Having trouble viewing this email? View it as a Web page.

May 8, 2024

Legislative Update

Friends and Neighbors,   We are now in the final days of the legislative session and have just six legislative days left! Conference Committees and other omnibus bills have seen progress over the last week which has led to many late nights on the floor. We in the House of Representatives have already heard most of the omnibus bills on the Floor and sent them over to the Senate, but there are still a few left to debate and take other actions on. I've included a table below of each omnibus bill and other notable bills this session:

Yesterday both the Higher Education Omnibus Bill and the Judiciary Bill passed off of the House Floor after a debate that ran for several hours. House Republicans have been fighting on the Floor to amend many of the above bills to either cut spending, cut regulations, or insert other commonsense proposals (since many of these bills don't include a single Republican provision).

During last week's floor sessions, we spent many late nights on the floor debating and attempting to amend the DFL's omnibus bills. The bulk of the omnibus bills have already passed the House as you can see above, but I want to give you a brief update of what all we passed last week.

Monday's session began promptly at 11:00 am, where we tackled a lineup of eight bills. We ended up spending over 12 hours on the gun bills alone and the rest were tabled when we adjourned at midnight. A major point of contention was the bill mandating the immediate reporting of lost and stolen firearms. Although this bill is aimed at enhancing responsibility among gun owners, and is something that responsible gun owners do anyway, the bill's vague language could unjustly penalize victims of theft which led to my "no" vote.

Throughout Tuesday and Wednesday, the House reviewed multiple omnibus bills spanning Education Finance, Legacy, Children & Families, and a combined Transportation/Labor/Housing bill, followed by Pensions. Despite their generally neutral nature, I found several provisions concerning enough to vote against them, particularly due to the potential impact on small businesses and schools and the fact that they spend money amid a looming state deficit. There is simply too much in each of these bills to list each one in this newsletter, so if you'd like more details on one specific bill please send me an email at [email protected] to discuss further.

On Thursday, the debate extended over 12 hours as we discussed two additional gun control measures: a safe storage mandate and a ban on binary triggers. Both bills, in my view, failed to address the real issues at hand and instead introduced problematic stipulations that could have unintended consequences. For example, the storage mandate excessively broadens the scope of regulation, and would criminalize ordinary behavior in private homes. Also noteworthy was a positive development; we succeeded in upgrading the penalty for straw purchases to a felony after nearly five years of my colleague Rep. Peggy Scott trying to get a hearing on her bill to do just that.

On Friday, we debated the Taxes bill and began debate on the Higher Education Omnibus Bill that we finished yesterday. I offered several amendments to the Taxes bill that would have repealed taxes that were passed last year while the DFL was spending our record-breaking surplus, fixed problematic language regarding new corporate disclosures required in this bill, and another to require the Department of Revenue to list the amount of equity Minnesota has in each corporation that will be affected by these new disclosure requirements.

You can watch my floor speech on the amendment to repeal last year's new taxes on my Facebook page here.

I will try to keep this updated every few days as we finish out the last few days of session. Stay tuned.

Please Contact Me

Please continue to reach out if I can be of any assistance to you. You can reach me by phone at 651-296-3018 or by email at [email protected].

Have a great weekend! 

Patti

387 State Office Building
100 Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Blvd.
Saint Paul, MN 55155
ph: 651.296.3018