End of Session Update- June 11, 2025

Dear Neighbors,

I hope this email finds you well and that you’re enjoying the first couple of weeks of June. The 2025 legislative session and special session have concluded. After a little overtime needed to wrap up our work, the state budget is balanced for the next two years.

Special sessions aren’t unusual in our Minnesota history—especially during times of divided government, natural disasters or emergencies, or in response to a federal action or an urgent need. For example, in the 1936 “extra” session (as they used to be called), legislation was updated to ensure towns of “2,000 inhabitants or more have fire departments with two or more regularly employed firemen.”

Source: Minnesota Reference Library

You can access a comprehensive list of the special sessions and bills passed Minnesota has had since 1857, here. 

Highlights from the Budget

Serving as the co-chair of the State Government Finance and Policy Committee, I’ve been honored to continue this civic responsibility, working to invest in the basic functions and core essential services Minnesotans expect of their government. Public investments should serve public needs, and fraud threatens the trust and integrity of critical services Minnesotans rely on. This is why we strengthened fraud prevention efforts to include enhanced data sharing and allowing payments to be withheld when fraud is suspected and expanded the Attorney General’s Medicaid Fraud Investigation Unit.

It's an honor to do this good work with State Government Committee Co-Chair Jim Nash (R-Waconia). PHOTO CREDIT: House Photography

You can read more about the bipartisan budget Rep. Nash and I crafted together and passed on May 19th here.

Here are my main takeaways from each issue area of the budget:

Health and Human Services: Includes funding for a dementia services program, expands mental health access, and creates a smoother path for physicians’ assistants, midwives and foreign-trained physicians to practice in Minnesota.
READ MORE HERE.

Children and Families: Contains important provisions to protect Minnesota kids and seniors’ well-being, like requiring mental health warning labels on social media platforms and a $1 million investment in dementia services to support caregivers of loved ones with Alzheimer's through coordinated research, services, and education.
READ MORE HERE.

Commerce: Create a new advocate position to facilitate disputes between unit owners and homeowner associations and require places of entertainment with an occupancy of at least 100 people to provide, at ticketed events, free water to attendees and allow attendees to bring in sealed bottled water or an empty water bottle to fill.
READ MORE HERE.

Environment and Natural Resources: Makes improvements to regional parks and trails, extends bass fishing season to all year, and funds the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources, Pollution Control Agency, Board of Water and Soil Resources, and the Minnesota Zoo.
READ MORE HERE.

K-12 Education: Contains sustainable and reliable funding for our schools with automatic inflationary increases over the next two years and beyond; modest funds to recruit and retain more special education teachers and to strengthen cardiac emergency response plans. 
READ MORE HERE.

Transportation: Delivers funds to improve our roads and trunk highways and build a State Patrol metro headquarters building. 
READ MORE HERE.

Higher Education: Addresses Minnesota’s peace officer shortage by establishing a Law Enforcement Scholarship Program, fills a budget hole to fund the State Grant Program.
READ MORE HERE.

Energy: This lights-on portion of the budget (no pun intended), includes modest funding for the Commerce Department’s energy resources division, community solar gardens, Clean Energy Resource Teams and the implementation of energy benchmarking.
READ MORE HERE.

Workforce/Labor: Extends the availability of unemployment benefits to approximately 630 Iron Range workers impacted by mine closures this spring.
READ MORE HERE.

Taxes: Includes tax increment financing authority for the cities of Brooklyn Center, Brooklyn Park, Eden Prairie, Maplewood, Plymouth and St. Cloud, increases cannabis sales tax from 10%-15%, and eliminates a tax exemption for electricity use by data centers.
READ MORE HERE.

Bonding: The statewide capital investment package invests regional infrastructure needs to improve water quality and funds road projects.
READ MORE HERE.

Provisions Protected from 2023-2024

Serving with the most closely divided legislature in the country (not unlike my first legislative session), I’m proud we protected the things that make Minnesota the best state in the country to raise a child, to work, retire, and live with dignity: universal free school meals; paid family and medical leave; Meals on Wheels & Lutheran Social Services food aid for veterans; 100% clean energy by 2040; and investments in infrastructure. 

I believe, even when we have major disagreements, it is still possible to bridge those divides, and that’s what we’ve done with this two-year state budget. Compromise means both sides don’t get everything they want, and our responsibility as lawmakers is to ensure the state government stays up and running for everyone.

Although the work of the 2025 session is complete, there’s more work to do. I continue to work for you to advocate for our Plymouth and Medicine Lake communities, families, and values. Please, continue to reach out to share the issues that matter most to you. 

Take care and be well!

Sincerely,

Ginny Klevorn
State Representative