Dear Friends,
Another busy week in the legislature has flown by. Things are moving quickly!
TAX CREDIT PROGRAM TO BENEFIT ALL MINNESOTA STUDENTS
In 2025, the federal government passed a special tax credit that will become active in 2027. It is designed to help students across the nation from middle and low income families. This program will have no negative impact (actually a net benefit) to our state budget.
I’m going to simplify and shorten the details as to how this works: Individuals throughout the nation can receive a federal tax credit of up to $1,700 for a contribution made to a qualifying scholarship granting organization (SGO). These SGOs can be organized by K-12 public schools districts, homeschool organizations, non-public school organizations, etc.
The SGO can then use those contributions to provide funding to students for educational expenses such as tutoring, transportation, technology, non-public school tuition, art classes, and homeschooling costs. Eligible students are limited to middle and lower income families. There will be fraud guardrails for this program.
Many of my DFL colleagues are characterizing this federal tax credit program as “school vouchers for wealthy families to send their kids to private schools.” This is TOTALLY incorrect. Yes, some of these SGOs will be designed to help students from low or middle income families attend the school of their choice. However, it is so much more! It’s not just private school groups who can form these SGOs. Our public schools can equally participate, and those funds will go to benefit public school students.
Think about all of the public schools kids who come to the door selling cookies, popcorn, etc. to fundraise for their sport group or for student activities. Now schools can encourage families to donate directly to their local qualifying SGO and the contributor can get a tax credit to boot!
Estimates show that approximately $487 million per year could flow from scholarship-granting organizations to Minnesota parents and students through this tax credit program. The clinker is that states must opt in to participate and our governor has not done so yet.
If Minnesota does not opt in, Minnesotans will still be able to contribute and receive their tax credit - but they will be giving their dollars to out-of-state SGOs benefiting out-of-state students.
This tax credit program is being opposed on party lines and that saddens me. The governor has thus far refused to opt in. This should not be a partisan issue. The program will help all Minnesota students and all schools. Minnesota dollars should stay in Minnesota and benefit Minnesota students.
This is a no brainer! Please reach out to the governor and encourage him to opt in to this federal tax credit program.
SCHOOL ANTI-GROOMING BILL MOVING FORWARD
Recently I told you about my school anti-grooming bill that’s designed to stop grooming in Minnesota schools. This week it cleared it’s second committee hurdle – the public safety committee and now heads to the House Children’s and Families Finance and Policy Committee for further debate.
The legislation strengthens protection for students against sexual grooming by providing clear field trip supervision rules, improves mandatory reporting and mandated reporter training to include grooming, and creates a new felony penalty for grooming. It allows grooming of children and youth to become a more chargeable and recognizable offense.
WCCO continues to follow the progress of this legislation, and you can watch this week’s story here.
MY COLUMN - MINNESOTANS WANT AN ELECTION SYSTEM THEY CAN TRUST
Several years ago, when my Republican colleagues and I attempted to bring forth legislation that provided anti-fraud controls, I can clearly remember the floor debate. In that debate, my Democratic colleagues claimed that fraud was pretty much non-existent and basically mocked us for bringing it up. Some of them went as far as to call fraud "fairy dust."
Well, now that Minnesota has reached $9 billion of fraud and counting and has become the laughingstock of the nation, I think we can all agree that it's time to put that debate to rest. Fraud is absolutely real and we must pass laws with strict controls and accountability measures to put an immediate stop to it.
I say all this because, at the same time we were hearing that financial fraud in our state was fairy dust, we were also hearing (and continue to hear) that election fraud is not existent. What do you think?
I think it's time to get the election fraud "fairy dust detector" out!
Just like many of our state’s financial programs have been designed with huge fraud loopholes in them, many of our election laws are also designed with huge fraud loopholes.
One example that comes to mind is a new election law passed two years ago during the Democrat trifecta where a person can register to vote without providing an actual address. That person can simply say, "I live down by the river," or "I live in a yellow house two blocks away." How does one prevent a person like that from voting in multiple areas of the state?
Another example is one of Minnesota's laws allowing a single person to vouch for the identity of eight voters who have no identification. I don't think I even need to tell you what might go wrong with this scenario!
I joined more than six dozen other state lawmakers in writing a letter urging U.S. Senate Majority Leader Thune and his Republican colleagues to take immediate steps to pass the Safeguard American Voter Eligibility (SAVE) Act.
A national poll from the Pew Research Center shows that 83 percent of Americans support requiring all voters to show government-issued photo ID.
Mandating verifiable proof of identity and citizenship - which is a key component of the SAVE Act - is essential to safeguarding voter eligibility and enhancing public confidence in our elections.
While I hope that federal officials will act quickly on the SAVE Act, there is plenty we can do at the state level to ensure election integrity as well. Here are a few of the solutions that I strongly support:
· Require voter ID at polling places to ensure every vote cast is by an eligible voter and citizen, a commonsense policy already in place in 36 states. Photo ID’s are required for many things in Minnesota, including buying cigarettes, cashing a check, boarding an airplane, receiving food stamps, and purchasing a fishing license. It’s time to require one for elections too.
· Require regular audits and verification of the Statewide Voter Registration System to ensure that only eligible voters remain on the voting rolls.
· Implement provisional balloting. This gives election officials time to verify a voter's eligibility before their vote is counted - something all but two states do.
· Shrink the voting window. Minnesota’s lengthy voting is currently the longest in the nation and gives potential bad actors plenty of time to scheme the system to their advantage.
· Require a valid vote backup to create a way to verify the vote if needed.
Minnesota’s lax election laws create loopholes for fraud. This has created distrust in our election system and led to citizen anger and division. Everyone, no matter what political party, should come away from an election feeling like it’s a fair election. Any amount of election fraud is an attack on democracy because every fraudulent vote takes away someone else’s legitimate vote.
Rightly or wrongly, if the perception is there that a vote doesn’t count, it creates anger and erodes trust. We must put into place measures that regain this trust.
LOCAL VISITS
This week, I had the privilege of meeting with local community education leaders from our area. It was a pleasure to chat with John Double, from Albert Lea, and Samantha from Janesville and learn about community education related issues.
(PIC)
We talked about early education programming, driver education, adult education, and more. Thank you to John and Samantha for coming to the Capitol and helping me be more informed about community education programs!
Have a good weekend,
Peggy