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There is a legal concept so widely accepted that its tenets are mentioned at least as far back as William Shakespeare’s time: “the spirit of the law.”

The concept acknowledges that while making, practicing and adjudicating law is a precise business, it’s nearly impossible to address every eventuality. In that gap between exact words and the messiness of everyday life lies “the spirit of the law” — the clear intent of the lawmakers who made the rules.

We saw a prime example at the Minnesota Capitol last week.

Violations of the spirit of the law are, of course, so common that industries have arisen to find ways around laws without actually breaking them. For example, tax loopholes that allow the extremely rich to pay a lower percentage of their wealth in taxes than members of the middle class and working poor. (We’ll leave the argument about whether those are intentional loopholes for another day.)

Another obvious example: Senate Republicans deciding, in the final hours of the latest 2021 special session of the Minnesota Legislature, that they finally had time to consider the qualifications of a tiny few of the approximately 120 cabinet-level commissioners and appointed state board members over which it has confirmation power.

Only four of Gov. Tim Walz’s 24 Cabinet-level appointees have been confirmed so far: Agriculture Commissioner Thom Peterson, Higher Education Commissioner Dennis Olson, Mediation Services Commissioner Janet Johnson and Mark Phillips, commissioner of the Iron Range Resources and Rehabilitation Board, who was confirmed just last week.

You’ll note that Walz was inaugurated 2 1/2 years ago. Governors generally name appointees shortly after taking office.

So why are these confirmation proceedings happening now, 2 1/2 years in, and only a few of them at that? Because the spirit of the law that makes the Senate a vital roadblock for corrupt or incompetent appointees of a bad governor is less convenient right now than the letter of the law, which allows them to force out qualified leaders because its one of the few weapons available to them.

The Minnesota GOP finds itself in a position of weakness now, positioned against a governor and House controlled by Democrats. That weakness is proven by the party’s year-long failure to muster the votes it needed to overturn the governor’s less-than-popular emergency powers.

So lacking leverage elsewhere, the GOP leadership has decided to use the law’s silence on deadlines for confirmation of appointees as a bargaining chip, hanging on to the threat of ouster indefinitely, to the detriment of Minnesotans.

And the tactic does cost all of us — in inefficiencies in the operation of state agencies when leadership changes abruptly on a political whim, and in the lost opportunity to get the best people for these important jobs. Knowing they could be summarily dismissed after years of work is not an enticement to lure high performers who quite often take a pay cut to leave the private sector to do the state’s work. If this trend of long-term limbo continues, second-rate public servants in key positions will be the result.

Republicans have disingenuously argued that delayed confirmations allow time to see if an appointee is competent. That would make sense if these jobs were internships or entry-level gigs with unproven hopefuls. They’re not, however. Minnesota gubernatorial appointees from all parties have historically been known quantities with public track records from which their qualifications can be easily judged.

Even providing the Senate leadership with the benefit of the doubt on that point, such drastic delays in confirmation lack sense: If the 20 Cabinet-level commissioners still awaiting confirmation are not qualified, they’ve been allowed to serve incompetently for more than half of the governor’s four-year term. That seems like an unjustifiably long probationary period at the taxpayers’ expense.

No, the situation is not one of bad appointees. It’s one of a weak party wielding whatever power it can find — even outside the spirit of the law — to gain traction. This year, it’s the GOP violating the spirit of the law. Eventually, however, the balance of power will shift. If the Democrats follow suit, they’ll be equally in line for criticism.

The spirit of the law and of public service? Or the spirit of party supremacy? We know which is better for Minnesota.

— St. Cloud Times, July 9