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State Representative Paul Anderson
100 Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Blvd.
651-296-4317
For more information contact: House GOP Communications 651-296-5520
NEWS COLUMN
Legislature hits home stretch
By state Rep. Paul Anderson
It’s like the fourth quarter of a basketball game. As legislators returned from the Easter recess, the feeling seemed to be one of renewed vigor as we surveyed the task ahead: not even five weeks left in the session and a $4.6 billion deficit to manage.
Finance and tax committees are putting in long hours to craft their respective bills. Legislative spending targets have been released, and each omnibus bill must live within those benchmarks.
As committees finish their work and finalize bills, action will then shift to the House floor. Sessions are slated for nearly every day, with weekend meetings also probable.
The Education Omnibus Bill was released in the Education Finance Committee April 14. Totaling 214 pages, the bill provides the framework for funding K-12 education in Minnesota for the next two years.
This bill contains the House Democratic spending plan, and it calls for $185 million less in K-12 education funding than the Governor’s proposal. It totals $11.6 billion in state General Fund spending for the coming biennium. When figuring all revenue, including federal stimulus dollars and payment shifts, the figure rises to $13.6 billion.
Two pieces in the bill have generated a number of calls and e-mails to my office. The first has to do with removing state funding for special education students attending private schools. That would have a huge negative impact for us in District 13A. Our Catholic schools do a wonderful job of educating their students, and they compliment and work together well with the public schools.
If this legislation passes, it would almost force private school students with special needs to enroll in a public school. That, in turn, would increase the cost of education for the state of Minnesota. I offered an amendment to take this language out of the bill, but, as of this writing, the fate of that amendment is not known.
The other item that has drawn interest has to do with teacher licensure. A provision in the bill would allow a person who has obtained a bachelor’s degree with a certain grade point average or 10 years of work experience to obtain a two-year resident teacher’s license after taking 200 hours of instruction. It’s patterned after a program called the Teacher America Program.
Visited with the district engineer from MnDOT recently, and we reviewed the short- and long-range construction plans for District 4. Highway 55 is scheduled to have a reclaim pavement job done from the west Douglas County line down to Hwy. 28 in Glenwood. Cost is estimated to be around $11 million.
Also on tap for 2010 is a milling to concrete and overlay project on Hwy. 9 from Benson to three-fourths of a mile north of the Pope-Stevens county line. That project comes in just under $6 million.
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Rep. Anderson encourages constituents to contact his new office with input regarding any state legislative issue. He can be reached on the web at www.house.mn/13A and via email at rep.paul.anderson@house.mn. To contact Anderson by phone, call (651) 296-4317. Mail can be sent to Rep. Paul Anderson, 239 State Office Building, 100 Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Blvd., St. Paul, Minnesota 55155.
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