In less than five months of intensive activity each year, the Minnesota legislature makes decisions and laws that determine the shape of government and impact the lives of every Minnesotan. If you want to find out what they are up to, the tools are at hand. The Legislative Reference Library has hugely detailed information available on-line and the House of Representatives’ Session Weekly and Session Daily publications offer a window on issues, legislation, committee hearings, and individual legislators.
The home page for the Minnesota legislature is organized with tabs for House, Senate, and Joint Departments and Commissions. From the home page, you can search for statutes (laws) or bills now pending before the House or before the Senate. If you want to follow specific legislation, you can list it in your own personal bill tracker, which will send you e-mail updates when the status of the bill changes, or when it is the subject of a committee hearing. That’s only the beginning: every report prepared for the legislature, every legislative auditor’s report, video of legislative proceedings, and much more is available on this site.
Session Weekly is a community media partner of the TC Daily Planet<.i>, so you will find some of its articles reprinted here. For the full story, go to Session Weekly‘s web page and peruse both current and back issues. As you might expect, it is published weekly, with Session Daily providing shorter, daily updates.
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