Dear Neighbors, It’s a busy time at the Minnesota Legislature, with both the House and Senate passing their respective budget bills - the culmination of our work in committees this year. Because of our tied House, the budget bills we’re voting on aren’t what I would consider perfect, I don’t think either side of the aisle would claim that, but each one is a bipartisan compromise that at the very least ensures our state government can continue to operate. We’ve passed most of the House’s budget proposals already. You can read nonpartisan summaries of the budgets we’ve voted on here: With more to come, including our Health, K-12 Education, and Tax bills. Once the House and Senate have passed their budget bills, conference committees made up of House and Senate members meet to reconcile the differences between each chamber’s proposals. Once that’s done, we vote on the bills a final time before sending them to Governor Walz. This process could be moving faster, but we’ve run into a couple sticking points, namely House Republicans demanding that we strip Unemployment Insurance benefits away from our schools’ hourly employees. I serve on the House's Education Finance Committee, where we cover this issue, and I spoke to how important it is to protect these benefits for our workers, which you can watch here. |