End of Session Legislative UpdateDear Neighbor, The 2026 Legislative Session has ended. When you are part of a team that controls one half of one-third of state government, the feeling you have when all the dust settles is… torn. As I’ve served these past two years, there have been MAJOR wins. And yet your heart sinks knowing all that was left on the table and all the work yet to be done. When you run to make a difference, maybe that’s the feeling you have every year, no matter the political dynamic. I’ve owned businesses basically my entire life, and you get used to having ultimate decision-making power; you live with the consequences, good and bad. When you’re in a legislative body filled with 134 people who all share weight in a decision, it’s not like that at all; it can be painstakingly slow, frustrating, confusing, nauseating, momentarily crushing, and momentarily rewarding. The work is never done, and the stakes never get lower, especially because of the precarious situation Minnesota finds itself in because of one-party DFL control last session. This year especially, there have been a lot of great things done to improve our condition in Minnesota. - First, we established the Office of Inspector. This new office creates independent oversight with real investigative authority, public transparency requirements, and coordinated fraud investigations across agencies.
- We also locked in Medicaid work requirements connected to the federal reforms passed in Washington. These reforms strengthen accountability, help combat fraud, encourage workforce participation, and create long-term savings that protect these programs for the people who truly need them most.
- We secured hundreds of millions in relief through one-time property tax relief, one-time relief in car tab fees, and ending the Twins Ballpark tax.
- We also had some wins in helping our businesses in Minnesota with HR1 tax conformity. This will help Minnesota businesses keep more capital, remain competitive, grow jobs, and avoid getting punished by an increasingly hostile tax climate.
- Locally, we had some critical infrastructure projects funded – including a sewer line project in Taylors Falls and a portion of the interchange project in North Branch – which will become ever more important based on some of the businesses who’ve chosen our community to set up shop.
- However, the real wins are found in everything that we were able to stop. Massive gun control packages, removing vaccine exemptions even for homeschool kids, quintupling car tab fees, a massive “climate superfund” tax which would have imposed tens of thousands of dollars on MN households, a myriad of bad small business taxes and regulations, “unrealized gains” taxes, never-ending mandates which would balloon the cost of private insurance, more top-down mandates on our schools and counties (increasing property taxes), and so much more.
But there are several things we’ve still left on the table because of the political impasse we find ourselves in. We absolutely have to work on these items next year. - Our schools do not have the funding flexibility needed. A few years ago, we passed a bunch of new spending for our schools, but that spending was attached to mandates. And those mandates are running out of funding. I fear we will continue to see budgets stretched, class sizes increased, and critical staff laid off. This was compounded by the fact that not one Democrat could support the $1,700 dollar-for-dollar tax credit that would have gone to tutoring, textbooks, and other education-related expenses for ALL students (including public school students).
- We didn’t get enough done on school safety. There were numerous incredible bipartisan provisions which dealt with mental health, funding for physical school safety, anonymous threat reporting (we got a little bit of this done), and innovative technology for all schools, public and non-public. It is to my GREAT SHAME that we voted on security improvements for ourselves in the Minnesota House before we passed anything similar for our schools. Democrats took bipartisan provisions for school safety and held them hostage for gun control… but did not do the same for VERY fortified Capitol security measures.
- Minnesota is losing businesses because of crushing regulations and taxes. There is so much more work to be done, from reducing our corporate taxes, to reforming Paid Family and Medical Leave and other crushing mandates on small businesses, to cutting red tape for new development. We are consistently losing opportunities to other states because of these issues, and there was not adequate movement this session.
- Lastly, we got some tax relief done this session, but so much more must be done. We are one of the highest-taxed states in the nation, and I consistently heard from my Democrat colleagues that we STILL have a “revenue problem.” This is WRONG. We must reduce the tax burden on people who are already feeling the pinch of expensive groceries, gas, housing… and just about everything else. From mandate reform (a huge reason why your county property taxes are way too high), to sales taxes (a huge reason why building homes is so much more expensive here), to keeping more money from your paycheck which has to become a top priority next year. Minnesota does not have a revenue problem; it has a priorities problem.
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