February 8: The week ahead at the Capitol

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Assuming the weather doesn’t shut everything down, there are a lot of early opportunities to speak up at the Capitol this week.Here are a few:* At 10:30 a.m. Tuesday, a joint Veterans Day on the Hill rally sponsored by the United Veterans Legislative Council and Minnesota Commanders Task Force will take place in the Capitol Rotunda to highlight legislative agenda items for this year’s session.* At 12:30 p.m. Tuesday, the Minnesota Coalition for Battered Women will release the 2009 Femicide Report and release their 2010 legislative agenda at a press conference in Room 181 of the State Office Building.* At 9 a.m. Thursday, Arc of Minnesota will hold a press conference and rally in the Capitol Rotunda to highlight their legislative agenda for disability issues before gathering outside the House of Representatives’ chamber before Gov. Tim Pawlenty’s State of the State address.Pawlenty’s State of the State address at 10:30 a.m. Thursday in the House chamber will be a highlight of the week and help set the tone for the rest of the session.Don’t look for lots of what people in the news-gathering business would call “new news” though. He typically lets the new ideas he’ll introduce in the speech trickle out during the week and often repackages themes and proposals from previous years within the speech. Continue Reading

Bonding in rural MN

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So we’ve seen what the Twin Cities asked for, and what they might get in this year’s bonding bill at the Legislature.Next, we’ll take a brief look at bonding requests from outstate, or rural Minnesota.The Minnesota State Colleges and Universities system is not entirely located outside the Twin Cities, with many community and technical colleges in the metro area. But it’s largest campus is St. Cloud State and most of its members are scattered around the state.MnSCU would get $245 million in the House bonding bill, compared with $211 million from the Senate bonding bill and a relatively paltry $93 million from Gov. Tim Pawlenty’s bonding recommendation.Included in the Senate and House bill, but not in Pawlenty’s request, are: $28 million for St. Cloud State to build a science and engineering lab, money for North Hennepin and Anoka Ramsey Community Colleges to build bioscience and health careers additions, and millions more for projects in Bemidji, Alexandria, Willmar, Rochester, Marshall and elsewhere.Pawlenty, the House and Senate are on the same page when it comes to $50 million or more for basic upkeep and repairs throughout the system, as well as other projects in St. Cloud, Eveleth and Duluth.The Red Lake School District would get a $5.7 million capital loan in both the House and Senate bills that isn’t included in Pawlenty’s request.The Department of Natural Resources would get $139 million in bonding from the Senate bill, compared with $123.6 million from the House bill and $88.5 million from Pawlenty’s request. Continue Reading

What’s a fiscal note?

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In the first of a series of entries looking at the jargon of the Minnesota Legislature, let’s take a look at what a fiscal note is and the role it plays in shaping legislation.According to the House Fiscal Analysis Department, a fiscal note is what puts a price tag on a bill.More from CAPITOL REPORT: Pulling back the curtain on the legislature to “share what I know and give people a somewhat insider’s view of how decisions are actually made inside that building and how normal citizens can have the best chance of influencing those decisions.”A committee chairman or chairwoman in the House of Representatives or Senate can request a fiscal note for a bill coming before their committee before a hearing.The bill’s author provides it to Minnesota Management and Budget, the fiscal arm of Gov. Tim Pawlenty’s administration. In consultation with the appropriate state agency, they put a price tag on the bill and send it to the committee chairman.A fiscal note is considered advice to the Legislature and is not binding. However, it can have a big impact on the bill’s fate. If MMB puts a big price tag on the bill, it can make it more difficult to get support for it.Likewise, if the bill in question is a tax bill, the fiscal note estimates how much money the tax change would yield or cost in revenue.In 2009, more than 1,000 fiscal notes were generated on proposed bills during the legislative session.You can look to see how much a particular bill might cost yourself using MMB’s fiscal note search tool.  Continue Reading

