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NEWS COLUMN

2010 Legislative Report (Year End)

July 2010


? MULLERY IS 2010 LEGISLATOR OF THE YEAR (Minnesota Police and Peace Officers Association)
? MULLERY IS 2009 LEGISLATOR OF THE YEAR (National Alliance on Mental Illness)
? For the fourth straight year, Mullery passes a new foreclosure law that is a leader in the nation.
? Mullery is one of 13 legislators in the country appointed to the new Advisory Board on Youth Development for the National Conference of State Legislatures.
? Mullery gets state money for local construction projects (Lowry Bridge and Victory Memorial Drive)
? Mullery authors strongest bill in the country against predatory debt buyers.


I have tried to make this Report meaningful to you. Many people want to know some of what I’ve been doing (that begins on page 1 of the Report) and others want the broader overall perspective (that begins on page 4 of the Report). The issues have headings so you can easily scan through the report to the topic(s) of special interest to you. A survey is on the reverse side of this page. It’s simply impossible to cover everything that was done in a few pages, so please contact me with questions and suggestions.

IMPORTANT REMINDER: All political parties will hold their primary elections this year on August 10th. Be sure to put it on your calendar. I voted against changing the primary election from September because most people don’t follow politics until late summer and it appears there will be a low turnout in August.

Sincerely,



Joe Mullery
State Representative


Name ______________________________________
Address ____________________________________
Phone _____________________________________
Email ______________________________________


2010 LEGISLATIVE SURVEY
Please complete the survey and return it to me via email or U.S. mail.
Thank you.

Question Voter 1 Voter 2
1. Should the state build a new stadium for the Vikings by increasing taxes?
Yes
No
Not Sure
2. Should the state balance the budget by increasing taxes or cutting spending?
Raise taxes
Cut spending
Both
3. If we raise taxes, what taxes should be raised?
Income
Sales
Property
Don’t raise taxes
4. If the sales tax is increased, should we:
Increase from 6½% to 7%?
Expand to:
Clothing
Services (haircuts, auto repairs, etc.)
Other (specify)
5. If we cut spending, which programs should we cut?
Higher education and job training
E-12 education
Health care
Human services (mostly nursing home care for elderly and disabled)
Pollution control and environment
Public Safety and corrections
Other (specify)


COMMENTS/CONCERNS/QUESTIONS: ____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________




LEGISLATIVE REPORT
By Representative Joe Mullery


My Work


FORECLOSURES
Stopping homeowner foreclosures helps maintain stable neighborhoods. For the fourth straight year, I passed a new law that is one of the leaders in the nation on foreclosure. If a homeowner has paid down one-third of their mortgage, they will have at least 14 months (most states allow only two months) from the time of default to make the payments that are in arrears. When you consider the fact that most lenders take an extra three months just shuffling papers back and forth between their departments, and attorneys, most people will have 17 months. The average person in the Twin Cities who loses their job is usually able to find another in five months, so most people in this situation can easily save their home under this new law.

I also passed a new law that regulates mortgage loan originators and counselors to make sure they have the necessary qualifications, are bonded, and haven’t committed improper or fraudulent acts anywhere in the country.

You may have read in the media recently that the Attorney General is bringing cases under a law I passed last year to get at people who charge homeowners large fees upfront to renegotiate their mortgage and then don’t do it.

LOCAL PROJECTS
After dining many times for three years with the Chair of the Transportation Finance Committee and often talking to him about the dangers of the Lowry Bridge, I got him to assign to the new Lowry Bridge half of the total of all state dollars given to local bridges statewide last year. This year I obtained 1/6 of all money given to local bridges statewide to be allocated for the second phase of the Lowry Bridge. If we had not gotten the money to do the second phase at the same time, the bridge would have eventually closed again for two years.

I was also able to get state money each of the last two years for the improvements to Victory Parkway and the monument area.

YOUTH
I’ve become a leader on the development of our youth that takes place outside the classroom. I was one of the two founders of the Children and Youth Caucus for Legislators and still co-chair it. Our purpose is to help coordinate all state efforts to develop “complete" young people. Because of all my leadership efforts on youth issues, the National Conference of State Legislatures asked me to be on their 13-member Advisory Board on Youth Development.

