Disaster relief bill heads to House floor

A bill to devote an additional $17 million in state dollars to repairing infrastructure damage caused by 2014 flooding was approved by the House Ways and Means Committee late Wednesday.  

Sponsored by Rep. Jim Knoblach (R-St. Cloud), HF164 would meet the lion’s share of the cost by cancelling previously enacted but unspent dollars from past natural disaster bills in 2011 and 2012. The measure would include just $2.2 million in new spending. It awaits action by the full House.

Its companion, SF1, sponsored by Sen. Vicki Jensen (DFL-Owatonna), awaits action by the full Senate.

Watch the committee meeting here.

The discussion of disaster relief took up only about 15 minutes of committee time, but DFLers unsuccessfully offered a series of amendments proposing deficiency funding for a number of state agencies that expect to run out of money before the current biennium ends on June 30. Amendments included funding for projected shortfalls at the state security hospital, Minnesota Zoo and Department of Natural Resources.

DFLers pleaded special exigency for the agency funding requests, but Republicans accused them of trying to circumvent the relevant House committees.

“I think this is precedent-setting,” said Rep. Greg Davids (R-Preston). “I don’t think we’ve ever done something like this to a disaster-relief bill. ... If there’s one thing we can do on a bipartisan basis, it’s disaster relief.”

Rep. Jim Knoblach

Knoblach, the committee chair, noted that these so-called “deficiency” items are contained in a separate bill he is sponsoring, HF264, and that they are traveling in a separate bill in the Senate as well.   

HF164 includes $13 million in Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) match dollars as well as smaller appropriations for disaster spending by the Department of Transportation ($3 million) and the Board of Water and Soil Resources ($2.5 million).

HF164 grew out of a series of heavy storms from June 11–July 11, 2014, that caused flooding across the state and prompted a federal disaster declaration covering 37 Minnesota counties and three tribal governments.  

Under federal rules, the state is obliged to cover 25 percent of the costs incurred by the FEMA in responding to a presidentially declared disaster. The bill also contains about $5 million for state-only disaster relief spending enabled by the 2014 law that created the state’s natural disaster contingency fund.