Bonding bill update

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Both the House and Senate bonding committees put their proposals for a capital investent borrowing bill on the table Thursday in the first day of the session.The House bill, with Rep. Alice Hausman, DFL-St. Paul, as its author, comes in at just under $1 billion in size.The Senate bill, written by Sen. Keith Langseth, DFL-Glyndon, weighs in at $955 million.More from CAPITOL REPORT: Pulling back the curtain on the legislature to “share what I know and give people a somewhat insider’s view of how decisions are actually made inside that building and how normal citizens can have the best chance of influencing those decisions.”Both are significantly larger than the $685 million list of projects Gov. Tim Pawlenty has endorsed.Both houses will pass their own versions of a bill, then we’ll see what comes out of conference committee and negotiations with Pawlenty. He said he’ll veto anything that’s too big. Both houses need three-fifths majorities to pass bonding bills, and would need two-thirds majorities to override a veto.Full spreadsheets of projects and funding are available for the House and Senate bills, but here are some of the highlights for Twin Cities area requests:* The University of Minnesota would get $111 million in the Senate bill, $77 million in the House bill and $100 million in Pawlenty’s proposal. Pawlenty wants more for physics and nanotechnology, the Senate wants more for basic upkeep and repair.* The Minnesota Zoo would get $32.5 million from the House bill, compared with $21 million from the Senate and Pawlenty. Continue Reading

All together now: Tackling bonding and budgets

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It’s not a coincidence that the Minnesota Legislature meets to hand out state funding for construction projects and other desired baubles on even-numbered election years.Odd-numbered years are for the hard work of putting together a two-year budget for the state, while the “bonding session” as this year’s gathering is commonly known, is supposed to be where the 201 state lawmakers make people happy before they go into the voting booth.More from CAPITOL REPORT: Pulling back the curtain on the legislature to “share what I know and give people a somewhat insider’s view of how decisions are actually made inside that building and how normal citizens can have the best chance of influencing those decisions.”In today’s tough economic times, some lawmakers are already calling for passage of $1 billion in spending on construction and other work-generating projects in the first weeks of the session.But that tough economy is also raining on the parade. A November economic forecast for the state predicts that there’s still a $1.2 billion hole in the current budget those lawmakers agonized over just last year before Gov. Tim Pawlenty decided unilaterally where and what to cut.That budget runs through June of next year. Projections for the next two-year budget cycle right now show a $5.4 billion deficit, but lawmakers won’t be working on that until next year.Still, the current budget will be back on the table this year, especially after a judge tossed out part of Pawlenty’s ability to make those cuts as unconstitutional.So where does that leave the bonding bill (so-called because the state issues bonds to finance the debt incurred to pay for the projects included in it)?Well, local governments submitted requests to fund 153 projects at a total cost of $783 million for this year’s bonding session, and state agencies submitted $2 billion in requests. So there would have to be a lot of cutting even to come up with that big $1 billion bonding bill DFLers want to see.But Pawlenty’s bonding recommendation is for a bill that borrows only $684 million, and uses $338 million in other sources such as highway funds and federal dollars. And his recommendation doesn’t include any projects sponsored by local authorities.For the Twin Cities, that means requests of $25 million for a regional ballpark in St. Continue Reading

Fast start for bonding bill

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When the Minnesota Legislature officially goes back to work at noon today, all eyes will be on the capital improvements borrowing (or bonding) bills that key committee chairs are expected to introduce right away.In the House of Representatives, Rep. Alice Hausman, DFL-St. Paul, heads the Capital Investment Finance Division and is expected to introduce the House bonding bill when the committe meets today at 2:45 p.m.More from CAPITOL REPORT: Pulling back the curtain on the legislature to “share what I know and give people a somewhat insider’s view of how decisions are actually made inside that building and how normal citizens can have the best chance of influencing those decisions.”In the Senate, Sen. Keith Langseth, DFL-Glyndon, heads the Senate Capital Investment Committee and is expected to introduce his bonding bill when it meets at 2 p.m.Langseth in the past has written the Senate bill has pretty much written the bill by himself, while Hausman takes a more collaborative approach.Both bills are expected to be significantly larger than the $685 million bonding bill Gov. Tim Pawlenty proposed, which includes no funding for any construction projects desired by local governments.I’ll update this post or write another one later on today comparing the bonding plans between the House, Senate and Pawlenty to show what big Twin Cities and rural Minnesota projects get off to a good start.Typically, a request needs to be in at least one of the bills or Pawlenty’s recommendation, or it’s considered pretty much dead for the session. Items not included in the bills when they pass out of committee can be added via amendment on the floor, but like the overall bonding bills, those amendments must be approved by three-fifths of the voting members.Lawmakers say they want to pass the bonding bill quickly and put Minnesotans to work, but typically, these bills get hung up in conference committee for a while during three-way negotiations over their final shape. Continue Reading

