Dear Friends,
The 2025 special session for the House ended late Monday evening with a mixed bag of legislation that I will classify as both good and not so good. Legislators passed 14 omnibus budget bills to finalize our 2025 work. Minnesota’s budget is set for the next two years.
A special session is never ideal, and this one was largely caused by my DFL colleagues not showing up for work for the first 23 days of the regular session.
Special sessions are not transparent to the public. Much of the work is done behind closed doors by just a few leaders. In addition, a special session essentially allows the governor to become a legislator giving too much power to the executive branch to craft bills.
Among the good things I celebrate: my Republican colleagues and I were successful in stopping any new taxes for Minnesota families. Let me tell you, there were a myriad of new tax increases proposed (and even demanded) by the governor and my DFL colleagues. This was a hard NO for me.
There is no way Minnesota taxpayers should be on the hook to pay for the $18 billion dollar spending spree that trifecta legislators went on over the last biennium, spending us into this upcoming deficit. No!
I want to be transparent about the fact that Minnesotans will unfortunately see many fee increases in this compromise budget. I am adamantly opposed to this. Fees are hidden taxes. The bills that left the bipartisan House during regular session protected Minnesotans from most of these fee increases. Unfortunately, the final compromise bills were not so fortunate.
I am very happy that these final budget bills produced the largest spending reduction in state history. This will cut the future $6 billion deficit in half. It’s not enough - our state budget is still grossly bloated - but it’s a start. There are a lot of wasteful and ineffective high-cost programs that we will need to examine for future spending reductions.
I know you want your tax dollars to go toward programs that work, and programs that don’t waste or use your tax dollars fraudulently. I am excited that my bill I worked on to reduce the potential for fraud for education non-profits was included in final legislation.
This end of session gave a start to addressing the important job of prioritizing our tax dollars on core state responsibilities. We successfully eliminated state funded free health insurance for illegal immigrant adults. Even if people want this, we simply do not have the funds to pay for it. Nursing homes, veterans’ mental health, our schools, and more are all experiencing cuts. It is simply not right to put foreign nationals, here illegally, before our citizens.
I am pleased with the bonding dollars that passed this special session. Our $720 million capital investment bill prioritizes core infrastructure needs across Minnesota - clean water, roads and bridges, and maintenance of state buildings and parks. It thankfully leaves out all the pork projects that we typically see in bonding bills.
Almost one-third of these bonding dollars are dedicated to helping fund sewer and water infrastructure projects throughout the state. I will have more information in the future on how this funding will impact the water infrastructure projects in our local communities like Albert Lea, Clarks Grove, and Manchester.
My biggest disappointment about almost all these bills is that there are no real fixes for anything. I had high hopes at the beginning of session with the bipartisan mix of this legislature – hopes that we would bring much needed fixes to the many areas of state government that are in desperate need. I battled for that. But it sadly never happened.
What I saw was a lot of dug-in heels toward any significant reform that would actually fix things for Minnesotans. All we did in most of these bills was inject a little anesthetic around gaping wounds that never got addressed.
All the heavy mandates that are sinking our schools; the out-of-control discipline problems that are making it impossible for kids to learn; rampant crime; the looming energy deficit that will impact all of us with power shortages and expensive bills; and so much more – none of these were meaningfully addressed.
Equally disappointing to me was watching all the governor’s state agencies get their operating increases while schools, nursing homes, and more received cuts. That’s just plain wrong.
Because of the lack of real fixes, tons of new fees, and watching state agencies receive increases while our kids and seniors got cuts, I voted no on many of these bills. There was some good, but the lack of any true fixes was unacceptable to me.
I will look forward to next session and continuing the battle on your behalf to make these necessary fixes for Minnesota. Thank you for the honor of representing you.
Have a good weekend,
Peggy