The thing that comes through loud and clear in Jim Knoblach’s LTE isn’t that Gov. Dayton didn’t negotiate in good faith. Nobody that’s paid attention to him the past 8 years honestly expected him to do that. It’s that he moved the negotiating goalposts 4 times in the final 61 hours of the session.

Chairman Knoblach wrote “When you are given a list of 117 objections 61 hours before the Legislature ends, one naturally wonders if Dayton actually wanted a deal at all. Or was he just trying to set us up to look bad for political purposes? I still don’t know that answer to that question. However, I worked very hard with other legislators in the following hours to delete or otherwise satisfy 71 of Dayton’s 117 objections (but not any of those mentioned above). We thus went 61 percent of the way (71/117) to the governor. Dayton gave us six more objections the following day, and we agreed on four of those. The response of his staff was to demand we meet every single one of his objections. On Saturday evening, they added even more.”

Chairman Knoblach is right in saying “This is not compromise or negotiation by the governor.” What makes it utterly disgusting is that Gov. Dayton has the audacity to call the conference committee process a scam:

What a disgusting person. The thing that proves that Gov. Dayton is the problem is the 2015 budget session. Speaker Daudt and Sen. Bakk met each day of the final week of session with Gov. Dayton to negotiate a bipartisan compromise. After their fifth negotiating session with Gov. Dayton and with nothing to show for it, Speaker Daudt and Sen. Bakk went off to the side to work out the details of a bipartisan compromise. Within an hour, they’d reached an agreement, which they took back to their caucuses.

Of course, Gov. Dayton and then-Rep. Thissen did their best to sabotage it. The bills got passed but Gov. Dayton vetoed a number of them. Is there any doubt that Gov. Dayton is the problem? Why hasn’t the Twin Cities media mentioned the fact that 3 of the 4 budget sessions in Gov. Dayton’s time in office ended during a special session? Are they trying to protect him? Why haven’t they questioned Gov. Dayton’s intentions? It isn’t like he hasn’t questionable things. It isn’t like he hasn’t had a ton of crises that he’s totally to blame for.

Gov. Dayton should resign so the important things that he didn’t get finished get finished. The reason these things didn’t get finished is because Gov. Dayton a) kept moving the goalposts and b) vetoed the bills. To the DFL-friendly media who isn’t explaining this, shame on you for not being honest about this. The people have the right to know.

Thanks to Chairman Knoblach’s LTE, we now have the truth.