Session Ends in Chaos

Yesterday, we adjourned sine die, meaning that it is the end of the biennium and the 93^rd legislature. No bills can be passed on the day of adjournment, so we said goodbye to our retiring members and listened to their retirement speeches. We will reconvene the first week in January of 2025 as the 94^th legislature after the November elections with a new roster of representatives. Sunday marked the last day of the session that bills could pass. I would describe the final day of legislative work as chaotic, though that word does little to describe how insane the final hours of the 93^rd legislature were.

For perspective, all legislative business had to be completed by 11:59 pm on Sunday and no bills could pass after that time according to our state's constitution. Late into the evening on the last day we were debating  SF 4942, the Agriculture, Energy, Utilities, Environment, and Climate supplemental budget bill. First of all, the fact all of those subjects are wrapped into one ginormous omnibus bill is ridiculous and a poor example of governance. Keep that in mind for later as it is a great foreshadowing of what was to come. Rep. Patty Acomb (D), who is the author in the House, finished giving her closing remarks and asked members to vote yes on the bill. We were expecting a vote, when the majority leader stood to be recognized and made a motion to table the bill.

Speaker Hortman (D), began the process of tabling the bill during which time Minority Leader Demuth (R), asked for a roll call, which is a non-debatable motion. It requires 15 people to agree by raising their hands. Once that has happened, instead of voting by voice, members must vote by pressing their "yes" or "no" button on their desks. It also provides the public with a record of who voted in which way. Instead of recognizing the minority leader’s motion, the Speaker continued with the vote, refusing to recognize a single member of the minority party. During the vote, you can hear Leader Demuth continue to request a roll call, and eventually call for division after being ignored. Division is called when a voice vote is too close to tell who won. It requires that members stand to indicate which way they voted. The call for division was also ignored (see video by clicking above picture).

Now just after 11:00 pm, Majority Leader Long (D), began opening remarks to HF 5247, the Taxes Omnibus Conference Committee Report. One would think that by the name of the bill, it would refer to taxes. However, as I mentioned earlier, the Agriculture bill was not the only logrolled heap of garbage that would pass on Sunday. Aside from tax provisions, this bill contained:

• HF 5242 – Transportation Bill
• HF 4247 – Scope of Practice and Licensing Bill
• HF 4024 – Higher Education Policy Bill
• HF 2609 – Binary Trigger Ban/Straw Purchaser Penalty
• SF 4942 – The entirety of the Agriculture, Commerce, Energy, Utilities, Environment, and Climate bill we were previously debating
• SF 5335 – Human Services Omnibus Bill
• SF 4699 – Health and Human Services Supplemental Appropriations Bill
• HF 5363 – Minnesota Paid Leave Law (changes from last session)

This Grand Theft Omnibus bill weighed in at a whopping 1,430 pages in total length. Its first appearance was in the dead of night in the final hour of session in the Tax Conference Committee. Because of its length, late appearance and not being available in print or online, members could not read the language before it was brought to a vote. It was not available to read online until long after we adjourned, nor was it feasible to give members printed copies. Many of our members rose to be recognized for points of order or points of parliamentary inquiry but were ignored by the Speaker. To move to an immediate vote on a bill of this size without the ability to read it, caucus it, or debate it is irresponsible and quite simply undemocratic. Without a chance to read or debate a bill of this size and scope, there are sure to be provisions in there that lawmakers voted on without knowing what they were, or their ramifications. We were not even given an index of the multiple omnibus bills adopted into the Tax Omnibus Conference Committee Report. And, indeed on Monday, we learned that there were a handful of provisions that were air dropped into the bill that never went through the proper committee process, which means they were never debated and the public had not received the opportunity to provide input.

Democrats had made the point that a similar maneuver was pulled by former Republican Speaker, Kurt Daudt. While it’s true that Rep. Daudt did bring a 990-page omnibus bill to the floor in the last hours in 2018, Daudt had claimed that his bill had gone through the committee process. Indeed, according to the Office of the Revisor, the bill was first introduced on March 21, 2018, nearly two months before the end of session. The media dubbed this bill “omnibus prime” because of how large it was. However, the bill we heard on Sunday is significantly larger than the 2018 bill. To make matters more interesting, Speaker Hortman said in 2018, “Nobody looking at this legislative session, Democrat or Republican, should ever do anything like that ever again. We certainly would not.” It was later vetoed by Governor Dayton. Fast forward six years and she has done exactly that, but larger in scale and offered zero time to read the bill as it wasn't made publicly available. There was zero time to debate the bill and zero time to express our objections.

At the end of the day, Democrats had two full years of control over state government. They had zero meaningful opposition in the sense that they could pass anything they wanted without Republican votes, and they still could not get the work done properly. Instead, they forced a vote on a ridiculously large and unvetted bill without any floor debate. They passed law without knowing how those provisions may impact you and the people of Minnesota. It is an irresponsible and tyrannical way to govern and a shame to the institution that is the state legislature.

Finally, to add insult to injury, at the press conference immediately after Speaker Hortman forced through her addend, she said, "The Democrats in the Minnesota House of Representatives did what we needed to do to pass our agenda." You can see that press conference here.

When asked by the press about how she treated the minority she blamed us and said, "...they wanted to co-govern." Excuse me Speaker but we were duly elected to do just that. The Speaker wielded her power and governed like the Legislature was comprised of only 104 members (one of which was charged with a violent felony and was the Senate's deciding vote on every partisan bill they slammed through) not all 201 of us. This was a display of the worst abuse of power ever in state history. I look forward to a new Legislature being elected this November in the hopes of reestablishing order, process, decorum, civility, and frankly, respect for the institution.