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*March 10, 2023*






Robbins Coffee with Constituents

Dear Friends and Neighbors,

Tomorrow I am hosting my first "Coffee with Constituents" of the 2023 Session! Please join me at the HyVee in Maple Grove between 9:00am - 10:30am or at Blackwater Coffee & Cafe in Maple Plain from 11:00 am - 12:30pm to share your concerns and priorities for this legislative session. I look forward to sharing a cup of coffee with you tomorrow!

This week was first deadline for bills to be heard in a House Committee, so committees have had long hearings. I also had many great constituent meetings with people from our district! Great thanks to everyone who takes the time to come to the Capitol to share their concerns and priorities! I really value hearing from you and learning more from your expertise!







Executive Summary

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Give It Back

*
Safe & Sound Public Safety Plan

*
Sanford - Fairview Merger & the U of M

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Pregnancy and Parental Leave Law

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Social Security Urgency

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Bonding Bill






Give It Back

It is concerning that with a $17.5 billion surplus, Democrats have not brought a single bill to the House floor that would provide tax relief for hardworking Minnesotans. Instead, they have been spending the surplus to grow government. Our families are struggling with rising costs. Now is the time to give them relief instead of spending more on Minnesota's bureaucracy.?

*Last week, House and Senate Republicans shared our "Give It Back" tax plan*?to return the surplus and provide families and Seniors with meaningful tax relief. I detailed this plan in last week?s newsletter. I spoke on elements of the package at our?*press conference which you can watch?**here* [ [link removed] ].






Safe & Sound Public Safety Plan

Robbins at Safe & Sound Press Conference

Yesterday,?*House and Senate Republicans released our "Safe & Sound Minnesota" public safety plan.*?I joined our public safety team at the press conference where we shared our policies to address the threat of violent and repeat criminals, strengthen police and improve training for law enforcement, and hold judges and prosecutors accountable with public data and information.?*Bills included in the package would:*


* Add a new crime of carjacking to state statute;
* Increase penalties for fleeing police in a motor vehicle;
* Align fentanyl to the same weight thresholds and penalties as heroin; and
* Increase sentences for those convicted with at least two prior crimes of violence;
* Support our state?s law enforcement officers with robust recruitment, training, and retention plans; and
* Put in place transparency and accountability measures for the state?s courts.

*Every Minnesotan should feel safe in their community. I hope we can work this session to achieve meaningful reforms to strengthen public safety.?*







Sanford - Fairview Merger?& the U of M

This week, the House Higher Education Committee, on which I serve, had our first?*hearing on a supplemental budget request from the University of Minnesota to reacquire four flagship medical facilities that it currently owns and operates jointly with Fairview*, under an agreement that it entered into in 1998 and which runs through 2026.

The University of Minnesota is concerned that the proposed merger between Sanford Health and Fairview will adversely impact the University?s control of these medical facilities and their ?public? mission as an academic and research facility.?

*The U of M is asking for $950 million to ?reacquire and operate? these facilities this session, but they have provided little information on how they arrived at that figure. In addition, they did not provide the Committee with any data on the actual value of the properties or the cost of continuing to operate the facilities as the sole owner.?**?*

The Fairview-Sanford merger is likely to be completed sometime this year and the current agreement is for the joint Fairview/U of M facilities to continue to be run by a joint Fairview/U of M Board, that will report to the Sanford/Fairview parent board*.? All of the terms of the current contract between the U of M and Fairview will remain in place until 2026, regardless of the Fairview-Sanford merger.?**?*

*I believe we simply do not have enough information to make a sound decision on whether it is in the best interests of the U of M, the state, or the taxpayers to spend nearly $1 billion on the ?first phase? of reacquiring and operating these assets.*?


* In addition to these 4 properties, the U is also considering building a brand new medical facility. We have not been given any indication of how that future building will either replace or compliment existing facilities or how much additional money it would cost to construct and operate.
* *We also don?t have any information on who the new patient population would be at any of the facilities, should they be solely owned by the University.*?The current arrangement with Fairview ensures that the University?s medical system has access to the Fairview system?s patients through its primary care referral network. If that relationship is ended, who will partner with the University to refer paying patients? Allina and Park Nicollet already have their own hospital systems, so it is unclear who would be a viable partner.

*Until we have answers the questions I raised, I do not think we should give the University nearly $1 billion in the next 8 weeks.*?*The current relationship will continue until 2026 and we need to use that time to fully understand the value of the properties, the cost of operating the facilities, the cost of a potential new medical center, and who would replace Fairview as a patient referral network.**?*

Only when we understand these issues can we make a decision about what is best for our flagship academic and medical research institutions at the U of M.?*You can listen to a KSTP story and some of my remarks**?**here* [ [link removed] ]*.*?






Pregnancy and Parental Leave Law

Last night we debated *yet another one-size-fits-all mandate on our smallest employers* to provide additional accommodation and leave for pregnancy, breast-feeding, and parental leave.?

*This is the third major bill addressing this issue and it will be incredibly difficult for small businesses to understand and comply with the competing requirements of this bill, the already-passed Earned Sick & Safe Time bill, and the upcoming Paid Family & Medical Leave bill.*

Under current law, all Minnesotan businesses with 21 employees or more must give full or half-time employees who have worked for 12 months reasonable accommodations for expressing breast milk and allow them to take up to 12 weeks of unpaid leave for pregnancy and parenting, including up to 16 hours for school conferences or classroom activities.?

