Gary Gross, who authors the GOP-leaning blog, letfreedomringblog.com and I have exchanged email about the unallotment litigation, and the Minnesota House entering that dispute as an Amicus party [a "friend of the court"].
Gary put up a post yesterday; this link; and I added info in three related but separate comments there. Since there is no need to reinvent the wheel, have a look at that link and then pursue the resource materials as you see fit.
The House Amicus brief is online, this link, (courtesy of Eric Black, at MinnPost, see also this prelude item), so readers can see its arguments in comparison to Gary's briefer presentation arguing the other [Pawlenty] side.
The litigation raising a constitutional challenge to Pawlenty's unallotment actions was filed Nov. 3, 2009; with the Amicus Brief submitted Nov. 20, 2009.
Dig as deeply into it as you choose. At this point it is not a fully developed story, but probably will gain attention as it is decided by the chief judge, and then further pursued on appeal.
Searching the law library's online cases, via a full text search off of this page, for the unallotment statute, Minn. Stat. 16A.152, subd. 4, via searching all online cases at that site for "16A.152" reveals the Rukavina case Gary cited is the only item the search returns. That means it is the only prior case under the statute (or that the search was defective, and perhaps another case might have contained the "16A.152" term). I would trust it as the only precedent under the statute.
________UPDATE_________
Gary's post makes one mistake (or it was made for him by another individual); the Rukavina case was not a top court opinion, nor an en banc Court of Appeals decision. Roughly speaking, a trial court should try to comport its opinion in the present situation with a rational reading of the earlier case; and a panel of the court of appeals may follow the earlier opinion or choose to differ. Only a Minnesota Supreme Court opinion would require deference from the intermediate reviewing court. Usually an intermediate court will want to explain and enlarge or limit earlier decisions from the same level, but, so far, only three intermediate appellate judges have written, without dissenting opinion, so the "precedent" is weaker than Gary's characterizing it as Supreme Court authority.
_________FURTHER UPDATE__________
There is always the possibility that an argument against the unallotment statute might exist, depending on its passage, if circumstances arguably violated the Single Subject and Title Clause of the Minnesota Constitution, Article IV, Section 17, when passed. (The argument has been successfully litigated; see, e.g., this online Supreme Court case).
Leaving that aside, I see an interesting question on the constitutionality of the process Pawlenty exploited, i.e., reading the statute as allowing him to veto the revenue portion of a balanced budget, and then to not in good faith seek to balance it by using the line item veto (where a veto could have been presented for overriding); which is the Constitutional way of doing things; Article IV, Section 23 (the entire Constitution is online as one item, or by chapters, see, this link).
Pawlenty apparently wilfully avoided the line-item veto process (presumably, with that existing as the only Constitutional provision on negating appropriations, it was intended to be exclusive of any and all other ways to evade its clear procedural specifications); so that Pawlenty arguably acted unconstitutionally, and willfully so; or it can be phrased that Pawlenty's reading the statute to include how he operated is an overbroad reading and in error, so that the statute in the main is constitutional, but the manner of Pawlenty's chosen way of exploitning it was not.
Having not read the Amicus brief, I do not know whether any such arguments were raised yet in the trial court, but since courts review the constitutionality of a stutute de novo as a matter of law, raising new arguments of law in the appellate courts not raised below, might, in unusual cases, not be forestalled.
But it sure appears that Pawlenty was playing games; by not taking line item veto steps where there would be another legislative bite at the apple, and not calling the legislature back into session, etc.
Perhaps calling a special session would have impeded his vast ambitious and self-centered present travel agenda, and seeing that impediment had he done that, he got cute with a vague statutory situation - the entire unallotment game he pulled.
_________FURTHER UPDATE_________
As a practical matter, delegation of "legislative" authority occurs where a budget is passed for, say MnDOT, and then it sets its spending priorities, and spends all alloted funds, or not. But that is executive agency behavior, not the chief executive affirmatively stepping to the plate saying, "I am rewriting the budget and not using line-item veto procedures to do it." It goes to the practical matter, after a legislature passes spending allotments, what authority does it have to force a governor to spend all of each allotment? If a governor runs a surplus by not spending it all, that's, however, quite different than a before the fact dithering with the spending priorities the legislature, within its powers, established by duly passing legislation which was not vetoed in whole or in part - unallocation being the tricky dance step used instead.
_________FINAL UPDATE___________
I have given links to two helpful MinnPost items above; yet there is a third that explains the dispute quite well; so giving all three now makes the most sense.
Here, here and here. And remember you can follow the case somewhat, by referring from time to time to the online docket. Also, expect local press coverage to continue, and if anything, to increase.
