By Rep. Mark Anderson
Most news reports of the recent special legislative session are missing the point: It was an unnecessary waste of time and money caused by Gov. Mark Dayton.
Special sessions are supposed to be conducted for the purpose of addressing emergency issues. A special session justly was called when the 35W bridge collapsed. Now we have a governor who vetoes budget bills just because his pet projects are not included and sets up special sessions to keep pushing them.
Um, governor, get over it.
None of us got all we wanted in this year's legislation and it is a disgrace that nearly 9,500 state workers were stressed out over layoffs because the governor's actions caused them to receive layoff notices. Most of the changes between the bills he vetoed and the ones he signed were tweaks as opposed to major overhauls. The governor could have signed the original versions and spared us all from the headaches his decisions brought.
It is ridiculous that our governor vetoed the bipartisan K-12 education bill passed by the Legislature because it did not include funding for universal pre-Kindergarten. School districts did not want it, parents objected and legislators illustrated numerous problems with the plan. Still, the governor demanded it.
Dayton's unilateral push for unionized child care failed. Then he wanted universal pre-K, which would have brought many of the same kids under the union umbrella, but that also failed.
Which reminds me, he wanted to raise the gas tax by at least 16 cents per gallon this year. And failed.
The new House majority did what it could with mixed powers at the Capitol during 2015, but I still am unsettled over the results. Yes, it is good the final General Fund budget total is lower than what the governor and Senate Democrats demanded. But it still is $41.8 billion, a smaller increase but an increase nonetheless. For context, family incomes have risen 12 percent since 2000 while taxpayers are forced to pay almost 75 percent more.
That's not right.
There was an opportunity for significant tax reductions this year, but Democrats ran those plans right into the ditch. The House proposed eliminating the state tax on Social Security benefits. Minnesota is one of only six states to fully tax Social Security but Democrats in our state apparently figure blue-haired dollars are just as ripe for the picking as any.
How disgusting.
Oh, and we could have provided another $7 billion for roads and bridges over the next decade without raising taxes … except Democrats sank that plan once their Titanic gas-tax increase hit the public's iceberg of rejection.
Talk about jilted lawmakers. Nobody loved the Democrats' plan, so they won't let another plan people like come to passage?
I am pleased we passed a historic funding increase for nursing homes and approved a scaled-down transportation package that will help cities of 5,000 residents or fewer fix their roads. We protected property owners from the governor's land-grab proposal regarding 50-foot buffer strips and drafted law to help eliminate teacher shortages in Greater Minnesota. And there is $4 million for workforce housing in the outstate and $10.5 million for broadband grants. Two skilled-job training programs will help place and train workers immediately in positions where the regional need is the highest – outside the metro area.
All that spending on the heels of the Democrats' historic tax-and-spend increases in 2013, their wishes to raise the gas tax again this year, and their plans to blow through a $2 billion forecasted state surplus like a watermelon seed on grease.
I know I've asked the rhetorical question time and time again, but: Is there ever enough of our hard-earned tax dollars to satisfy the Democrats' appetite for spending?
We stopped some, swallowed hard on others in the name of compromise and will continue working hard in 2016 thanks to a new Republican House majority bringing balance to the Capitol.
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