote one way or the other.
The only state to have a unicameral legislative is Nebraska, which has had one house for the past eighty-some years. Do you know that, in all that time, they have never been forced into a special session to reach a budget conclusion? That speaks volumes. In a unicameral set-up, you don’t have two separate houses holding each other up! Unlike Minnesota, where the last several years of legislative sessions haven’t finished on time because of a budget deadlock. (I think the legislators shouldn’t be paid at all for these special sessions