You can get into the action on opening day

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The first day of the Minnesota Legislature’s session is mostly for show, but sometimes it does set a certain tone for the rest of the days that follow. With that in mind, the Office for Social Justice is trying to see if they can make a big enough splash on that first day to get reporters’ attention and win the messaging wars for the first day of session. 

More from CAPITOL REPORT: Pulling back the curtain on the legislature to “share what I know and give people a somewhat insider’s view of how decisions are actually made inside that building and how normal citizens can have the best chance of influencing those decisions.” They’ve scheduled a rally from 11:30 a.m. to 1 p.m. Thursday at the Capitol to save General Assistance Medical Care, the low-income safety net public health insurance program that Gov. Tim Pawlenty cut in his unallotment maneuvering to end last year’s budget stalemate. Unless the Legislature reverses Pawlenty’s move, an estimated 35,000 Minnesotans will be out of insurance this spring, according to their estimates. So if you want to send a message to lawmakers at the beginning of the session and you agree with their agenda, this rally is one way to do it. Continue Reading

Pulling back the curtain on the legislature

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The first time I came to the Capitol in St. Paul, it was as a rookie reporter to cover the end of the session in 1999 for the Fergus Falls Daily Journal. These were the heady days of “Jesse Checks” and budget surpluses for everybody.I was awestruck by the beauty of the building, the dignified look of the people wandering its halls and the excitement of the session’s end.For a political science major who has always been interested in politics, it was a dream come true to be in the rooms where the business of governing was taking place.When I left the Capitol complex that night, I stopped to stare at the white dome and think about all the people who had come and gone from the building, their dreams and needs and their desire to make Minnesota better, in their own way.Since then, my reverence for the Capitol, the Minnesota Legislature and state government has evolved, first into repulsion and outrage at the lack of seriousness on display almost every single day, then to boredom at the predictability of it all, then to amusement at the theatrics and egos of the players.Finally, I grew saddened by politicians’ preference for scoring political victories over achieving important goals, the media’s pursuit of the trivial aspects of state government and interest groups’ myopic focus on the one thing they think is important, instead of rolling up their sleeves and sacrificing to make the state better for everybody.So why am I writing a column for the Twin Cities Daily Planet that focuses on the Legislature, state government and politics, you might ask? It’s not because I want another shot at tearing into the people and organizations I think are ruining it for the rest of us.Read more Capitol Reports here.I think I’m writing this column because the only thing I can think of to do with all this frustration is share what I know and give people a somewhat insider’s view of how decisions are actually made inside that building and how normal citizens can have the best chance of influencing those decisions.So I hope you’ll join me as we begin another session in St. Paul. Continue Reading

Northstar commute: Fun on the train?

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Trains are fun. But are they a viable alternative to driving for Minnesota commuters? I rode the Northstar commuter train from Big Lake to Minneapolis for the first time to find out. 
In December, Northstar’s first full month of operation, people took 49,070 trips, according to Bob Gibbons, spokesperson for Metro Transit, which operates the line. That’s about three percent ahead of what the agency predicted, he said. “It’s promising, but ridership patterns aren’t really going to establish themselves until sometime in the first quarter of this year,” he said. Continue Reading

Capitol Report

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Capitol Report focuses on government and politics, looking at the Minnesota Legislature, Minnesota state government, Minneapolis and St. Paul city government, election and campaign related events and issues, with a focus on informing citizen readers about opportunities to influence or attend political events. 

 

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