Greetings from the Floor,
HF 375 was passed off the House floor on Monday, and allows counties to build veterans’ memorials anywhere in the county when county money is used. Under current law, only memorials built with county dollars can be done so in the county seat. The bill was passed by the House on a 125-0 vote.
On Thursday, the House passed permanent rules for the body and a Senate resolution to establish committee deadlines for bill hearings. This is generally routine work; however, after last minute action by the Legislature last year some important changes needed to be made. One change mandates that the House must allow 12 hours to go by before concurring with Senate amendments to an already passed House bill. Other similar ideas were presented for more transparency, but were ultimately not incorporated into the House rules. I think we now need to look at bills and statute changes to bring more transparency and public notice to bills and legislative action.
I introduced two bills in the last couple of weeks pertaining to the written driver’s license exam and Local Government Aid. HF 996 would translate the driver’s exam into Kurdish. This is a bill I introduced last year, and would help new Americans assimilate into our country. A large Kurdish population lives in our district, and they’ve been very eager to learn, work and live in Moorhead. HF 1320 would appropriate an additional $67.5 million for aids payable in 2018. This would help cities catch up with infrastructure investments and community services that may have been put off over the last decade due to decreased LGA appropriations. This bill would also continue the positive relationship between the state and local governments.
On Wednesday, I had a hearing in the Agriculture Policy Committee on my bill HF 200. This bill would appropriate $100,000 to establish a study conducted by the Department of Agriculture; the Department of Revenue; the University of Minnesota College of Food, Agriculture and Natural Resource Sciences; assessors and agricultural land owners to look at assessments for agricultural property taxes. Currently, agricultural property tax assessments are based on the market value of the property. This study would look at the efficacy and practicality of agricultural property tax assessments based on the productivity of land. Productivity based assessments would be more responsive to price swings in commodities and less reactive to land sales for property values (land sales for agricultural land can greatly inflate property values). The bill would also help the agricultural economy in times of low commodity prices. The bill was passed by the committee and referred to the Property Tax and Local Government Division.
Thank You for the Opportunity to Serve,
Ben