By Rep. Paul Anderson
To the surprise of many, the 2014 legislative session ended late Friday evening, May 16, three days ahead of the required adjournment date. Once a general agreement on the bonding bill was reached, the other financial pieces fell into place quickly. A second major tax bill was passed in the final days, with the omnibus supplemental spending bill being the final piece of legislation passed during the session. The spending bill utilized another $262 million of our projected surplus and, together with the other spending and tax bills, we have pretty much used up the $1 billion in extra funds that the February forecast called for.
Hopefully, it’s not a trend, but the last three months have seen below-forecast numbers for revenue collections coming in to the state. Last month’s figure was $11 million, certainly not a large number in the context of a 30-plus billion dollar budget, but it bears watching, none the less.
As mentioned before, the bonding bill was the most challenging piece of legislation to pull together. Since a super-majority vote is needed to pass such legislation, at least eight Republican House votes were required to insure its passage. To make it even more difficult, an agreement made last year limited the size of this year’s bonding package to roughly $850 million. That would make the two-year bonding total one billion dollars, which has typically been the upper limit of state borrowing. DFL members, however, wanted to spend even more since we had a projected surplus and interest rates were still low. Their original bonding request was for $1.2 billion this year, way above the limit agreed to last year.
To get around that, the Democrats proposed spending $200 million in cash on bonding projects. And since that was separate from the actual bonding bill, they only needed a simple majority to pass such legislation. That’s what happened, with the bonding proposal at 850, and the additional spending bill at 200. I voted in favor of the bonding bill because it contained a solid amount of funding for local roads and bridges, in addition to an item helping the city of Alexandria with the cost of demolishing the old Jefferson High School building. I voted against the spending bill because it contained a number of projects that didn’t seem to be necessary.
The final day of session started late in the morning and contained several breaks in the action throughout the day. When we came back in the evening, the final two bills awaiting action were the spending bill and the medical marijuana bill. A conference committee had come up with compromise language after each body had passed very different medical marijuana bills. The House bill was much more restrictive, with only one manufacturing location and three distribution sites, while the Senate called for over 50 distribution sites around the state.
The final language agreed upon calls for eight distribution sites and two manufacturing locations. There will be what’s called “observational research” done by doctors who will certify persons with certain medical conditions to be placed onto a registry to become eligible to receive the medical marijuana. It was a difficult vote because we heard compelling stories of families who had been helped by its use. However, there are many unanswered questions about the process, in addition to concerns about possible future liability for the state and the lack of research and support from the medical community. For those reasons, I voted against the bill.
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