Dan Sparks, State Senator

A lot happened at the Capitol this week but, undoubtedly, the first thing on everyone&8217;s mind is the snow. I&8217;m writing this as &8216;Round Two&8217; is pouring down and can&8217;t predict just how bad it will be.

But it&8217;s expected to rival last weekend&8217;s storm, when many of us in southern Minnesota were left without power and a lot of shoveling to finish.

As we all know, the 12 to 20 inches of snow received, combined with violent wind and nearly 3 inches of ice coating everything led to more than 20 downed power lines, according to Freeborn-Mower Cooperative Services. That left more than 2,800 homes without power, and nearly 65,000 powerless Alliant Energy customers between Iowa and Minnesota.

It&8217;s an expensive task to fix downed lines, and it&8217;s expensive to pay crews &8212; sometimes brought in from other areas &8212; to work extensive hours to restore power. When disasters are spread between two states, such as Iowa and Minnesota in our case, it becomes difficult to receive financial assistance to properly respond to the aftermath of these storms.

A good example of this is from 2005, when tornadoes devastated the area around LeRoy. The damage totaled well over $6 million, the federal threshold to receive Federal Emergency Management Agency dollars. But because damage was spread across two states, each state had to submit its own application for federal disaster dollars and Minnesota could not reach the $6 million damage threshold on its own.

That is why this week, I&8217;ve been working with U.S. senators and representatives, as well as local officials and state departments on ideas that could help mitigate some storm damages. We&8217;re considering pursuing a joint appeal, which would allow the states of Iowa and Minnesota to submit a request together to the federal government to receive FEMA dollars. And in case this second snow storm is particularly bad, the National Guard also will stand call this weekend to provide back-up relief.

Between the snowfalls, state economists revealed the February economic forecast on Wednesday. This is an updated estimate of how much money the state will have to spend during the next two years. If you believe the news headlines, the state has about a $2 billion surplus in its budget for 2008-2009.

Unfortunately, this isn&8217;t the whole story. When you consider the natural increase in the costs of goods and services over the next two years, $1 billion of the &8220;surplus&8221; is already spent on inflation. That leaves $1 billion, but that money is only available for one-time spending, meaning it can&8217;t be used on things like long-term education or transportation funding.

During a joint committee hearing with the Senate Finance and Tax Committees on Thursday, Finance Commissioner Tom Hanson said, &8220;I think when you use the world &8216;surplus&8217; and don&8217;t factor in inflation, it leads people to believe there&8217;s more money than there really is. And there isn&8217;t.&8221; When all the money that honestly will be needed to support the state&8217;s budget is subtracted, the state is left with a little over $20 million to spend at the end of 2008. That sounds like a lot to you and me, but in terms of the state&8217;s $34 billion budget, it&8217;s a drop in the bucket.

It&8217;s time to be honest about the way we budget in this state. It might be politically convenient to use fuzzy math to make it look like the state has a surplus. But when it comes to our finances, politics isn&8217;t what we should be focused on.

The budget we will be assembling during the next two months will fund education, transportation, hopefully some property tax relief and many other programs. We need to know how much real money we have to work with in order to craft this budget responsibly. Otherwise we&8217;re risking the same multi-billion-dollar deficits we&8217;ve been faced with during the past several years.

State Sen. Dan Sparks&8217; column appears every other Sunday during the legislative session.