ST. PAUL – The Minnesota Legislature passed a new two-year budget and adjourned on time Monday night.
The House made good on a number of its top priorities for the 2015 session, including providing more funding for K-12 education, care for aging adults, and roads and bridges. But a comprehensive, long-term transportation package and billions in tax relief the lower body proposed became casualties to insistence by Gov. Mark Dayton and Senate leaders to raise the gas tax by at least 16 cents per gallon, Rep. Mark Anderson, R-Lake Shore, said.
"When it comes down to it, House Republicans and Senate Democrats came together with a pretty good agreement with strong bipartisan support for our major budget bills," Anderson said. "Did we get everything we wanted? No, we didn't, but neither did the governor and the Senate. That's how compromise works. One House proposal that fell by the wayside with the tax bill would phase out Minnesota's practice of taxing Social Security benefits. That would be a huge boost for our seniors living on fixed incomes, but the governor and the Senate stood in the way on that one so we'll have to continue working to get that through next year."
During the 2015 session, Republicans proposed a transportation plan that would invest $7 billion in roads and bridges without a tax increase, and passed $2 billion in tax relief primarily targeted at Minnesota families. Anderson said Democrats declined to take up either the House's long-term transportation plan or tax cuts unless a gas-tax increase – which polls indicated was widely unpopular – was in the mix. A scaled-back transportation bill passed the Legislature, including $12.5 million in road assistance for cities of less than 5,000 residents.
The K-12 education portion of the budget which passed includes $400 million in new funding, 72 percent of which goes directly onto the per pupil formula. At 1.5 percent in 2016 and 2 percent in 2017, the education budget dedicates more per pupil than Dayton proposed in his own budget. The agreement the House and Senate reached does not include funding for universal pre-K.
"For the governor to threaten vetoing the K-12 bill because it does not fund universal pre-K is selfish and purely political," Anderson said. "He's not living in reality. Where is the support for it? Districts themselves don't want it, the Legislature doesn't support it and I'm not hearing an outcry from parents advocating it. It would be really disappointing for the governor to veto a good bill because he isn't getting his way on pre-K. Again, none of us got everything we want and it's time for the governor to accept that, sign the bill and move along."
House Republicans also reformed the senior care reimbursement system in the budget that was approved, resulting in $138 million in increased funding, improving the wages of care providers and establishing a permanent solution to statewide nursing home needs.
The 2016 legislative session is scheduled to convene on March 8.
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