GOPers on House children and families panel balk at omnibus bills in final scheduled meeting

As of this moment, there will be no omnibus bill coming out of the House Children and Families Finance and Policy Committee, which came as a surprise to half the committee members Wednesday.

Tears were shed during the meeting as a party-line dispute over process ultimately led to the committee’s 7-5 vote to defeat HF2929. It was the last scheduled meeting before the Legislature’s deadline of 5 p.m. Friday for budget bills.

Co-Chair Rep. Carlie Kotyza-Witthuhn (DFL-Eden Prairie) sponsors HF2929, which she dubbed a “minibus for our mini-Minnesotans.” A delete-all amendment on child care licensing modernization was proposed for the bill and then 15 amendments were proposed for the delete-all amendment, many of which included language from bills that had been laid over and had bipartisan support. DFLers presumed there would be bipartisan approval of these amendments.

This wasn’t the case.

Republicans had no intention of passing any omnibus bills out of the committee this session. They said this was always the plan while DFLers said, if this was the plan, it was never communicated to them.

Led by Committee Co-Chair Rep. Nolan West (R-Blaine), Republicans opposed any amendment that wasn’t about child care licensing modernization, which meant many of the DFL amendments that included laid over bills failed to pass in a party-line vote.

At one point, Kotyza-Witthuhn called for a recess as her side of the table scrambled to understand what was going on.

West insisted the bills DFL members wanted to include in the “minibus” could be passed as single-subject bills, but DFL members repeatedly pointed to the impending Friday deadline as a barrier to this.   

“Over time, the history of this institution has not only passed single-subject bills. Frankly there’s just not enough time in the body to do all of that work,” Kotyza-Witthuhn said.

“From the beginning, we knew we were not passing an omnibus bill,” Rep. Pam Altendorf (R-Red Wing) said.

Rep. Kim Hicks (DFL-Rochester) was one of the DFL members who said this hadn’t been communicated to her. She pointed out that her other committees are still doing omnibus bills. “No one told me that when I laid over a bill, it was dying, that we would not be having an omnibus bill.”

One of Hicks’ amendments would have included two laid over bills related to foster youth.  “I don’t think a breakdown of communication should punish foster kids and kids of abuse.”

There were some amendments West liked. He said the bill’s delete-all amendment about modernization “has been the bill I’ve been waiting on from the first day of this session.”

At the conclusion of the meeting, Kotyza-Witthuhn said prioritizing only child care modernization bills and shooting down child protection and welfare bills is “just wrong.”

“I am really disappointed that a lot of the good work that we did in a bipartisan fashion this session was rejected today,” she said.