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Legislative News and Views - Rep. Jeff Howe (R)

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Update from the House

Friday, April 28, 2017

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Above, I was pleased to join Sen. Michelle Fischbach, Kimball Area High School Principal Erik Widvey, Congressman Tom Emmer, and KAHS Superintendent Jim Wagner during a recent school visit. It was interesting to hear the success the school is having with industrial technologies programming at a time that area of learning has, unfortunately, become a lesser priority in many other districts. It would be a positive step to see shop classes revitalized throughout out state so more students have opportunities similar to the ones students at KAHS have in preparing for careers in manufacturing and the trades.

Greetings,

Congratulations to all those who recently received ROCORI Proud certificates, including Karen Brettingsen, Sharon Posch, Doris Minnerath, Aaron Schneider, Jan Clements, Kayelee Freeman, Belinda Walsh, Stefanie Rothstein, Matthew Zurbriggen, Nancy Nysteun, Ken Salchow and Lea Frank.

Also, congratulations to Roger and Sharon (Arnold) Hess of Paynesville for recently celebrating their 50th wedding anniversary. May many more happy years be in store.

At the Capitol, the focus remains on conducting joint House-Senate conference committees to put finance bills in shape for votes on final passage. These bills will form the basis of our state’s next two-year budget and, as a conferee on the transportation package, I have been working closely with that subject.

We started the conference committee process by conducting a side-by-side comparison of the respective omnibus transportation finance packages the House and Senate each have approved. A number of provisions are similar or the same in each version, such as directing sales taxes already being collected on the purchases of auto parts toward roads and bridges.

Then we identified a number of non-controversial differences each body is offering and the other is willing to accept. The Senate, for example, has language related to active transportation (pedestrians and bicyclists). That gives us the basis of a final bill so we can build compromise on the rest.

Along the way, I successfully offered an amendment to the transportation package that would allow our state to automatically adopt the national bus safety standards updated at the federal level every five years. The caveat is the standards would not be adopted in Minnesota until after the legislative session takes place those years, allowing us to make changes as we see fit before they take effect. It is a more efficient, less costly way of functioning and we ultimately retain control over our bus standards. The state patrol and the busing industry support the amendment.

As I noted in last week’s email, it is good to see the governor is coming off his proposal for increasing the tax on gasoline at the wholesale level. It would be very helpful to have the governor involved in the budget process but, to this point, he is choosing to not be engaged. The Legislature is busy formulating budget bills and we will continue working and welcome his participation as we now have less than one month to go before adjournment.

Good luck,

Jeff