Minnesota House Speaker Kurt Daudt is calling on Governor Mark Dayton to explain taxpayer-funded severance payments after a new report that the governor’s administration awarded nearly $80,000 to state employees who voluntarily departed.

 

A Dayton spokesman responds that “State law explicitly authorizes severance of up to six months’ salary for senior-level state employees, who make more than 60 percent of the Governor’s salary, when they leave state service.  Governor Pawlenty used the same statute to authorize severance payments of $73,552 for two senior level state employees.”