In 2006, Tim Pawlenty signed a bill that authorized the construction of a new stadium for the Minnesota Twins. Turns out in order to help fund the stadium (cost: $522 million), Pawlenty didn’t interfere when the county where the stadium was located opted to hike taxes without getting permission from local voters. From RealClearPolitics’s Scott Conroy:

Though the Twins agreed to pay approximately one-third of the cost, the rest of the bill was to be footed by a 0.15 percent sales tax hike in Hennepin County — a relatively small encumbrance on the state’s largest county, but an increased tax burden nonetheless. The bill was controversial, since the state legislature and Pawlenty took advantage of a 1997 law to grant the county board permission to enact the new tax without a voter referendum. …
Pawlenty spokesman Alex Conant emphasized that all of the funding for the stadium project came from the county, not the state, and that local officials could have made the decision to put the tax hike to a vote before the governor got involved.
“He didn’t approve the sales tax,” Conant said of Pawlenty. “He simply let the local government — Hennepin County — decide how to proceed on its own.”