As it does every year, with roughly four weeks to go in our legislative session the heavy lifting in the Minnesota House and Senate is about to begin.
The dominoes usually begin to fall after we receive the most current state fiscal forecast, which in this case happened at the beginning of March. From here, both the House and Senate established budget targets, and eventually each finance committee then works within its limit to help build the overall state budget.
Take the transportation finance committee which I chair. We were tasked with finding a long-term solution for Minnesota's road and bridge needs, along with funding the short term needs of agencies such as the Department of Transportation. The committee came up with a framework for transportation funding, then members from both sides of the aisle offered and debated amendments that they believed would improve the bill. A number of those were approved. When our work was finished, a bipartisan group of committee members approved legislation that would appropriate $7 billion over the next ten years to road and bridge repair, and under this plan that would happen without raising anyone's taxes.
I'll discuss this bill in greater detail next week, but this gives you an idea of the work that is now taking place throughout several House finance committees.
Eventually all of the finance bills will be debated on the House floor and approved. Once that occurs, and the Senate has approved similar legislation, a conference committee made up of an equal number of representatives and senators will be called to hash out the differences between the bills. When their work is complete, this compromise proposal will be submitted to both the House and Senate for approval and eventually sent to Governor Dayton for his signature.
The 2015 legislative session must conclude on May 18, so expect to hear about a flurry of activity at the State Capitol in the coming days.