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Dear Neighbor,
Greetings from the House, where committees have been busy buttoning up bills to fund various sections of the state budget for the next two-year cycle.
This includes bipartisan agreement on an omnibus finance bill in the House Children and Families Finance and Policy Committee, which I chair. The bill we crafted helps provide more families with greater access to affordable childcare with minor but important reforms to reduce costs. There also are important measures to help detect fraud and hold fraudsters accountable.
We had a signed, bipartisan agreement Friday, April 4. But the bill did not pass until a full week later. You might be asking yourself what took so long. The reason is Democrats went back on their word the next day. After signing the agreement, they wanted to gut my measure requiring video retention and camera requirement in infant and toddler rooms to address abuse we’ve seen recently in our state.
As you know, this provision is not just important for protecting kids and holding abusers accountable, but it’s also personally important to me. People must truly be held accountable and justice served when situations such as what my family experienced at Small World Learning Center in Blaine occur. I would never have agreed to the rest of the bill package without this provision.
In the end, in the interest of getting a budget done on time by our April 11 deadline, I was willing to further compromise. Unfortunately, Democrats required another $500,000 in spending on their priorities. This is an unacceptable way to do business, especially when bipartisan support is required for bills to pass in a House that is split 67-67 and has equal party balance in committees.
Our committee was able to overcome this setback and finalized an omnibus package that provides some steps in the right direction. Thank you to the families that appeared in committee meetings to support legislation we proposed. While we didn’t achieve the full objective in some cases, we took steps in the right direction thanks to your work.
I look forward to this bill and others that will comprise our state’s next two-year budget coming to the floor in the coming weeks. When the House returns to the Capitol on Monday, we will have less than one full month to complete our work and adjourn as required May 19. There will be many long days and nights debating this session’s biggest bills between now and then and I look forward to the challenge.
The biggest question that remains to be answered is whether a 67-67 tie in the House will force bipartisanship that serves Minnesotans well, or if it will cause a partisan standoff that prevents us from passing this year’s most important bills on time.
After 49 percent of the state was ignored in the last two-year budget, I hope we can ensure all Minnesotans’ voices are heard this year.
Sincerely,
Nolan
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