HF 2 Passes House

Last Tuesday, the House debated HF 2, the Paid Family and Medical Leave bill. This bill has been rushed through committees from day one. Throughout the committee process, this bill has had either no fiscal note or an inaccurate one. In Ways and Means, the final committee stop, we had a fiscal note that was later revealed to be inaccurate.

Legislators were not informed that there even was a corrected fiscal note until we began the House Floor debate, and only then because during the debate I raised an alarming finding from the fiscal note we had received in Ways and Means. The entire process of this bill was appalling and inadequate. Even after receiving the corrected fiscal note, we still will not know what the local fiscal impact on schools, cities, and counties until after we adjourn in June. It is irresponsible to pass bills this way.

In addition, there are no verification mechanisms to prevent fraud. There is no mechanism to make sure that, if an employee says they are taking time off to care for a loved one, that the specified loved one is in need of help, that 50 other people have not taken off the same time to take care of the same person or that this loved one even exists. Theoretically, 50 or more people could take off 12 weeks to all take care of grandma in Florida at the same time.

As the GOP Higher Education lead, I made a motion to send the bill back to the Higher Education committee, since the bill never went through the committee even though this bill will greatly affect all of our university systems. This bill requires 14.1 new full-time employees at the University of Minnesota, and allocates $1.916 million to MNSCU and another $1.762 million to UMN. Even so, it was not discussed in the Higher Education Committee.

Unfortunately, the Democrats voted down that motion, as well as motions to send the bill back to Judiciary, Labor and Industry, State and Local Government, Commerce, and Human Services, each of which incur costs under this bill but never saw the fiscal note nor discussed the fiscal impacts. The costs to the State and Local Government committee area alone was $53 million over 4 years.

House Republicans proposed an amendment with an alternate plan for a private insurance option that would provide the same sort of benefits in a way that would not have the same negative impact on small businesses that the original bill had. You can see the comparison between the two plans in the table above. Unfortunately the amendment was voted down.

Bills should not be rushed through committees, they should not be heard in fiscal committees without a fiscal note, and they should not be passed without getting public input in committees that they affect. This bill imposes a direct payroll tax on employees that will only go up when the fund is quickly depleted from heavy use and abuse. The conservative estimate is $1 Billion in tax increases and sharp increases in the future. I voted no on this bill.

Higher Ed Conference Committee

On Wednesday of last week, we had a Higher Education Conference Committee meeting, where we walked through the spreadsheets and side-by-side comparisons between the House and Senate bills, and adopted same and similar provisions. While we have not met since then, we began hearing rumors on Monday that an agreement was reached between the House and Senate chairs, behind closed doors and with no public input, shutting out all of the four remaining conference committee members. We then found out late Monday night that conference committee chairs had published the agreement, even though I had not seen any language or even a high-level sketch of the agreement. I could not be more disappointed being frozen out of the conversations, and the public deserves better.

Rules Committee Meeting

On Thursday, the Rules Committee calendared a bill for Monday, HF 402, which requires health systems that have been sold or have transferred control to an out-of-state entity to return any charitable assets received from the state to the General Fund. The bill would also provide additional power to the Minnesota Department of Health to review and approve transactions made between hospitals and/or health care systems, a direct response to the proposed merger by Sanford Health and U of M Fairview Health Services.

Unfortunately, this is yet another instance of a bill going through nearly the entire committee process without a fiscal note, leaving legislators to debate and pass a bill without all the relevant information until the final committee stop. I made a motion during the Rules committee to remove this bill from the calendar because of it, but House Democrats voted to keep moving it through the process.

We debated and passed this bill along party lines on Monday this week and again raised these concerns. We made a motion to re-refer the bill back to the Higher Education Committee but the motion failed along party lines. This bill greatly expands the authority of the Attorney General to take legal action against health care systems, lacks proper data privacy for sensitive data and could result in the closure of small health care facilities. I voted no.

Ways and Means Meeting

On Friday, the Ways and Means committee heard HF 1900, a bill for a constitutional amendment to extend the Environment and Natural Resources Trust Fund to 2050, as well as increasing the amount that will go to the fund and allowing disbursal of community grants from the fund.

The bill also sets up a "community grant advisory council" consisting of 11 members appointed by the Department of Natural Resources (DNR), including two members of the Ojibwe Tribe; two members of the Dakota Tribe; and four members who identify as Black or African American, Hispanic or Latino, Asian or Pacific Islander, or another member of a community of color. When I asked a testifier from the DNR how the process for issuing community grants would work, and who would make the final decision, the testifier replied that she does not know as that had not be figured out yet.

As this is a constitutional amendment, the language for the ballot question is included in the bill. The bill author said that language was chosen based on a poll they did on what language would get the most positive response from voters. While much of the testimony was oriented around social and environmental justice, that language was not included in the ballot question.

Conference Committee Reports

On Monday, the House passed two conference committee reports for Veterans and Housing. The process in hammering out these conference reports was massively inadequate. The Veterans conference committee had no public testimony and no public walk through and input. The chairs walked into the Conference Committee and declared that they had an agreement. No language was made available nor were the spreadsheets and the Chairs walked back out. Our very own Senator Anderson served on the Conference Committee but had zero input in the creation of the final bill.

The Housing conference committee similarly had all of their negotiations away from the public eye. The Housing conference report also raises the metro sales tax by .25%, adding to the most regressive tax we have in Minnesota. It alone will raise taxes by $190 million per year when fully implemented. This bill further spends $1.1 Billion of the surplus for housing, meaning it goes to subsidize rent, maintain current low-income housing inventory and builds some affordable homes. It does nothing to lower the cost of actually building a home. I voted no.