There will be a special session Monday to pass a two-year state budget. All four legislative leaders and Gov. Tim Walz signed off on a deal to pass 13 bills in a one-day session that has to end before 7:00 am Tuesday morning. In order to accomplish this feat, the rules and the Minnesota Constitution will have to be suspended by a supermajority vote of each body. The agreement also states that no amendments will be permitted to any of the bills unless agreed upon by the four leaders and the governor.
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While a global agreement for a one-day special session is not unusual, this agreement is unique when it comes to transparency. The exact wording and budgets for many of the bills are not public as we write this Capitol Watch the day before the session. It appears the spending targets agreed to at the end of the regular session are still in play, but how each spending committee divided up their target remains to be seen.
One interesting thing to note is the bill repealing free health care for illegal immigrant adults is traveling separately as Senate Majority Leader Erin Murphy requested. Watch for her and just a few of her Democrat colleagues to vote with all of the Republicans to pass the bill. This illustrates the risk of a one-day special session as Republicans have to trust Gov. Walz to sign the bill after they adjourn. It would be unprecedented for a governor to break their word and veto a bill like this but stranger things have happened in politics lately.
A lot of uncertainty remains going into the Monday special session. Several Republican lawmakers have expressed frustration on social media over being told they can’t offer amendments to bills they haven’t even seen yet. One example is Sen. Wesenberg:
It might take an unusual coalition of Democrats and Republicans to pass some of the bigger spending bills. We will send another update via email after they finish the special session.
Two additional notes: It appears several Republican legislators are upset over a last-minute change in the Transportation Bill to transfer $89 million from metro counties to the Met Council to use for bus rapid transit projects. Their anger is warranted, but we can’t help but wonder if that energy couldn’t be put to better use against real general fund spending instead of this revenue-neutral shift.
One of the bills on the “must pass” list just says “Data center bill.” There is no detail in the joint memo about data centers, but based on recent news reports we have to assume this bill repeals the sales tax breaks for data centers called for by Gov. Walz. It’s telling that this issue was raised to the level of these other major spending bills.