Legislative update - April 30, 2025
Publish Date
Committees
With three weeks left in session, the House and Senate began passing omnibus budget bills off the floors and will be moving them to conference committee next week. As of Tuesday afternoon, the Senate has passed the omnibus State and Local Government Finance bill, the Commerce and Consumer Protection Finance bill, the Veterans and Military Affairs bill and the Housing bill.
The House passed the omnibus Agriculture Finance bill, the Transportation Finance bill, the Legacy bill, the Higher Education Finance bill and the Judiciary and Public Safety Finance bill. Several House committees have bills that could not be closed in time due to policy contentions, specifically the House Health committee and the Workforce and Labor committee. The House Education Finance committee recently reached a deal on their bill, which provides no operating adjustments for the agencies in its jurisdiction and discontinues providing unemployment insurance coverage for hourly school workers. MAPE currently opposes the bill.
As mentioned in previous updates, the House budget target leaves a lot to be desired - both the lack of new revenue to help balance some of the cuts here at the state level and not preparing 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 governor's DOC operating adjustment budget request, which was already significantly short of their needed funding amounts. This means significant cuts and layoffs unless the House and Senate receive higher joint budget targets in 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. The Senate also does not fully fund several agency requests, including Vocational Rehabilitation Services, the MN Zoo, and Department of Commerce. The Senate also passed language in the State Government bill that prohibits grant-authorizing agencies from collecting administrative fees unless specifically authorized in the budget appropriation.
Two bills that have not seen the light of day are the Tax bill and the Bonding bill. With impending state and federal cuts, Minnesota will need to raise considerable revenue if we hope to mitigate devastating impacts to services and staff.
Pensions committee is also starting to wind down their work. The committee will reconsider the early retirement for corrections agents bill. After numerous hearings and no agreement, advocates will be pursuing new options.
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.