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Omnibus jobs and energy bill mixes shrimp farming, nuclear payments

Minnesota could see small-to-sizable shifts in how government is organized and what it spends money on in the areas of energy and economic development over the next two years.

The House Job Growth and Energy Affordability Committee began work on a $380 million omnibus jobs and energy bill for the 2018-19 biennium Thursday evening with an overview of HF2209, as amended.

Public testimony is planned for Monday with amendment consideration scheduled for Tuesday with a final vote potentially that day.

The House plan, also spelled out in a spreadsheet, is but one vision for spending and policy changes in the areas of employment and energy.

Those areas are handled by separate committees in the Senate: the Senate Energy and Utilities Finance and Policy Committee, and the Senate Jobs and Economic Growth Finance and Policy Committee, which has its own jobs proposal, SF1937, sponsored by Sen. Jeremy Miller (R-Winona). It awaits action by the Senate Finance Committee.

And then there is the budget plan offered by Gov. Mark Dayton, which specifies amounts for spending on relevant agencies such as the Department of Employment and Economic Development, the Department of Commerce and the Public Utilities Commission.

Monetary changes

Overall spending in the bill would amount to a $10.8 million bump in the 2018-19 biennium.

A major policy and fiscal shift that proved controversial in committee, as well as when it was passed on the House Floor on its own is the creation of a new energy fund from the Renewable Development Account, into which Xcel Energy pays about $25 million annually, an amount tied to storage of spent nuclear fuel casks at the Prairie Island and Monticello nuclear power plants. The new fund would bring to an end the “Made in Minnesota” incentives for owners of solar energy panels.

Other changes in the bill include:

  • appropriating $96.7 million for the Minnesota Housing Finance Agency, a $4.9 million reduction from last biennium’s budget;
  • appropriating $3.7 million for the Board of Mediation Services, a reduction of more than $1 million from 2016-17;
  • appropriating up to $1.25 million as an incentive to promote jumbo shrimp farms, with eligible producers receiving a payment of 69 cents per pound for up to five years;
  • allowing Xcel Energy and several smaller public utility companies to renegotiate or terminate their contracts for electricity produced by burning biomass fuels; and
  • prohibiting cities from banning merchants from providing customers with paper, plastic or reusable bags.

Committee members expressed interest in how the omnibus jobs and energy bill incorporates provisions drawn from at least 46 smaller bills that have previously been introduced by more than 30 House sponsors.

Rep. Pat Garofalo (R-Farmington), the committee chair and omnibus bill sponsor, said individual bills were made part of the omnibus jobs and energy bill in several ways.

For example, a bill providing funding for a wastewater treatment facility serving Clear Lake and Clearwater appears “exactly as it was,” Garofalo said. The language from a bill to create a rental assistance program for homeless and highly mobile students is included, but the omnibus bill changes the amount of money appropriated.

Rep. Regina Barr (R-Inver Grove Heights), who sponsors a bill that would change how the Department of Commerce seeks to return unclaimed property to Minnesotans, was open to the agency’s suggestion that its own staff could handle a duty that her bill would have assigned to an outside vendor, so that is how the omnibus jobs and energy bill has it.

What’s in the bill?

The following are some of the bills that have been incorporated in part or whole into the omnibus jobs and energy bill:


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