A wide variety of local projects have been eliminated — at least temporarily — by a flurry of vetoes issued by Gov. Tim Pawlenty, who accuses Democrats who control the Legislature of spending too much and reforming too little.

While the Republican governor and DFL leaders butt heads, south-central Minnesotans are left wondering about budgets for their favorite projects or their place of employment as the legislative session moves into its final 10 days.

“It makes a big difference who’s governor, doesn’t it?” said Joe Kunkel, a political science professor at Minnesota State University. “The governor’s got the veto, the governor’s got the line-item veto.”

And Democrats controlling the Legislature don’t have the two-thirds majority needed to override Pawlenty’s vetoes.

“All he needs is one-third plus one in one house and a willingness to go to the wall,” Kunkel said.

The vetoes set the stage for some hard negotiations and leave a lot of government-financed programs in limbo.

Two lakes, three vetoes

Funding to remove tornado debris from Lake Emily just east of St. Peter was wiped out when Pawlenty vetoed the entire jobs and economic development budget bill. The compromise bill worked out by a House-Senate conference committee had included $75,000 to clean up the lake after an August tornado dropped debris into it from damaged and destroyed lakeside homes.

Another area lake clean-up project has now been struck by a pair of vetoes. Plans to reduce the amount of sediment and other pollution going into Sibley County’s Lake Titloe were funded partly in the state capital improvements bill, commonly called the bonding bill, and partly in the environment and natural resources budget bill.

The bonding bill was vetoed May 1, eliminating $165,000 for reducing the amount of sediment in the Rush River upstream from Lake Titloe.

Pawlenty signed the environment funding bill Tuesday but used a line-item veto to eliminate $200,000 to help Gaylord set up holding ponds for its storm water to keep it from going directly into the heavily polluted lake.

“Although this is an important water quality initiative, it is more appropriately funded in an upcoming capital improvements bill, either this year or in the traditional bonding year,” Pawlenty wrote in his veto message.

Economic development