It’s omnibus season at the Minnesota Legislature, with the focus of a legislative session just one month from completion shifting from committee work to the conference committees set to negotiate the final details on several significant omnibus packages driven by DFL majorities.
Under an agreement of House and Senate leadership announced before the session began, Friday marked the Legislature’s third and final deadline, by which committees in both the House and Senate must act favorably on major finance and appropriation bills.
Over the two year biennium, Minnesota legislators have introduced more than 10,000 bills covering every conceivable subject, and the large majority formally came to a quiet death either last week or last month with the first and second committee deadlines.
Even more bills are likely to be introduced over the last few weeks of session, despite being guaranteed to fail this year. After all, many bills take several legislative sessions to pass, and legislators also introduce bills to stake out their positions on key issues or lay out an agenda for when their party returns to power.
After all, many once-doomed ideas and proposals became viable overnight and law last year after the most minor of shifts in voter preferences helped the DFL to win a bare majority in the Minnesota Senate, giving the party full control of the levers of power in St. Paul.
On the surface level, Minnesota has earned its reputation as a reliably Democratic state, with no Republican having won a statewide race in Minnesota since 2006 and no Republican Presidential candidate having won Minnesota’s electoral votes since 1972.
While overwhelming margins in Minneapolis, St. Paul and their inner ring suburbs make DFL candidates tough to beat statewide, many DFL victories have been fairly narrow and over the last decade, the GOP has largely established itself as Greater Minnesota’s party of choice.
Those internal divides left Minnesota for years as a lonely holdout while the large majority of states sorted themselves firmly into the red or blue camps, with divided government and the compromise it necessitated the lay of the land for all but two years from 1990 to 2022.
When the DFL was finally able to clinch a bare majority in 2022, it did so with an unprecedented meager representation from Greater Minnesota — just six of 34 DFL Senators and 12 of 70 DFL Representatives represent Districts mostly outside the seven county metro area.
With ideologically coherent DFL majorities newly empowered not only with full control but a robust surplus at their disposal, the result was a historic 2023 legislative session which passed massive new reforms and increased state spending by close to 40% over the biennium.
Meanwhile, the area’s Republican legislators largely expressed frustration at their inability to get their ideas even considered in DFL-run committees. After this session, all three local Republican Representatives, Reps. Brian Daniels of Faribault, John Petersburg of Waseca and Brian Pfarr of Le Sueur, are headed for the exits after a combined total of over 25 years in St. Paul.
This fall, Republicans only need a net gain of four seats in the Minnesota House to win back control of the chamber, and a special election in the State Senate seat currently held by Sen. Kelly Morrison, DFL-Deepwater, should she win election to Congress could even provide the GOP a dark horse opportunity to snatch back Senate control early next year.
With only a limited number of seats truly in play, the DFL’s ability to retain its trifecta is likely to be decided by a small number of voters in the Twin Cities suburbs as well as those in a handful of more DFL-friendly enclaves in Greater Minnesota, particularly college towns.
Ahead of the crucial elections, some DFL legislators wanted to push state policy even further to the left, pushing bills to legalize medical aid in dying, make Minnesota a sanctuary state, tighten gun control laws and allow all Minnesotans to buy into MinnesotaCare with a public option.
However, those proposals ultimately fell by the wayside amid resistance from more moderate DFLers as well as from party leadership who reminded members that even numbered years are traditionally not budget years and little of the state’s once $18 billion surplus remains.
Other bills fell by the wayside despite significant support, including bills that would have restricted the ability of local governments to adopt zoning practices which advocates say have made it difficult for developers to build affordable multifamily housing.
Backed by Housing Committee Chairs Rep. Michael Howard, DFL-Richfield, and Sen. Lindsey Port, DFL-Burnsville, the proposed legislation would have required cities to allow construction of duplexes, triplexes and complexes of up to 10 units in areas zoned for single family housing.
Other proposed reforms would have limited the use of parking minimums and minimum lot sizes, and would have prohibited the demolition of affordable housing units unless replaced by a new development including at least as many affordable units.
Despite bipartisan support and backing from business groups, builders and affordable housing advocates, the bills failed to advance at the capitol amid a full-court press of opposition from the League of Minnesota Cities, a traditionally staunch advocate of local control.
Efforts to pass a sports betting bill continue but face major challenges. Though legalization has strong bipartisan support in theory and several bills have advanced, the traditional disputes which have prevented the legislature from making Minnesota the 39th state to allow legal sports betting have persisted.