Youth development is probably the biggest issue for the North Side. Failure of students to do well in school, plus their lack of social development, leads to high unemployment, low-paying jobs, gangs, drugs, etc. That contributes to crime, foreclosures, and other factors harmful to our neighborhoods.

Over half our state budget goes to education, and for each student in Minneapolis public schools, we get 1½ times as much as the average student in Minnesota. But, many of our youth are not receiving the early childhood education or the social development at an early age to become good citizens.

My special interest is in the pre-frontal cortex area of the brain, which controls character, judgment, social skills, commitment to community, leadership, inter-personal relationships, etc.

Despite all the cuts to programs this year, we were able to prevent any cuts to the funding for youth jobs in Minneapolis (I authored the funding bill last year).

JUVENILE JUSTICE
I’ve become the acknowledged leader on juvenile justice issues in the legislature. On a recent KFAI radio program, the host said he was told that no legislators were interested in or working on juvenile justice. The chief judge for Hennepin Juvenile Court said that “Joe Mullery is working” on it and had some good bills. In this year’s session, the Public Safety Committee chair referred to the “Mullery package of juvenile justice bills”. I’m the only legislator on the Juvenile Justice Coalition, the Juvenile Justice Legislative Group, the Juvenile Justice Interstate Offender Committee, and the ServeMinnesota Board (which oversees the Americorps workers in our schools).

This year I passed bills to separate youth from adults in jails and to join the Juvenile Offender Interstate Compact (without joining we wouldn’t have information on juvenile offenders from other states who move here). We passed my bill to get prompt treatment for youth who are chemically dependent, but the governor vetoed it. I had several other good reform bills, but they died because of in-fighting between various groups within the law enforcement, prosecutor, and probation systems.

For example, I worked for eight months on a bill that almost everyone agreed was a great idea. It allowed a stay of adjudication until their 19th birthday if the prosecutor consents. Right now, the court can’t put youth into full treatment for sexual, chemical, mental, or other problems. It also allows the court to keep “a club over their head” so they don’t re-offend; but, if they go straight, they don’t have a conviction record that prevents them from getting a job. Every time we’d get an agreement on language for the bill, some group of members of one of the organizations would object. Each organization committed to the need for the bill and then proceeded to scuttle it for some petty reason.

There is a lot of recent research showing that our traditional ways of dealing with youth in the justice system are ineffective and in some ways, exacerbate delinquency.

I’m also working on re-entry and rehabilitation for both adults and juvenile offenders. If they don’t get the education or the jobs they need to become self-sufficient and productive members of society, they’ll fall back into crime.

Kids in juvenile court are often not represented by an attorney and agree to a plea agreement without understanding the consequences. I tried to get the judges to warn the juvenile that the plea might bar them from various jobs or careers in the future, but the courts wanted so much money just to give that warning that my bill failed for lack of funding.

PUBLIC SAFETY
The Minnesota Police and Peace Officers Association honored me as their Legislator of the Year for 2010 because of my anti-crime efforts.

Gangs and Drugs: Due to the completely irresponsible actions of some members of the Metro Gang and Drug Strike Force, there were strong efforts this year to get rid of the law enforcement databases on gang members, and to abolish the part of the forfeiture law usually used against drug dealers. Our forfeiture law takes property from people who have either used the property while committing a crime, or have obtained it through criminal activity. I reviewed the forfeiture laws in other states and determined that we needed certain protections for people whose property was seized by police and authored a bill to that effect. The most important change is that now a county attorney will have to certify that the record shows things were done properly before the police can dispose of property. This was one of the most hotly-contested non-budget issues of the session. In the end, I worked with law enforcement and was able to pass my bill unanimously after defeating attempts to abolish the procedure most often used against drug dealers. A Minneapolis Deputy Chief told me the efforts by some legislators to greatly restrict gang data would have effectively prevented anti-gang efforts, so I helped lead the effort to preserve gang databases and we were successful.

