Legislative update - April 16, 2025
Publish Date
Committees
Last week, the House and Senate assembled their omnibus finance and policy bills, voting them out of committee to the House Ways and Means committee and Senate Finance committees ahead of the Friday’s deadline to act on major finance bills. However, due to the evenly divided chamber, several House committees had bills that could not be closed in time due to policy contentions. This resulted in the House Health committee, the Workforce and Labor committee, and the Education Finance committee to vote out “vehicle bills” for the DFL and GOP leadership to negotiate the final provisions.
As mentioned in previous updates, the House budget target leaves a lot to be desired, specifically regarding the lack of new revenue to help balance some of the cuts here at the state level, as well as prepare to mitigate devastating impacts of proposed federal cuts. MAPE has significant concerns around the current proposed operating adjustments for numerous agencies, specifically the Department of Corrections, as neither the House nor Senate provide more than 46 percent of the DOC operating adjustment budget request. This means significant cuts and layoffs unless the House and Senate receive higher joint budget targets conference committee.
In the House, other agencies that currently do not have their full operating adjustments are Public Safety, Revenue, Mn.IT Services, Natural Resources, Mn Zoo, Pollution Control Agency, Children, Youth and Families, Employment and Economic Development and others. MAPE also collaborated with workers at MDH impacted by federal cuts to advocate for creating a funding stopgap so they can wind down their work under a more reasonable timeline.
Tax committees heard a proposal to tax the data collected by social media corporations, which is a novel approach to a growing revenue sector. This would raise about $90 million in FY 26-27, which is nowhere near enough but seems to have support. MAPE will also be introducing a bill for enhanced corporate tax compliance and reintroducing the worldwide combined reporting proposals, which would help end tax shelters for multinational corporate profits.
Pensions committee is starting to also wind down their work. The committee will reconsider the early retirement for corrections agents bill, using a new amortization assumption of 15 years, that would have corrections agents pay 11.39 percent of payroll in exchange for retiring at 60 or after 35 years of service.
This week is the legislative break and many DFL legislators are joining their congressional partners to hold townhall meetings. Emails with registration details are being sent out on a rolling basis and we encourage folks to attend and talk about the need for more revenue to support public services.
Other updates
MAPE will continue to fight the Walz administration on their return to office mandate and look for opportunities to escalate our demand that he rescinds the directive and negotiate with us in good faith.