Dear neighbor,
The Legislature is set to adjourn in about 80 hours, but the majorities still have not put forth a complete budget and the tax bill remains a work in progress.
In the meantime, the House has spent most of its time on the floor discussing a wide variety of bills that do not pertain to the budget. Today, we debated a bill that would borrow $800 million to fund construction projects throughout the state. It failed. A bill to raise the salaries of legislators reached the floor this afternoon, but a vote has not yet taken place. Tomorrow, we expect to receive a bill that would unionize day care providers and personal care assistants.
A higher priority should be to pass a new two-year budget. In fact, that should be our top priority this session. Yet, the majority of large budget items – including K-12 education and Health and Human Services – remain unfinished as time winds down.
I am very concerned we will end up rushing these important bills through the process and not give them the public transparency they deserve. The logistics of passing the remaining budget bills through both bodies of the Legislature will make it very difficult to conduct the process as intended.
We appear to be headed toward a situation where only a handful of legislators will be influencing the final budget bills at the expense of promised transparency. This already happened in one situation, where a small group of legislators stripped a provision from a transportation bill that was approved by both the House and Senate and would have increased speed limits on state highways from 55 mph to 60 mph.
The day care unionization bill we may take up Saturday is highly controversial because it has almost no public support. A recent KSTP survey shows 86 percent of licensed providers themselves don’t want to unionize. Editorial boards from both the Star Tribune and Pioneer Press recently wrote editorials expressing opposition to this push.
We did receive word last night that the governor and Democrats in the Legislature have reached an agreement on a new tax bill. Their plan would raise taxes by $2 billion. It includes making Minnesota’s top income tax bracket the fourth-highest in the country at 9.85 percent. Cigarettes would be taxed another $1.60 per pack. I will pass along more details after we have a look at the full bill.
One thing worth noting is the $2 billion tax increase is far above the $627 million shortfall we need to resolve. The state continues to receive more revenue than previous projections called for, including an extra $145 million in April. That brings us to around $3 billion in more-than-expected revenue this biennium. Projections indicate we will have a surplus of $856 million in the 2016-17 biennium without raising taxes by a single penny.
It concerns me the new taxes and extra spending proposed by the legislative majorities and the governor could disrupt this growth we are experiencing.
I will let you know what unfolds the next few days as things take shape leading up to adjournment. Some marathon floor sessions will be necessary to get the work done on time once the majorities finally come forward with finalized plans on the budget and taxes.
Here is a link to live streaming House and Senate video, along with TV channel information if you would like to follow along as we take on this session's most important issues.
Sincerely,
Paul