Dear Neighbors,
The 'regular' 2025 Legislative Session ended Monday, but our work is far from over. Although several strong budget bills passed and are headed to the Governor for his signature, such as the Housing and Homelessness Prevention Budget Bill that I helped usher across the finish line, many important issues are outstanding. Since my previous update, Governor Walz and legislative leaders were able to reach a deal to set a framework for our state budget. While this deal finally allowed us to meaningfully work on our budget bills, only a few were able to pass by Monday’s deadline.
Below is a breakdown of what did pass and the work that remains. I am committed to finishing the job – which means passing a balanced and equitable budget in a manner that leaves no Minnesotan behind. All the while, I’m ensuring Greater Minnesota has a voice at the table when these decisions are being made.
What passed? Before midnight on Monday, we managed to pass several important budget bills. We passed our budgets pertaining to Veterans and Military Affairs (extra proud of the work we did to ensure strong funding for homeless veterans!), Agriculture, Judiciary and Public Safety, and State Government and Elections. We also passed our Legacy bill funding projects that preserve our environment and arts and cultural heritage (including projects for Duluth like the Great Lakes Aquarium!), and a historic pensions bill keeping our promise to - and for the next generation of - teachers, police, and firefighters in the state.
Within our State Government bill, we passed legislation brought to me by a constituent who is a retired state worker who has recently been diagnosed with ALS. The bill will protect his health care coverage, along with the coverage for his spouse, so that he can be assured to get the quality health care his family needs.
Housing and Homelessness Prevention Bill Passes! We also passed our bipartisan Housing Budget. It is a good bill that includes my Tenants Rights reforms, $2M investment in the Challenge Fund Program, and policy provisions to help spur the creation of more homes, particularly in greater MN. This legislation makes vital investments that will help prevent family homelessness and build more affordable homes.
Co-Chair Mike Howard and Vice Chair Liish Kozlowski with Team Housing!
In the face of Minnesota’s housing crisis and cruel funding cuts brought on by the Trump administration, this legislation will provide stability to thousands of Minnesotans by preventing rising evictions thanks to emergency rental assistance, keep seniors in their homes, expand workforce housing in Greater Minnesota, make the dream of home a reality while closing shameful racial wealth gaps with the First Gen Homeownership Program, and thanks to a bold $50 million investments in Housing Infrastructure Bonds, we will build affordable homes to rent and own all across the state.
Catch my remarks HERE as we presented our Housing and Homelessness Prevention Bill in Conference Committee, just before we passed the bill off the House floor!
What work remains? Simply put, quite a bit. We still need to pass our K-12 Education budget, as well as our Health and Human Services budgets. Together, this represents more than three quarters of our entire state budget. We also have not passed our budgets for Jobs, Higher Education, Energy, Commerce, and more.
Frustratingly, the main obstacle to passing these bills has been House Republicans' insistence on non-budget items that rollback freedoms and protections for workers, including healthcare for hardworking immigrants. The days ahead consist of working around the clock for Minnesotans. Legislators in the House and Senate will be meeting all through the weekend into Monday in order to negotiate final versions of budget bills to fund our state government. At this point, a special session will be necessary to finish our work and ensure we have a budget that reflects our values. Additionally, we’ll need time for our nonpartisan revisors staff to draft the final negotiated agreements into bills ready to pass the House and Senate Floor.
With my conference committee and bill wrapped up, much of my efforts will be focused on our Workforce, Labor & Economic Development and Taxes Bills, where I serve on these committees and am helping to shape the final outcomes. Additionally, I’m laser focused on passing legislation I’m leading such as in a Bonding Bill for our state and regional projects, Human Services for supports to end homelessness, Education for the resources and equity our schools, families, and studies deserve & more.
In these final days of the legislative session, I’ll also continue my efforts to pass a robust Capital Investment bill that funds local infrastructure, creates good-paying union jobs, and makes our state a better place to live. None of these budget bills are going to pass unless we work together, and I’ve been working closely with our House and Republican colleagues to ensure our work is a success for our communities back home.
Governor Walz, Rep. Liish Kozlowski, Local elected officials, and community leaders make the urgent case for a robust Bonding Bill; and celebrate a groundbreaking in Duluth with a mix of State, County, and local dollars thanks to private-public partnership.
The uncertainty and cuts coming from our federal partners doesn’t help the state’s financial situation, but I know we can build a budget that lifts up our communities and all of Minnesota if we work together - it’s just going to take us going into overtime a little bit to ensure we’re doing the best work possible.
Fighting for Workers and Minnesota Care: With a 67-67 tie in our House chamber, we came into this session knowing that much of our work would be focused on protecting the historic progress we made the last couple of years, and I’m glad to say this deal protects many of those wins: Universal School Meals, reproductive freedom, gun violence prevention measures, clean energy goals, Unemployment Insurance for hourly school workers, MN Voting Rights Act, clean energy goals, gun violence prevention, Earned Sick & Safe Time, and Paid Family & Medical Leave, just to name a few!
However, in negotiations, Republicans held the state budget hostage unless their demand to strip health care access for our undocumented neighbors was met. The compromise reached by legislative leaders would strip MinnesotaCare, a health care program for Minnesotans with low incomes, of undocumented adults, while leaving children still eligible.?
As you may have heard by now, I co-led my fellow People of Color and Indigenous (POCI) Caucus, legislative colleagues, and community leaders outside the Governor’s Office to protest the budget deal reached by Governor Walz and legislative leaders, particularly Republicans. The GOP has been willing to risk a state government shutdown, along with all the services Minnesotans rely on, just to strip the dignity from our community members who pay taxes, boast the highest labor participation, create thriving businesses, and work to make our state better every day, in order to make life more difficult and deadly for migrant and immigrant communities -- and more expensive for all Minnesotans.
