Dear Neighbor, The third and final committee deadline of the legislative session has now passed, and the House will be spending the vast majority of our time on the House Floor discussing and voting on bills that made it through the committee process. Once these bill pass, they are sent to the Senate for a vote on their floor or if we have received the bill from the Senate and we do not amend the bill, it goes to the Governor for his signature. The legislature is set to adjourn in less than one month and there is a lot of work to do in addressing pressing issues. Here is the latest from St. Paul: School safety  House Republicans have been working hard to deliver commonsense school safety plans to make sure that every student in Minnesota is safe, no matter where they go to school. On Tuesday, April 14, Republicans unveiled proposals that have been carefully crafted to keep all students safe, no matter where they attend school. Each school district is unique, and it is important to provide flexible solutions. These proposals pull ideas from both sides of the aisle, and I am hopeful that we can come together and pass them. We have heard directly from superintendents, teachers, students, and parents across Minnesota. Many of these ideas have historically received bipartisan support: - Increased funding for school safety in public, nonpublic, and Tribal schools
- Expanded student mental health funding to support early intervention and crisis prevention
- Flexible, local options for anonymous threat reporting systems
- Funding to strengthen school safety plans tailored to local needs
- Discipline reforms to restore order in classrooms and support teachers and staff
- Additional flexibility for schools to hire student support personnel
This bill takes $50 million from the canceled Northern Lights Express train account, which was the boondoggle line between the Twin Cities and Duluth. Every student deserves to be safe no matter where they go to school. House Republicans have made school safety a priority from day one, putting forward a practical, multilayered plan with real solutions schools can implement right now. Our goal is to deliver meaningful changes that could succeed in a narrowly divided legislature. It is unfortunate that this bill, offered as an amendment to H.F. 3493, was blocked by House Democrats not only in a committee hearing, but also on the floor last week. Higher Education Last Thursday, April 16, the House Higher Education Committee passed to the Ways and Means Committee, a small funding bill (H.F. 4252). It includes $1.5 million for technology to combat fraud in the Minnesota State system. Specifically, it supports ID verification to help crack down on the “ghost student” problem that has sprouted up as fraud has seemingly infiltrated every corner of our government. It also includes a $5,000 appropriation to replace 200 trees on the Bemidji State University campus that were destroyed by a massive storm on June 21, 2025 that destroyed 9 million trees across Bemidji. The interesting part about this is we are partnering with the University of Minnesota-Duluth to use a hybrid tree the school developed. It is advertised as “More than two decades to research. Less than one decade to grow.” Click here for more. We did not make much progress resolving a $131 million projected shortfall in the State Grant Program (SGP) caused by a structural imbalance that Democrats created in Trifecta of 2023. During our hearing on Thursday, April 16, Democrat committee members were only willing to add money to the program with very little change to fix the structural imbalance. The only structural change they agreed to hurts middle-class students whose families have a household income of over $80,000 and attend private schools or the University of Minnesota. House Republicans offered several common-sense amendments to help fill the SGP hole, including eliminating negative Student Aid Index numbers, lowering the income cap for North Star Promise eligibility from $80,000 to $70,000, and barring undocumented noncitizen students from receiving aid. House Democrats voted down each proposal. House Democrats also voted down an amendment that would address the very serious issue where Gov. Walz appointed two University of Minnesota Regents who had not gone through the rigorous Regent Candidate Advisory Council process. They seemed to come out of nowhere, but after looking into who they were, it was clearly a massive conflict of interest. One was a major democrat donor (nearly $400,000 since 2009) and had donated over $30,000 to the Walz campaign for governor and the other bought a house together and was living with the staffer who ran the state of Minnesota on behalf of Walz when he was out campaigning with Harris. One House Democrat member even said during the meeting that this looked like a “pay to play” scheme and has no place in Minnesota. But then in a shocking move all Democrats voted down the amendment claiming falsely that it was unconstitutional. I wrote extensively about the governor’s pay to play Regent selections in a recent newsletter. Click here for the full content. (Alleged) fraudster flees The ringleader of an $11 million fraud scheme was nabbed and charged but fled the country before his trial took place because a judge turned him loose on $150,000 unconditional bond despite flight-risk warnings from prosecutors. Per reports, “The criminal complaint shows investigators raised concerns over his family ties outside the country, including a wife and child in Nairobi, Kenya.” We are being taken to the cleaners by fraudsters in this state and need all hands on deck to stop it – especially the judicial branch. |