The cornerstone of the session, as is typical for an even numbered session, is likely to be the bonding bill. However, the bill is likely to be smaller than last year’s $2.5 billion package, which was particularly large to help make up for the failure to pass any bonding bill in 2022.
Bonding is traditionally the last item to pass in the legislative session. Under the Minnesota Constitution, a bonding bill which includes borrowing will also require a three-fifths vote by both chambers, making it one of the few bills DFLers cannot pass on a strictly party line vote.
Pfarr
After just two terms in the legislature, Rep. Brian Pfarr, R-Le Sueur, is leaving the legislature after receiving a promotion from his primary employer, First Farmers & Merchants Bank, which will mean both more time on the job and an expected move outside of Le Sueur.
One bipartisan provision that Pfarr is hoping to advance would add hasenpfeffer to the allowable list of card games at Minnesota establishments. Pfarr said the idea was brought to him by a local Le Sueur bar owner who said that the game is more common and popular than others already allowed under state law.
The bill was heard in the Commerce Committee and Pfarr said that Commerce Committee Chair Zack Stephenson, DFL-Coon Rapids, is supportive. However, its prospects remain unclear as it is only likely to pass as an amendment to a broader gambling bill, not as a standalone item.
Pfarr also expressed concerns about legislation which makes significant modifications to the cannabis legalization bill passed last year. A strong opponent of the original bill, Pfarr suggested that the update, which passed on a near party-line vote, misses the mark as well.
In an attempt to speed up the rollout of the legal cannabis marketplace, the license allocation system will shift from a strict merit-based approach weighted towards “social equity applicants” towards a lottery-based system.
In other states, the merit-based approach has led to lawsuits and delays in roll-out. However, Pfarr and other Republicans raised concerns that a lottery approach could indiscriminately hurt applicants who have a well-thought out business plan but got unlucky.
Draheim
As a member of the powerful Senate Finance Committee, Sen. Rich Draheim, R-Madison Lake, has gotten a front row seat as the DFL majority has moved forward piece by piece with supplemental spending plans adding another $477.5 million of spending in the current biennium.
Senate Finance is one of a handful of committees exempted from the committee deadlines, so the committee will continue to hear legislation over the next month, often as a last stop after clearing other committees and before going to the floor.
Draheim lamented the overall lack of bipartisanship, though he managed to get amended to the Jobs and Economic Policy omnibus an amendment to provide greater transparency around the use of economic development grants over $500,000.
As for a bonding bill, Draheim said that attempts to include funding for affordable housing in the bonding bill would end up particularly expensive and also criticized the DFL for including grants to nonprofits in last year’s bonding bill.
Draheim also criticized the proposal for $12 million to replace the irrigation system at Giants Ridge, a publicly owned golf course. With communities across the state struggling to pay for essential water infrastructure projects, Draheim said any bonding bill should eschew those kinds of “luxury amenities.”
Frentz
To help deliver on the ambitious goal of 100% clean electricity generation by 2040, Sen. Nick Frentz, DFL-North Mankato, shepherded legislation to passage that will streamline the permitting process for clean energy projects.
The final vote broke down nearly entirely along party lines, with Republicans arguing that permitting reform is a good idea that should be enacted in a much more expansive manner, cutting red tape for manufacturing, mining and other industries as well.
While the legislature may have a limited amount of cash to allocate in a non-budget year, Frentz’s omnibus bill allocates millions from the Renewable Development Account, a special funding source provided by Xcel Energy in exchange for being allowed to continue operating its Prairie Island and Monticello nuclear power plants.
The Senate omnibus bill would also set the stage for Minnesota to potentially make greater use of geothermal energy. A new Department of Commerce study would determine where in the state investing in geothermal would be the most productive while a new work group would identify opportunities to address barriers to potential development.
As a member of the Capital Investment Committee, Frentz said that he is optimistic over how negotiations on a bonding bill have progressed. In contrast to last year, Frentz said there seems to be less interest among his GOP colleagues in using the supermajority requirement as a bargaining chip.
“This year, bonding has had the least pushback of any of the years I’ve been in the senate so far,” Frentz said. “In many of the other years there’s at least one caucus saying not going to do bonding.”
Frentz has several projects he’d like to see included in a potential bonding bill, including most notably a proposed $50 million investment in the Bureau of Criminal Apprehension’s Evidence Processing Lab in Mankato and $74 million to demolish and replace Minnesota State-Mankato’s Armstrong Hall.
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