Dear Neighbor,
Much of the work this week in St. Paul revolved around getting policy bills through initial committee stages ahead of the Friday, March 20 deadline.
I presented a handful of bills to committees in the last week or two, including one that is now ready to come to the floor for a full House vote. H.F. 323 allows local governments and volunteer firefighters, ambulance personnel and first responders to agree on alternative compensation dates.
Other bills of mine which continue moving through the process after hearings include one to provide veteran service organizations some breathing room on property taxes (H.F. 705) and another to ban cancer-causing chemicals from furniture and children’s products (H.F. 1100).
Maybe the bill which advanced recently and could turn out to be the most noteworthy is one that would dedicate the existing tax on motor-vehicle parts to the highway user tax distribution fund. This is not a new tax, but it would take taxes we already pay and put another well over $200 million directly toward our roads and bridges each year.
More will develop on that topic as the House comes forward with its budget proposal next week. The Senate also will put out its budget plan and then both bodies, along with Gov. Mark Dayton, will start working on finding ways we can agree on a finished product.
One topic that has raised red flags for many people across the state is when the governor controversially announced he wanted to require 50-foot buffer strips around Minnesota waters (including every stream, drainage ditch and river in the state).
Interestingly, the governor announced this proposal after attending a Pheasant Summit and touted his plan would create 125,000 acres of habitat for pheasants and other wildlife. Questions arose over whether buffer strips would truly benefit pheasants, so now advocates have shifted the discussion toward protecting our water.
In any case, this proposition is a large undertaking with significant local impacts that, in total, could touch more than 100,000 acres in Minnesota. What many people may not realize is there already is a buffer-strip requirement in place – a 16-foot regulation.
Many questions remain unanswered. How would this be enforced? How would landowners be compensated for giving up their land? Would these buffer strips be good for wildlife? Would they help keep our waterways clean?
It seems the best course of action for now would be to let 50-foot buffer strip pilot programs – including one in our area between Cold Spring and Sauk Centre – take root and provide us with results to examine. This may turn out to be a great idea, but we should get results from the tests we are conducting before we implement laws with so many unanswered questions and widespread impacts.
I will be back with budget-related updates soon. Until then, Please let me know your thoughts on these issues and anything else pertaining to the Legislature.
Good luck,
Jeff