Dogfighting: After four years of having a certain senator kill my bill, I was finally able to get into law that dog- and cock-fighting equipment will be used as evidence at trial. The Humane Society was extremely happy to see my bill finally become law. They said it will greatly help to stop the clandestine dog- and cock-fighting industry.

Human trafficking: I continue to work on this issue, whether the trafficking is in prostitution or “slave labor”. Last year, while working with Civil Society (a leader against trafficking), I realized that we should use civil law, not just criminal law, to go after traffickers. My idea to set mandatory minimums on damages was the first of its kind in the country. My idea “would have put teeth into” the civil law approach. This year, the coalition against trafficking adopted my approach and we are working on expanding the bill for next year.

DWI: Finally, the Public Safety Department supported the statewide ignition interlock program for multiple DWI offenders this year. I promoted this since 1998 and was able to get a pilot project passed in 2008 for two counties to try it out. The pilot project proved so successful that it was recommended to be implemented statewide. In committee, the staff person in charge of DWIs at Public Safety thanked me on the record for my leadership on ignition interlock over the years. Until the new law passed, people with past DWIs were often unable to drive to work, the store, school events, etc. This harmed not only the offender, but often destroyed the lives of their families. Our new law will allow them to drive anywhere if they haven’t been drinking alcohol. Also, our law gets rid of the “B Card” for people who haven’t had a DWI in 10 years. The B Card even prevented people from having non-alcoholic beer or wine at communion, even when they don’t drive afterward.

DEBT BUYERS
You probably saw the media attention given to the bill I authored that would have been the strongest regulation of “debt buyer” corporations in the country. “Debt buyers” are companies that buy alleged debt from other companies for a few cents on the dollar. There is often no legal debt, however; it many have been paid, the statute of limitations outlawed collection, or the debt never existed. Even some of the legitimate debt collection attorneys in the Twin Cities speak with contempt of the “debt buyers” and their often fraudulent practices. We learned that the governor was going to veto my bill, so we decided to put it off until next year (when he’s gone).

NEIGHBORHOODS
One of my ideas, which our city supported, was to amend the law so that Minneapolis (and some other cities) could take some of the abandoned, dilapidated buildings in our neighborhoods and turn the properties over to developers by using the eminent domain process. This would greatly help some of our North Side neighborhoods by turning these blighted properties into good housing. Both of the last two years I was able to get it out of committee and onto the House floor, but it went nowhere in the Senate last year. This year the lobbyists worked really hard on senators and in the final week it passed the Senate by one vote after keeping the voting board open a long time. The lobbyists then decided that since they hadn’t talked to House members (where there was more opposition), and it appeared the governor would veto it if it passed, the best plan was to wait until next year.

Another of my ideas supported by our city was to let cities with high foreclosure rates in low-income areas zone foreclosed properties so that if they were owner-occupied before foreclosure, they had to stay owner-occupied and not become rental property. Research has proven that home ownership helps stabilize neighborhoods. Some North Side neighborhoods already have a very high percentage of rental property with absentee landlords. The city lobbyists also decided to put this off until next year.

MENTAL HEALTH
Late last year I received the “Legislator of the Year” award from the National Alliance on Mental Illness.

Recent research shows that untreated mental health problems cause huge issues for our society.

Each year the House Education Finance Committee goes to one Minnesota school for a hearing away from the Capitol. This year I convinced the chair to join my committee for a hearing at Patrick Henry High School regarding the many problems in our city schools that occur because a student’s mental illness goes untreated. We also heard testimony regarding the new approaches our schools and county are using to help these students succeed.
My bills for crisis intervention training for mental health problems in schools, and for discharge planning for prisoners suffering from mental illness, were approved by policy committees but didn’t receive funding.

My bill that would have required schools to teach youth about the consequences of running afoul with the law was defeated in committee. It was strongly supported by the Juvenile Justice Coalition, law enforcement, probation, and many teachers. Several members of the committee that defeated it said my bill was a great idea but that staff had drafted the bill totally wrong. They said they’d help work on it for next year.

