Dear Neighbors, On Monday, the Minnesota Legislature reconvened for a one-day special session to pass the remainder of our state budget, funding the services Minnesotans rely on and completing our constitutionally-required work for the year. Voters delivered a tied Minnesota House, expecting us to work together to pass a state budget that reflects their needs. Compromise isn’t always easy, and this year’s session has shown that, but the end result is a budget that does its best to fund the immediate needs of Duluth, the surrounding communities, and our entire state. DFLers stood their ground and protected the hard-fought progress of recent years as Republicans tried to push us backwards, especially as it pertains to the protections and support for working families, but maintaining the status quo isn’t enough. This budget brings us a few steps forward, but as we grapple with economic uncertainty exacerbated by the actions of the federal government, Minnesotans deserve more. The bipartisan bills we passed on Monday were a mixture of proposals brought forward by DFLers and Republicans, and I was proud to vote for many commonsense proposals and investments, even if I wouldn’t describe the bills as perfect - that’s the nature of compromise in a closely divided legislature. The bills we passed covered our state budgets for Commerce, Energy, Environment and Natural Resources, Health, Children, and Families, Higher Education, Human Services, K-12 Education, Taxes, and Transportation. We also passed a pair of Capital Investment bills that improve our state buildings, transportation infrastructure, and water systems. We also passed the Jobs and Labor budget, which contained my legislation to extend unemployment benefits to the impacted miners on the Iron Range without tying it to environmental rollbacks. We had already passed this provision in the House, but now it has passed both chambers through this budget. While there’s something to like in all of these budgets, there was one bill that passed the legislature on Monday that was without any merit, and that was the Republican demand to kick our undocumented neighbors off of MinnesotaCare. This was a bill Republicans held the state budget hostage over, risking a government shutdown just to score cheap and cruel political points. Denying healthcare coverage to anyone doesn’t make Minnesotan any safer, healthier, or more prosperous. I voted against this bill. While that provision was a dark cloud over our work, I remain proud of the hard-fought wins we protected in our balanced budget. |