It is not low-income immigrants who are to blame for our current budget situation. It is the wealthy millionaires, billionaires, and corporations who don't pay their fair share to contribute to our state's economy, including the for-profit health care system that is already broken and will only get worse because of this policy. Meanwhile, Minnesota Republicans fought to continue corporate tax exemptions and against any attempt to force the wealthy to pay their fair share, because they would rather punish undocumented Minnesotans than build a budget that helps working people.
This is not “free healthcare,” as some have said. Our undocumented neighbors pay more than $220 million in taxes per year, and they will pay premiums and copays, just like everyone else. The enrollment in this program is higher than expected, showing demand for healthcare access is greater than even anticipated – but the costs through the first four months are lower than forecasted. Insurance for undocumented residents is supported by hospitals, doctors, nurses, insurers, labor unions, and faith groups. The only opponents are Republican elected officials, and the only reason to kick people off of their healthcare is racialized politics and xenophobia.
I also want to set the record straight that hospitals have told us this policy will harm Minnesotans in rural communities the most. Uninsured Minnesotans still get care at the emergency room, but that care is uncompensated, placing a heavy financial burden on rural hospitals that are already struggling to survive. That’s why expanding MinnesotaCare wasn’t just the right thing to do, it was a smart investment in the future of our state, and one I am fighting to protect.
Finally, I want to lift up the words of Senator Alice Mann, a physician, and fellow member of the legislature’s People of Color and Indigenous Caucus, who spoke against this proposal.
With a tied House and a 1-vote DFL majority in the Senate, we always knew hard choices and compromises were going to be a part of this legislative session, but I will not vote to strip healthcare away from anyone. That’s not what our community elected me to do.
It’s natural at this point for folks to get entrenched in their legislative priorities, but I’m confident we’ll find a bipartisan solution in our remaining days without compromising on our Duluth or Minnesotan values.
Standing with Hourly School Workers for Unemployment Insurance Benefits: As we navigate these final critical days, know that your DFL representatives remain committed to fighting for an economy and a state that works for everyone—not just those wealthy few at the top. I was proud to stand in solidarity with Minnesota school staff, parents, and labor leaders at a press conference to speak out (and do the work to fight these attacks) against the GOP's proposed repeal of unemployment insurance benefits for hourly K-12 school workers in the House education budget deal.
These essential workers — bus drivers, nutrition staff, clerical workers, and education support aides— were the *only* workers boxed out of UI until 2023. Now, their hard-won protection faces elimination from House Republicans. At a time when education and workers’ rights are under attack by Trump and his broligarchy — repealing this critical lifeline would be a direct attack on working people, falling the hardest on women and people of color, and would only worsen staffing shortages in our schools. Read more here.
Graduation Rates Reach All-Time High: Even as we work to craft a new state budget, we’re still seeing results from the investments we made last biennium. It’s also a good time to reflect on how far our schools have come. Minnesota’s schools are seeing historically high graduation rates, and that’s thanks in large part to the efforts of our teachers, as well as the transformational policies and investments the DFL fought for last session - the ones we’re fighting to protect this year.
When we invest in our kids, we see results.
Minnesota still has a long way to go to return to our nation-leading education outcomes, but this is an encouraging start as graduation rates have reached a historic high! Our Asian, Black, Latino, and Native American students saw the largest growth, helping to close the achievement gap we see in our state. When we see meaningful progress like this, we can’t back down when it comes to supporting our schools.
Now is the time to double down for our students and build on this progress, and I’ll be fighting for a state budget that does just that. That’s why I’m fighting to move our bipartisan Duluth Promise Initiative (HF 849) forward. It’s all about investing in our students, growing a strong local workforce, making Duluth the best place to live (and stay here with thriving wage jobs), and creating brighter futures for all Duluthians. Thank you, Duluth students and many other incredible partners, leading the way to bring this model to life. It's always the right time to make good on our promise to our students, workers & community.
Read the article collectively written by Duluth Public Schools, Duluth Area Chamber of Commerce, University of Minnesota Duluth, Lake Superior College, City of Duluth, APEX, and the College of St. Scholastica here.
American Indian Month: I’ll leave you with this - May, in addition to being the end of session, is also American Indian Month. Before we got to the work of debating and voting on our budget bills, Rep. Heather Keeler and I led our colleagues in a bipartisan moment to honor and celebrate the histories, cultures, and contributions of the sovereign Tribal nations and communities who have shaped this region for thousands of years.
You can watch us read our resolution on the House Floor here.
Rep. Liish Kozlowski, Lieutenant Governor Peggy Flanagan, and Rep. Heather Keeler
Let’s Stay Connected!
As this work moves forward, I will be sending regular updates. Until we head back for the special session, now is a great time to touch base on the issues that matter to you. Please always feel free to contact me at 651-296-2228 or rep.alicia.kozlowski@house.mn.gov. You’ll hear back from me or our Legislative Assistant, Alex. Don’t forget to follow along on my new Facebook page.
As always, I am focused on the task at hand: passing a balanced, equitable state budget and continuing to fight for a budget that protects Minnesota workers and families from the worst impacts of the Trump Administration, preserves the progress we made last term, and strengthens our state.
In community,
Rep. Alicia ‘Liish’ Kozlowski
(They/Them), Pronouns
Two-Spirit, Niizh Manidoowag
Minnesota House of Representatives