MINORITY HIRING
Nearly ten years ago, I pushed the state into actually putting in some measures to achieve its affirmative action goals. During the Ventura administration, we actually developed recruitment procedures. Under Pawlenty, however, almost all those efforts ceased. Over the last couple years I’ve pushed for more real efforts because I wanted a base to build on in anticipation of a new governor.

Because of my extensive efforts to get the state to hire people of color, the chair of the House Capital Investment (Bonding) Committee asked me to oversee the issues regarding people of color for all construction projects we funded this year. At my meeting with the two agencies in charge of construction of most of the state buildings (Department of Administration and State Colleges), it became apparent they had no real programs to make sure the proper number of minority contractors are used on each project. I had to explain to them the methods used by various government agencies around the country to accomplish this. They now are trying to set up some procedures to meet their goals, but staff was cut so much by the Pawlenty budgets that they don’t have any personnel to work on this now. The only agency that has programs for hiring minority contractors is the Department of Transportation because they have federal funds for staffing such procedures.

CONSUMERS
Minnesota was one of the first states in the country to pass strong laws against consumer fraud back in the early 1970s. For over 30 years individuals and groups of people could bring lawsuits against businesses for consumer fraud. A few years ago, our Supreme Court, in “its infinite wisdom”, suddenly decided that individuals and groups couldn’t bring suits under the consumer fraud laws and that the law only applies when a large number of Minnesotans are affected. This absurd decision goes against 30 years of practice in Minnesota. Thus, we are one of the few states in the country where individuals and groups are barred from bringing a consumer fraud suit against a business. I have introduced legislation the past few years that would allow individuals to sue; it passes policy committees every year, but it fails in the budget committee because the Supreme Court administration claims it will cost millions of dollars, even though judges who heard such cases tell me there’s no extra cost involved.

HOUSING & SMALL BUSINESS TAXES
My bill enabled the construction of needed housing for the homeless a few blocks north of the Basilica.

Another bill of mine allows cities to use taxes from housing districts to finance new market rate housing.

After working on it for several years, I finally got the Research and Development Tax Credit extended to small companies, which is a huge benefit to them (it’s mainly been used by very large corporations).

For the first time in nearly two decades, extensive changes in landlord-tenant law were in my bill that was agreed to by both landlords and tenant representatives. If a lease entitles the landlord to attorney’s fees if they win, then the tenants are entitled to attorney’s fees if they win. Late fees are capped at 8%. The tenant screening process is set up so tenants won’t have to incur numerous application fees. Severe penalties are incurred if landlords don’t hold property for 28 days after the tenant moves out. Tenants in a foreclosed property can stay to the greater of 90 days beyond the foreclosure redemption period or the end of their lease.


Other Laws

PROTECTING YOUR RIGHT TO VOTE
A group of organizations tried to get you to give up your constitutional right to vote in judicial elections without letting you know what was happening. They tried every tactic to bully their way through. It was the sleaziest effort to get a constitutional amendment passed that I’ve ever seen in my years at the Capitol.

Aside from their attempt to defraud voters into passing the amendment, the underlying concept is just plain not good. It was an idea from about 80 years ago and only seven states adopted it. In the last quarter century, the voters have soundly rejected this proposal in every state where it has been offered. In some cases, it has caused far worse problems than what it was supposed to fix. In the end, they just didn’t have the votes to pass it, but they are continuing their sleazy bullying tactics to get it passed next year.

TAXES
The Local Government Aid (LGA) and Market Value Credit Aid that the City of Minneapolis receives from the state were cut by $32 million over the last two years. If the City decides to make up for that loss by increasing property taxes, it will mean an increase of roughly $200 for the average home. I strongly opposed this.

I strongly objected to a bill that abolished a tax credit for low-income people and gave that money to multi-millionaires. It was supposed to help fairly small companies expand, but our staff said there was no research that showed it worked; even if it did produce more jobs, most of them wouldn’t exist until several years from now.

Once again the governor vetoed a bill that would only have raised taxes on high-income earners and would have made them pay closer to the percent of their income that most of us pay. Presently, most of us pay around 12% of our income in state and local taxes, while the wealthy pay 7 to 10%.

Also, once again the governor blocked our attempt to close the tax loophole for foreign operating corporations and businesses that shift income to foreign countries that are tax havens.

