I hope you and your family had a wonderful Easter/Passover season! With the holiday break now behind us, lawmakers have now entered the time period where, depending on your viewpoint, a lot or a little gets done at the State Capitol.
With most House committees having finished their work, most of our days are now spent on the House floor debating bills that center more on government policy. That’s not to say the legislation isn’t important, but the majority of the proposals we are now seeing are not ridiculously controversial, so they fail to garner many headlines.
In the meantime, conference committees from all budget areas are working in earnest. Prior to our holiday break, the Minnesota House and Senate both passed a series of spending bills for the next two years. These omnibus finance bills fund separate areas of government, such as transportation, education, and health and human services.
Because there are differences between the House and Senate proposals, a conference committee consisting of five representatives and five senators is called in order to create a compromise proposal that can be approved by both bodies.
Once the House and Senate have approved these conference committee reports they are sent to Governor Dayton, and he decides whether or not to veto them or sign them into law. If any of the budget bills are vetoed, its back to the drawing board for the Legislature, as both the House and Senate would need to come up with a new spending proposal in the area of government in which the governor issued the veto.
One last note: May 22 is the final day of the 2017 legislative session, meaning all of our budget bills must be approved and sent to the governor before this date. Considering we are starting up the conference committee process earlier than normal this year, I’m hopeful we will finish our work with time to spare.
As always, I am interested in your feedback. Please feel free to contact me by e-mail at Rep.Kathy.Lohmer@House.MN or contact my office at 651-296-4244. You can also send mail to my office address: 501 State Office Building, 100 Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Blvd., St. Paul, MN 55155.