Capitol News Report

Budget Actions

 

The House and Senate spent many long hours, both day and night, on the Floor of each body passing bills to address the $5.2 billion budget deficit.  Other than the Omnibus Agriculture Finance bill which had bi-partisan support in the House, the budget bills mainly passed along party lines with Republicans supporting the bills and Democrats opposing the bills.  The House passed six Omnibus Finance bills:  Education, Taxes, Judiciary and Public Safety, Higher Education, Environment and Energy, and Agriculture. 

 

The Senate passed the following Omnibus Finance bills:  Environment, Energy and Commerce, State Government, Judiciary and Public Safety, Education, Agriculture, Jobs and Economic Development, Health and Human Services, and Higher Education. 

 

The House Ways and Means Committee will take up the Omnibus State Government Finance bill and Omnibus Health and Human Services Finance bill on Monday.  These will be sent to the House Floor for final action, together with the Omnibus Jobs and Economic Development Finance bill which is also awaiting final action.  The Senate will take up the remaining Omnibus bills – Transportation and Taxes early in the week. 

 

House and Senate Republican Leaders have stated that they are about a month ahead of the typical schedule for passing the budget bills.  This will provide several weeks for conference committee deliberations and negotiations with the Governor in order to reach an agreement on the budget before the Constitutional end-of-session deadline of May 23, 2011. 

 

Special Election Primary

 

The Primary Election in Senate District 66 was held on Tuesday, March 29.  Former Representative Mary Jo McGuire won with 54-percent of the vote over current Representative John Lesch who garnered 36-percent, and attorney Steve Marchese who captured 10-percent of the vote.  The Senate seat is vacant due to the appointment of Senator Ellen Anderson to the Public Utilities Commission.  The winner of the DFL primary will face Republican Greg Copeland in the general election on April 12, 2011.

 

 

LEGISLATURE

The Legislature has spent the past two weeks working hard putting together their omnibus budget bills in the House and Senate Finance committees. The deadline for bills had to be passed out of the finance committees was the end of the day on Friday, March 25th.

Next week, the House and Senate will turn their attention to Floor debates and passage of the omnibus budget bills, leading to conference committee deliberations. The policy issues and committees have been on hold for the past week or two, and will not resume until the following week.

The House will start with the Omnibus Tax bill as its first bill taken up to address the budget; it will be followed by the Omnibus Transportation Finance bill. The Senate will begin with the Omnibus Agriculture Finance and Omnibus Jobs, Economic Development and Housing Appropriations bill.

The Primary Election for the upcoming Special Election in Senate District 66 will be held on Tuesday, March 29. Running in the DFL primary are: current Representative John Lesch, attorney Steve Marchese, and former Representative Mary Jo McGuire. The Senate seat is vacant due to the appointment of Senator Ellen Anderson to the Public Utilities Commission. The winner of the DFL primary will face Republican Greg Copeland in the general election on April 12, 2011.

We can expect long, heated debates in both the House and Senate next week. If you want to watch the debates, you can access the House and Senate Floor webcasts at:

http://www.house.leg.state.mn.us/htv/schedule.asp or http://www.senate.mn/media/

LEGISLATURE

The House and Senate continue to work on addressing the state's budget deficit.  The committee's are reviewing the Governor's budget recommendations and heating budget and other funding requests from various groups.  The House and Senate committees and on to the House Ways and Means and Senate Finance committees by March 25th, 2011.

PRIORITY BILLS

Two key priority bills were sent to the Governor this week.  House File 1 – Streamlined Permitting bill was passed by the House and Senate and signed by Governor Dayton.  The new law, Minnesota Laws 2011, Chapter 4, addressed the permitting process for the Department of Natural Resources (DNR) and the pollution Control Agency (PCA) and closely follows an Executive Order issued by Governor Dayton earlier in the session.  The law, which is effective  March 4, 2011, requires the DNR and PCA to issue or deny environmental and resource management permits within 150 days of a submitted application.  The DNR and PCA will have 30 days to make that determination.

Senate File 40 – Alternative Teacher Licensure was re-passed by the House and Senate this week following several days of negotiations with Governor Dayton and Education Commissioner Cassellius.  The Legislature reached agreement with the Governor on the  details of the bill which provides for and alternative past to licensure in order to address teaching needs in the state.

The Governor will hold a signing ceremony on Monday at 9:30 a.m. in the Governor's Reception room.

GOVERNOR DAYTON

Budget – On Monday, the Minnesota Management and budget office released the February Forecast, an update on the anticipated revenues and expenditures of the state.  the good news is that the budget outlook for fiscal years 2011-13 improved by $1.160 billion.  This includes a $264 million projected increase in the expected ending balance for the current biennium and a $896 million improvement in the budget forecast for the 2012-13 biennium outlook.  This reduces next bienniums projected budget deficit to $5.028 billion, $1.160 billion less than forecast in november.

Following the announcement of the budget forecast, Governor Dayton announced that he will revise his budget proposal to eliminate the proposed income tax surcharge, reduce the approximately $200 million proposed in cuts to the Department of Human Services for seniors' long-term care, MinnesotaCare and community action grants; restore funding for metro and rural transit to eliminate and state imposed need for fare increases; restore cuts to fire safety training; increase the research and development credit to promote Minnesota job growth; and provide $5 million to the Department of Employment and Economic Development (DEED) for the Minnesota Investment Fund (MIF) and the DEED Redevelopment Fund.

Metropolitan Council – THe Governor named his appointments to the Metropolitan Council through a "Notice of Intent to Appoint" form filed with the Secretary of State for the sixteen Metropolitan Council Districts.  After a five day review period, required by statute, the individuls will be appointed to the Metropolitan Council next Monday, March 7, 2011.  Those individuals are:

District 1:    Roxanne Smith, Champlin
District 2:    Lona Schreiber, Brooklyn Park
District 3:    Jennifer Munt, Minnetonka 
District 4:    Gary Van Eyll, Chaska
District 5:    Steven Elkins, Bloomington
District 6:    James Brimeyer, St. Louis Park
District 7:    Gary Cunningham, Minneapolis
District 8:    Adam Duininck, Minneapolis
District 9:    Edward Reynoso, Ham Lake
District 10:  John Doan, Blaine
District 11:  Sandra Rummel, White Bear Lake
District 12:  Harry Melander, Mahtomedi
District 13:  Richard Kramer, St. Paul
District 14:  Jon Commers, St. Paul
District 15:  Steven Chavez, Eagan
District 16:  Wendy Wulff, Lakeville

A copy of the Governor's press release and biographical information about the candidates can be found at:  http://mn.gov/governor/newsroom/pressreleasedetail.jsp?id=10031

NEXT WEEK

The House and Senate leaders expect to announce budget targets for the individual committees by the end of next week.  These targets will give a good look at the Republican majorities budget priorities for the legislative session and will provide clarity on where budget cuts will occur.