I really get tired of Republicans and some businesses saying that we have nearly the highest business taxes. In actuality, the expert auditing firm, Ernst & Young, says our business taxes are 15th lowest in the nation, and that while the rate is high, most businesses pay far less because we have many deductions, credits, and exemptions that other states don’t have. The Federal Reserve Bank ranked Minnesota 9th lowest in business taxes as a percent of profits. “Market Watch”, for two years in a row, has named Minneapolis-St. Paul as the best place in the nation to do business.

Moreover, Republicans totally distort the reality of our taxes on individuals. When you look at all revenue (which is mostly taxes) taken in by state and local governments, as compared to the personal income in the states, we rank 28th lowest of the 50 states.

BUDGET
One of the important outcomes of the year was that the Supreme Court said our governor has to abide by the Constitution and Minnesota laws. They determined that his unallotment (cutting the already-enacted funding for state and local government, and many other initiatives, without consent of the legislature) was illegal because he never signed into law a balanced budget, even though one was presented to him by the legislature.

The state faces a huge deficit, but not because of increased spending. Actually, almost all the deficit is caused by loss of revenue (mostly taxes). Our total General Fund budget for this biennium is $31 billion, which is a $3 billion decrease from the previous biennium despite increased costs from inflation and increased population. This is the first time since the state started keeping such data in the 1950s that the budget has been smaller than the previous biennium.

Even though it seemed we made huge cuts, we were able to balance the budget with less than $1 billion in cuts, because we received federal money and we shifted billions into the next biennium by delaying payments.

Next year we face a $6 billion deficit because of continued lack of revenue; this time there won’t be any federal money to help us out, nor will we have the ability to shift payments into the future. That’s almost one-fifth of the entire budget. Over half the budget goes to education and nearly a third goes to health care. For those who say cut welfare, that’s less than one-half of one percent of the budget.

SENIORS
People over 65 make up 12 percent of the state population. I believe Aristotle is the first person known for saying, “a society is judged by the way it treats its youth, its elderly, and its disabled”.

The governor continued his 8-year effort to shift taxes onto the property tax, which ignores the fact that many people (especially seniors) are on a low fixed income. We were able to lessen his shift onto the regressive property tax.

AARP was very happy that despite the governor’s efforts, we were able to prevent across-the-board budget cuts to long-term services (Minnesota ranks 6th in the nation for spending on home health care services for seniors and the disabled). AARP was also happy that we were able to defeat the governor’s effort to overturn our law that ensures all nursing home residents get quality care, whether or not they are financially well off.

Many seniors execute a reverse mortgage on their home so they can use the equity in their home to live on for the rest of their lives. A new law provides that the homeowner must be referred to an independent counselor and has seven days to change their minds after accepting the lender’s written offer of terms.


JOBS
Because of my experience on economic development, taxes, and capital investment, the Speaker appointed me to a special Jobs Task Force. We held hearings around the state to hear from experts on job creation. Most experts said the only thing we could do was not cut public sector jobs, but do pass as large a bonding bill as possible, thus triggering an increase in jobs. Our DFL legislature listened to the experts and passed a $1 billion bonding bill to create jobs (I wanted to do $1.5 billion). Economists said the total increase in jobs due to our bill would have been around 20,000.

Unfortunately, the governor vetoed about one-third of the money contained in the bonding bill for construction projects throughout the state. He vetoed needed buildings at Minneapolis Community and Technical College, Hennepin Technical College, and North Hennepin College, as well as the African-American Cultural Center, the Asian Cultural Center, the Theodore Worth Ski Center, and dozens of other worthy projects that were both needed and would have put many more people to work. Almost none of this bill would have had to be paid in the current budget, but rather over 20 to 30 years.

Another jobs bill aided expansion of the Mall of America with local fees, created a tax credit for rehabilitation of historic buildings, allowed cities greater leeway in using funds to encourage new construction, and gave incentives to Ford Motor Company to keep producing trucks and cars in St. Paul.

