Dear Neighbor,
As I briefly shared last week, the election integrity bills I have been working on have been well received so far this session. This week, I had the opportunity to introduce another election bill that would establish term limits for Minnesota’s governor and lieutenant governor. Because this proposal involves a constitutional change, the Legislature cannot implement it on its own. Instead, the bill would place the question directly on the ballot so the people of Minnesota can make the final decision. If the Legislature passes the measure, voters will have the opportunity to decide whether term limits should be added to the state constitution. I am pleased to report that we had a productive discussion in committee, and the bill was passed out with bipartisan support. You can watch a clip of the committee discussion here or the full committee here.
Addressing questions from committee
During the hearing, several colleagues asked thoughtful questions about the scope of the proposal. For example, why not also establish term limits for the secretary of state or attorney general? And why not include term limits for state legislators? I strongly support term limits for other offices but we have to start somewhere. With no incumbent in the governor’s race this fall, now is the perfect time to establish term limits and begin counting terms with the next administration.
Getting the unredacted Optum Report
In the last few weeks, I shared that the Legislature received the Optum Report, which looks at weaknesses in programs run through the Minnesota Department of Human Services and outlines possible ways to prevent fraud. The problem is that the version we received was heavily redacted, meaning large portions were blacked out. That left lawmakers with very little useful information to help us understand the problem or make informed policy decisions.
Since then, we have been working to get access to the full, unredacted report so we can see what the actual findings were and what changes may be needed to protect taxpayer dollars. I am happy to report that a bill requiring the release of the unredacted report to the Human Services Committee passed the House yesterday with strong bipartisan support. This is an important step toward giving the Legislature the information we need to properly address fraud and improve oversight.
Updating the Open Meeting Law
This week I presented HF3295 in the Judiciary Committee, a bill that clarifies that local governments can livestream their public meetings on social media. The idea for this legislation came from my time serving as mayor of Isanti, where we wanted to broadcast meetings online but found that current state law was unclear about whether social media livestreams were allowed under the Open Meeting Law. HF3295 simply removes that ambiguity and makes it clear that cities and other public bodies can livestream meetings if they choose, helping make government more transparent and accessible to the public. I am pleased to report that the bill passed out of the Judiciary Committee unanimously and will now move to the Elections Committee for its next hearing.
Sincerely,
Jimmy