MANKATO — The legislative session is over, the unallotments have been approved by Gov. Tim Pawlenty, but one of the state’s largest employee unions is still promoting its ideas for fixing part of Minnesota’s budget shortfall.

Officials with the Minnesota Association of Professional Employees say they have ideas that could eliminate the need for $350 million in cuts to health care programs or other parts of the budget made by Pawlenty through his unallotment powers.

The MAPE proposal calls for aggressively seeking to collect $240 million in unpaid taxes and unemployment insurance, capping the percentage of managers and supervisors at state agencies at 15 percent of total employees, replacing outside contractors with state employees and reducing out-of-state travel by state employees.

The union pushed the ideas, developed by a task force of union members from throughout state government, during the legislative session.

“Needless to say, it didn’t get a lot of traction,” said MAPE Executive Director Jim Monroe.

The budget problems aren’t over, however, and the union’s potential solutions can still be implemented, Monroe said.

“All of this is under the governor’s control,” Monroe said.

The governor’s office was asked to comment on the proposal. Officials there were also asked if Pawlenty has the authority to reduce the size of his unallotments, and responded with a somewhat opaque statement.

“The statute provides the authority to defer or suspend prior statutorily created obligations, which would prevent effectuating such reductions,” said Pawlenty spokesman Alex Carey.

Carey referred question about uncollected taxes to the Department of Revenue, and a spokeswoman there said she had been instructed to refer those sorts of questions to the governor’s office.

One clear opportunity to try to implement the MAPE proposals — or other ideas for cutting spending or boosting revenue — will be when the Legislature returns in February for the 2010 session.

Rep. Terry Morrow, DFL-St. Peter, said state employees have as much knowledge as anyone about how state dollars are being spent and where money could be saved.

“We should use MAPE’s expertise at any time but especially in economically tough times like these,” Morrow said, applauding employee unions for accepting pay freezes and suggesting the governor doesn’t need to wait until February to adopt the unions’ proposals. “... I would certainly hope the governor and his staff are listening to MAPE.”

Along with the $240 million in uncollected revenue, MAPE calculates that $110 million could be saved over the course of the state’s two-year budget cycle by paring the number of supervisors and managers in departments to no more than 15 percent of the workforce. That’s the maximum allowed for non-profits receiving state grants, so the state should accept the same standard for itself, Monroe said.

Many departments — based on 2008 figures — are already below 15 percent, including large departments such as Corrections and Employment and Economic Development (both 12 percent), Human Services (11 percent) and the Minnesota State Colleges and Universities (under 6 percent).

Several others are well above the figure, including Management and Budget (33 percent), and Natural Resources and Transportation (both more than 18 percent).

Paul Larson, assistant commissioner for the management and budget department, said he would need to look at MAPE’s figures to judge their accuracy but doesn’t sense that the state has a bloated management structure.

The union said it used the state’s own numbers for management figures.

“I know a lot of the operations of the state agencies, and I believe from a management perspective we’re operating as lean as we possibly can,” Larson said.

He also cautioned against the assumption that managers do nothing but supervise their staff. Most have a long list of duties, and supervision of a staff is simply an additional task.

“It’s just another add-on,” Larson said.

Monroe said MAPE’s budget fixes are motivated in part by concerns that its union of more than 13,000 government employees will face lay-offs as the state faces recurring budget shortfalls.

“We believe in protecting our membership,” he said. “I’m going to state that. This is not all altruistic.”

But Monroe also believes that broad sectors of Minnesota’s economy will be looking for better solutions once budget cuts approved by the Legislature and Pawlenty’s unallotments hit home later this year.