This state version of the federal Family & Medical Leave Act has been in place since 1987 and has worked well.? There have been very few complaints filed with the Department of Labor on average each year for the last 36 years.

*The new bill (**HF 1104* [ [link removed] ]*) would require ALL employers with one or more employees to provide time to express milk (no longer called ?breast milk?) at work and provide 12 weeks of unpaid pregnancy or parenting leave*, while guaranteeing the employee the right to return to the same or similar job when they return.

*Employment law has always recognized how hard these mandates are for small businesses and generally exempts them. The federal law exempts businesses under 50 employees and state law has exempted businesses with less than 21 employees since 1987.*

In addition to mandating this leave for ALL employers (business, non-profit, cities, counties, etc.), it also:


* Removes the ?undue burden? standard that gives employers flexibility to make accommodations in a way that doesn?t impose undue burdens or costs;
* Requires that the employers provide a ?clean, safe and secure? place for expressing milk. This is undefined, but could require small employers to provide a separate locked room, which may not work for their space or may be cost-prohibitive;
* Eliminates that requirement that employees work full time or half-time for one year before they qualify for the unpaid leave.?*We were able to get an amendment accepted that said employees had to work for 90 days, but the bill still applies to ALL part-time and seasonal employees, not just full or half-time employees;*
* Expands the definition prohibited retaliation against employees who exercise their rights under the bill. Current law already prohibits an employer from ?retaliating? against an employee, but the new language prohibits and employer from ?discharging, disciplining, penalizing, interfering with, threatening, restraining, coercing or otherwise discriminating against an employee for asserting their rights.?

We offered several amendments to restore flexibility for small employers but all but one were defeated on party-line votes.?

*Employers with less than 20 employees make up only 14% of the workforce but represent 85% of all of the business in Minnesota.*?

*The current law, which exempts employers with 20 employees or less, has worked well since 1987 ? there is no reason to add this new ?one-size-fits-all? mandate on our smallest job creators ? except to be punitive.?*The author of the bill even stated that in her remarks. She acknowledged that most small employers do a good job of working with employees to make accommodations*, but said ?we are legislating to the worst of us.?*

That is the wrong way to think about good public policy. See my response?here [ [link removed] ].

Government should regulate business in the most limited way that still protects public health and safety. We already have laws on the books to address bad actors.

We should not penalize all businesses owners with new one-size-fits-all mandates when there have been no significant problems with current law and we have penalties in place to address bad actions by a few.






Social Security Urgency

Last night I led the fight to declare an ?urgency? and pass?HF 300 [ [link removed] ], a bill introduced by?*DFL Rep. Dave Lislegard*?*that would fully eliminate the tax on Social Security and create a new state tax subtraction for public pension recipients receive their pension benefits in lieu of Social Security.*

We heard this bill in the Tax Committee yesterday and the testimony from Seniors, teachers, firefighters and others was very compelling. I believe it is even better than my bill to eliminate the tax on Social Security (HF 136), because it also ensures those who don?t get Social Security get a tax break on their pension benefits.

*The bill has 12 DFL co-authors, so I attempted to declare and urgency and get it passed last night as a bipartisan effort to give real relief to Seniors in Minnesota and to prevent this from being used as a bargaining chip in the end-of-session negotiations.*?Seniors in Minnesota deserve to have this passed as a stand-alone-bill, not tied up in the horse-trading that accompanies omnibus bills in final days of session.

We were not successful last night but we will keep fighting! You can watch some of my remarks?here [ [link removed] ].






Bonding Bill

On Monday, the House approved the largest bonding bill in state history. While bonding is typically done in the second year of the biennium, Democrats pushed a bill earlier this session because we did not approve a bonding bill last year.?

I believe the state has an obligation to maintain state assets and infrastructure, such as road, bridges and other state facilities, so I am not unalterably opposed to bonding. I do think bonding should be limited and that projects should be paid for in cash when possible, so we can limit the state?s debt burden and interest payments.

Minnesota has a $17.5 billion surplus. I do not think we should borrow money this year and pay interest to fund projects when the state has so much one-time cash available.

I voted ?no? on the General Obligation (GO) bonding bill, but I did vote ?yes? for the cash bill. Included in the cash portion was my?bill [ [link removed] ]?to provide $450,000 for the Town Line Road railroad crossing in Medina and Independence, at the edge of Loretto. Former Rep. Hertaus had worked on this last year, and I was happy to get it over the finish line in the House.






Photos

Robbins with Orono school board members

More great constituent meetings! Thanks to Orono Public Schools for sharing your priorities with me






Please Contact Me

Many of you have already been in touch to discuss your thoughts on the issues that matter most to you. Thank you for sharing your ideas! Please continue to contact me to discuss any matters to which I can be of assistance.?I?d also love to meet you if you are coming to the Capitol!

The best way to reach me is by email:[email protected]. For occasional updates, you can follow my Facebook Page at @RepKristinRobbins. You can also leave a voicemail on my office number, 651-296-7806, which is checked multiple times/week.

Have a great weekend!

?

Kristin











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Saint Paul, MN 55155
ph: 651.296.7806







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