HEALTH & HUMAN SERVICES
When the governor terminated General Assistance Medical Care (GAMC) last year, people with incomes under $8,000 were suddenly without medical care. This not only affected those without health care, but the rest of us would have to pay the extremely higher costs for their trips to the emergency rooms (which have to take uninsured patients) through higher premiums. A law was passed that retains care for most of those patients through new coordinated care initiatives at a few hospitals. It’s underfunded and I think it was a bad compromise forced by the governor. We also passed a law that allows our governor to opt into a new federal initiative where Medical Assistance would cover most of the people on GAMC, thus shifting the cost to the federal government. We would only have to increase our health provider surcharge by less than $200 million and would get $1.4 billion in federal money in return. Even the providers who pay the surcharge supported it. Other states are taking advantage of the federal money but our governor turned it down, so we’ll have to spend over $1 billion extra. Fortunately, the next governor has the ability to opt in.
Medical Assistance will now cover home health care services for those with at least one serious condition, two chronic conditions, or persistent mental health issues.

Health plans will be prevented from charging higher co-pays or deductibles for oral chemotherapy drugs than for drugs that are injected or infused.

Relatives will be able to provide licensed supported living services to a loved one and receive Medicaid reimbursement under certain circumstances.

Even though many cuts were made in the health care system, fortunately no cuts were made to the school-based mental health grants that are so important to our North Side schools.

In recent years, vast numbers of people have been getting tattoos. Because there’s been a large increase in disease transmission, a new law creates a licensing system that requires tattoo artists to be trained in preventive procedures. It also prohibits tattooing, some types of piercings, branding, etc., on children under the age of 18, regardless of parental consent.

HOMEOWNERS
Contractors who repair or remodel homes built before 1978 must be certified in proper procedures for working with lead-based paint and cities must check the certification before issuing permits.

A new dispute resolution process is established in the Department of Labor and Industry where neutral construction experts will give non-binding decisions on disagreements between homeowners and contractors.

Another protection for homeowners is that they will have 72 hours to cancel a contract for home repairs if they find out their insurance company won’t cover the cost of the repair.

A new provision helps owners of small- to medium-sized homes by allowing companies that provide electricity to charge lower rates per kilowatt hour for people who use less electricity.

A person attempting to acquire title after a foreclosure sale, but before the redemption period expires, must provide to the mortgagor a notice of the price that the mortgagor can pay to redeem the property.

Property owners can request a city assessment to finance capital improvements on their private property if they will boost energy efficiency. This is beneficial because assessments often have a lower interest rate than bank loans.

MERF
The Minneapolis Employees Retirement Fund was in danger of going bankrupt. Minneapolis residents would have had to pay more in property taxes to keep the Fund afloat. We convinced the state to contribute roughly half the cost of this deficiency in the future – a huge savings to Minneapolis taxpayers. If we had not convinced the State to fund the deficiency, the average homeowner would have had to pay an extra $150 per year in property taxes for decades.

PUBLIC PENSIONS
Public employee pension plans are in a very unsound condition because of the economy and benefit increases. Nearly one in ten Minnesotans are covered by these plans. We increased government and employee contributions and made changes to cost-of-living adjustments. This should stabilize these funds.

MISCELLANEOUS
The legislature unanimously passed a Resolution (to be sent to Congress) opposing federal takeover of insurance regulation. The federal government has proven its ineptness at regulating financial institutions. For example, the collapse of the multi-billion dollar American International Group (AIG) was federally regulated, but none of AIG’s state regulated subsidiaries failed.

Be careful not to get stuck in an intersection when a light turns red. If you block cross-traffic after they get the green light, you can be ticketed.

The legislature’s attempt to create a barrier to Asian carp coming up the Mississippi River was vetoed by the governor.

About two dozen of us legislators formed a bipartisan Small Business Caucus to work on special issues facing small businesses. Sixteen bills came out of that caucus and ended up passing. Some of them were similar to the ideas I received from small business owners in our district, such as preventing duplication of services by various government agencies, shortened time for processing permits, targeting workforce programs to needs of employers, and a one-stop government office where small businesses can go for assistance.

Homeowners and businesses can get a rebate for up to 60 percent of the cost of installing Minnesota-made solar panels.