holding that, “[b]ecause the legislative and executive branches never enacted a balanced budget for the 2010-11 biennium, use of the unallotment power to address the unresolved deficit exceeded the authority granted to the executive branch by the [unallotment] statute”
How later courts described this case
- holding that, “[b]ecause the legislative and executive branches never enacted a balanced budget for the 2010-11 biennium, use of the unallotment power to address the unresolved deficit exceeded the authority granted to the executive branch by the [unallotment] statute”
- noting that the “Legislature has the primary responsibility to establish the spending priorities for the state through the enactment of appropriation laws” (citing Minn. Const, art. IV, § 22; Minn. Const, art. XI, § 1)
- noting that the line-item veto power “must be construed narrowly to prevent usurpation of the Legislature’s proper authority”
- “[T]he absence of any timing definition leaves [the statute] ambiguous... .”
Written by the judges who cited it.
The opinion
ANDERSON, PAUL H., Justice
(concurring).
A legislative, an executive, and a judicial power comprehend the whole of what is meant and understood by government. It is by balancing each of these powers against the other two, that the efforts in human nature towards tyranny can alone be checked and restrained, and any degree of freedom preserved in the constitution.
John Adams, Letter to Richard Henry Lee (Nov. 15, 1775), in 4 The Works of John Adams 186 (Charles Francis Adams ed., 1851), quoted in The Oxford Dictionary of American Legal Quotations 377 (Fred R. Shapiro ed., 1993).
I join in the concurrence of Justice Page because I share his concerns regarding the balance of power between all three branches of government. That said, nothing about my joining in Justice Page’s concurrence should be construed to diminish my support for the opinion of the majority, which I support without reservation.