Kick Start Arrives For Minnesota Lawmakers After Standoff In Session’s Opening Weeks

Kick Start Arrives For Minnesota Lawmakers After Standoff In Session’s Opening Weeks

Starting Monday, committees are charging ahead and will review a slate of bills, ranging from anti-fraud measures to repeal pushes on laws passed in recent years.

ST. PAUL — A kick start is in store this week as the Minnesota House gets into a groove after spending the first month of the legislative session in a standstill.

Starting Monday, committees are charging ahead and will review a slate of bills, ranging from anti-fraud measures to repeal pushes on laws passed in recent years.

Rep. Christina Wolff tesitifes in favor of state spending capRep. Christina Wolff tesitifes in favor of state spending cap.

Democrats returned last week after a weekslong boycott over a power struggle with Republicans. The DFL attendance allowed the House to reach a long-sought quorum on Thursday, which meant they could officially get to work. But Republicans hold the power and can set the agenda for now.

The GOP will chair House committees and possess small majorities on them — at least for the time being. A special election in March could bring the House back into a tie, so Republicans aren’t wasting time.

They plan to make a big push to tackle some of their biggest priorities.

At the top of the list is an effort to weed out fraud and improper payments from the state to groups or other recipients.

The new House Fraud Prevention and State Agency Oversight Committee is scheduled to convene its first hearing Monday morning — the sole committee in the 8 a.m. hour to draw as much attention to it as possible.

Members will hear testimony from the Office of the Legislative Auditor on work that they’ve done investigating payments to nonprofits that missed the mark and the guidance auditors gave to state agencies that wasn’t always heeded.

“We’ve had different bills and proposals for many years on how we could do this better, and they've never gotten a hearing,” said Rep. Kristin Robbins, R-Maple Grove, who will lead the hearing. “So now that we have the opportunity, we are going to have these hearings to shine light, but also to provide solutions.”

Unlike other committees that could flip to co-chair control and evenly divided partisan representation if Democrats win a special election for a Ramsey County seat next month, the fraud prevention committee will retain a GOP majority for two years.

In the House State Government Committee on Tuesday, lawmakers will also consider a set of proposals. The top three Republican bills all have to do with ending improper payments and efforts to stop them. That could be through building in new requirements to encourage state workers to report potential fraud and some extra protections for whistleblowers.

“I think that there is an urgency in the people of Minnesota, to say, ‘Enough, this is enough. And we want some responsible leadership to be brought to bear,’ ” said committee chair Jim Nash, R-Waconia.

DFL-led Senate committees are also primed to review a variety of bills this year aimed at keeping better tabs on tax dollars. House DFL Caucus Leader Melissa Hortman said preventing fraud is important for Democrats, too.

She noted that new laws passed by the DFL-led Legislature in 2023 contained measures to add oversight to grants and do more to head off abuse in government programs. Some of those are still being implemented.

“We, all of us together, want to make sure that we have effective oversight of all of the spending and policy that we put in place,” said Hortman, DFL-Brooklyn Park. “We don’t have a lot of time for oversight typically, so we’re eager to work on that.”

After two years under full DFL control, Republicans view this moment as a reset.

They hold a temporary advantage in the House and extra freedom to set the agenda through at least the middle of March. If the special election produces a 67-67 tie, Democrats would have joint say over committee work. House Speaker Lisa Demuth, R-Cold Spring, will retain that title through 2026.

Given that perhaps temporary hold on power, Republicans are putting many of their wish list items on committee agendas now.

On the docket for this week: A new delivery fee on purchases of more than $100 would be rolled back under one bill. Another would delay clean energy requirements for electric utilities. A third would block people in the country without proper authorization from accessing MinnesotaCare or state scholarship benefits.

Nash said the election broke up the DFL hold on the Legislature, and GOP lawmakers are taking that as a cue to reassess changes implemented over the last two years.

“Minnesotans said, ‘We need to change and we need to have an ending of the trifecta,’ ” Nash said.

Even if those measures clear committees, they face a hurdle in the House. Republicans hold 67 seats and Democrats hold 66. A bill needs 68 votes to pass so only proposals with bipartisan backing will move forward.

But that might not be the entire goal. Bringing bills to the floor would invite debate and votes that could get diced up for future campaigns. Those anti-fraud items in particular could be difficult for Democrats to oppose.

Measures that do pass will have to pick up support in the DFL-led Senate and the backing of DFL Gov. Tim Walz to become law.

Senate committees have been meeting for weeks and taking up a mix of Republican and Democratic bills.

But the Senate ended its power-sharing agreement last week after the DFL gained a one-vote majority. So the tide is turning some there, too.

No matter what, though, this session will depend on compromises to get anything passed into law.

“We’re going to have to find solutions that are broadly acceptable,” said Rep. Zack Stephenson, DFL-Coon Rapids. “Neither party can do this on their own.”

This story was originally published on MPRNews.org

SOURCE: ECHO PRESS