Friends,
Wednesday night was quite the night. For the first time since 1990, a DFL governor gave a State of the State address to a DFL-controlled Legislature. I was honored to be among those in the audience.
Much of the address was a defense of his budget. Since releasing it last month, Republicans, and even some DFLers, have been taking shots at some of its elements. But the governor is right; we’ve can’t use the same old smoke and mirrors fixes to the budget that we have in the past. Getting back on the road to real financial stability requires some hard choices, and he spelled out some of those in the address.
The path we’ve been following for the past 10 years has not brightened our future. The governor’s plan ends the status quo of deep cuts to middle class and borrowing from our schools. It invests in education at every level because it is the key to prosperity. And I agree that we need to provide long-needed property tax relief to middle class homeowners and farmers.
Gun hearings
It’s been hard to get around the State Office Building this week. The House Public Safety Finance and Policy Committee has been holding three days of hearings on the issue of guns.
It’s a debate the country has been having all across the country since 26 people, including 20 first-graders, were gunned down at an elementary school in Newtown, Conn., just before Christmas. That massacre came on the heels of other mass shootings in Tucson, Aurora, Colo., Milwaukee and right here in Minneapolis.
I introduced a bill dealing with gun trafficking. It would make it a gross misdemeanor to falsely inform law enforcement that a firearm has been lost or stolen. It would also make it a felony on the person’s second offense for that crime or for making the claim while knowing or having reason to believe that the firearm was transferred to someone who intended to commit a felony crime of violence.
I think all sides of this debate agree that the status quo is not acceptable. I am committed to safer communities, so I welcome this debate.
Contact me
Please feel free to contact me with your questions, suggestions and concerns. My office is room 549 in the State Office Building, 100 Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Blvd. Saint Paul, Minnesota 55155. I can be reached by phone at 651-296-4201 and by email at rep.sheldon.johnson@house.mn. You can also monitor activities at the House, track bills, watch live video and sign up for my email update list by going to http://www.house.mn.
Sheldon