You can't make this stuff up...

So here in Minnesota, we have what appears to be somewhat of a constitutional crisis. In a bitter budget battle, the Minnesota GOP (which holds majorities in both the House and Senate) passed a series of spending bills that Governor Dayton was not very fond of.

Now in Minnesota, the Governor has line item veto capabilities. So it's not unusual for the legislation to tie one thing to another, in order to make it more difficult for the Governor to veto specific parts of the budget. This is generally accepted at the legislative level, because without this strategy, the efforts of the two Parties in Congress to make concessions and come to agreements would be rendered moot. Otherwise whichever side held the Governorship, could simply agree to whatever it was that the other side wanted, knowing full well that the Governor would just line item everything out that they didn't actually want. The Governorship would become all that mattered.

So in this case, a new tax bill (desired by the GOP and eventually agreed to by the DFL for other consessions) was tied directly to the funding of the Minnesota Department of Revenue (where my dear old dad used to work as an auditor). So if Mark Dayton wanted to veto the new tax bill, he would risk the funding of the Department of Revenue. So of course, Governor Dayton did what any "reasonable Governor" would do in this situation.

He allowed that bill to become law without his signature, and line item vetoed out the funding for the entire legislative branch.

Yes, you read that correctly. He eliminated the legislative branch with a line item veto.

This came with demands that he would allow a special session to reinstate their funding, but only if they agreed to eliminate the new tax bill that he was unhappy with. You can have your budget or you can have a legislative branch, but you can't have both.

Now quite obviously the Minnesota constitution provides the citizens with three branches of the government. Certainly the executive branch could not use a line item veto to eliminate a the legislative branch, because a particular Governor was unhappy with a tax bill. At least one would think. Moreover... like most constitutions,  in Minnesota the appropriates for spending must start with the legislative branch. It would seem that if Dayton were to successfully eliminate the legislative branch, there would be no way to ever actually bring it back to even create a new budget that would bring fund themselves again... meaning our state would probably function on the same 2018 budget indefinitely.

So the legislative branches sued the Governor, and a Judge agreed that it would be unconstitutional for the Governor to eliminate funding for another branch, and ordered the funding back into place. But, as expected, Governor Dayton appealed (requesting an expedited hearing) to the Minnesota Supreme Court where four of the seven Judges were appointed by him. Many observers felt that the Court would almost certainly rule in his favor.

So what happened, was that they did rule in his favor, but they didn't, but they sort of did, but they sort of didn't.  This is what happens when your Judicial branch loses sight of the law, and decides to put politics front and center, even if it twists them into pretzels.

• They ruled that the line item veto itself was constitutional
• But they ruled that eliminating the legislative branch was unconstitutional (and you could not use constitutional means to produce an unconstitutional result). 
• But they ruled that there were "not sure" that the courts had authority to "order" the funding back in place (as the lower court did)... in effect overturning the original ruling (for now).

Then they did what any reasonable State Supreme Court would do. They ordered mediation (in effect reopening negotiations)...  and more briefs to be filed on that specific subject (authority to order funding), just in case the mediation didn't work.

It seems to me that the shortsightedness of this move should be obvious to everyone, regardless of the issues being debated. To suggest that the Governor could line item veto out funding for the legislative branch, would be akin to suggesting that the legislative branch could simply write a budget that eliminated funding for either the Executive or Judicial branch.

This is pure "madness" as they say. Our man-child of a Governor has taken this one way over the top. He is pulling the ultimate play by my rules or I will take my ball and go home gambit. Of course, at the end of the day, what would he do if his bluff was called and the Minnesota legislative branch ceased to be funded?  No more tax increases. No more spending increases. No more state programs. No more new laws of any kind.

Sounds okay to me... but I doubt there is a Democrat anywhere who would like that end result.