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*May 16, 2024*






Legislative Update

Friends and Neighbors,

 

It's crunch time. We're down to three legislative days left in the 2024 Session and there are still a significant number of bills the DFL majority wants to pass. Most of these bills are, in my opinion, bad bills that require thorough debate on the House Floor. The DFL trifecta has had two years to pass their bills, but as of now they've saved about 20 large omnibus bills and several other major pieces of legislation like the Uber, ERA and sports betting bills for the very last moments of session.

Bill Update

On Monday we passed the Education Policy and Finance Conference Committee Reports off of the House Floor for the final time. Again, though there are worthwhile provisions in these bills, I believe that they are a missed opportunity to roll back some of the 65 new mandates imposed on schools last year. We've all been hearing from our local districts that these mandates severely restrict available funding and that despite last year's "historic" education funding many districts are finding themselves worse off than before.

Last night we debated several bills, the most important of which being the paid family medical leave "fix-it" bill. This bill is more of a tax increase than a technical fix -* the payroll tax for this program has already increased by 25%* after the findings of an actuarial study. Remember, this massive program was seeded with $1 billion of the surplus and will employ over 400 new government employees. The program was also passed through several important committee hearings last year without a fiscal note, meaning that the majority never had any real idea of the cost before they passed it. *The total tax increase "so far" is over $800 million.*

This bill also specifies that the new department has* only 20 months to set up their new website and infrastructure despite not even having a signed contract with a vendor yet. *Minnesota doesn't exactly have a great track record with setting up new websites and IT systems (MNSURE and MNLARS), and several subject matter experts testified that this was not an adequate timeframe to get everything up and running. Despite this, the majority rejected a Republican amendment last night to lengthen the timeframe.

*While we were debating this bill on the floor last night, a bill with nearly a billion dollar tax increase, the Speaker shut down debate, forced a vote, and then quickly adjourned the session.*

Unfortunately, this hard-headed approach seems to be how the majority intends to pass the rest of their agenda by Sunday's midnight deadline - silencing debate and forcing votes.* Watch a clip from last night's incident here [ [link removed] ].*

We've also just heard that the ERA bill will be up first tomorrow and will include the House's language that includes enshrining abortion up until birth and the elimination of women's-only spaces and sports into the Minnesota Constitution. We will start debating this Friday morning when we reconvene at 11:00.






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! 

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Patti











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







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