Legislature in the Home Stretch
With two weeks left of the legislative session, significant work remains to be done as legislators look to finalize several significant policy and supplemental appropriation proposals. With floor debates, dozens of amendments, and a conference committee process still ahead of them, legislators have been debating bills late into the evening. Further, the capital investment and bonding bill language was released last week and is continuing to progress through necessary committee stops. There is much work to be done in the short amount of time left in the legislative session.
Latest on Senator Mitchell
Last week, Sen. Majority Leader Erin Murphy (DFL-St. Paul) announced that Sen. Nicole Mitchell (DFL-Woodbury) would be relieved of her committee assignments and removed from caucus meetings while her legal investigation is ongoing. However, this does not bar her from voting on the Senate floor, including on motions regarding her ability to continue to vote on measures before the body. Republican senators have voiced their concern over this and believe she should not be able to cast her vote on the Senate floor prior to the Ethics Committee hearing scheduled for later this week.
House Capital Investment Proposal Released
The House Capital Investment Committee held a hearing last week to discuss the initial proposals assembled by committee chair, Rep. Fue Lee (DFL-Minneapolis). The proposals before the committee, include:
H.F. 5220: This is the $980 million bonding proposal and includes funding for state agency asset preservation, public housing, and infrastructure projects. Major spending in the bill includes $302 million for local projects, $256.9 million for asset preservation, $114.2 million for the Department of Corrections, and $65.5 million for the Department of Natural Resources (DNR), among many additional projects.
H.F. 5162: This bill would appropriate $38.7 million from the General Fund with $23 million set aside for local projects. Other funding initiatives in the bill include: $4.1 million to the Metropolitan Council for tree planting grants; $3.9 million for Department of Corrections asset preservation; $2 million to support early childhood facilities; and $1 million for improvements to the Capitol Mall. The bill also includes policy provisions spelling out state expectations related to projects being funded.
The Senate will have their own versions and both bodies must agree on funding totals and projects.
Other Key Non-Omnibus Bills Moving Through Committee
H.F. 2000 (Stephenson) / S.F. 1949 (Klein) – Authored by Rep. Zack Stephenson (DFL-Coon Rapids), H.F. 2000 would legalize a form of sports betting in Minnesota. Specifically, the proposal would authorize and regulate wagering on certain athletic and electronic sports events. It would also establish related crimes and create grants administered by the Minnesota Amateur Sports Commission and fund a study on gambling by young adults. The House Tax Committee heard and passed the bill last week and is now in the Ways and Means Committee.
H.F. 4757 (Stephenson) / S.F.4782 (Port) – The Office of Cannabis Management’s (OCM) omnibus policy and technical bill passed the Senate Commerce Committee and was subsequently taken up on the Senate floor. The bill includes changes to how OCM distributes so-called social equity licenses, change the ownership ratios for such license holders, bring the hemp-derived market regulation under the Office of Cannabis Management sooner. The bill would also impose numerical caps on each type of license rather than let OCM decide how many the market requires. Also included is a plan to replace a points-driven system for distributing licenses to enter the new market with what the agency called a “vetted lottery.”
Important Date to Remember
May 20, 2024 Deadline to Adjourn Legislative Session
What to expect this week: The House is in today and the Senate returns tomorrow. President Joe Biden will have lunch with King Abdullah II of Jordan today at the White House. Biden then heads to Racine, Wisconsin, and Chicago on Wednesday. Department of Education Secretary Miguel Cardona is expected to face a volley of questions from Republicans on campus antisemitism. Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene plans to trigger a vote to oust the speaker. Interior Secretary Deb Haaland is testifying, after facing tough critiques last week.
Secretary Cardona to Face Questions on Campus Antisemitism
Education Secretary Miguel Cardona will face House Republicans this week who say they are seeking to “crackdown” on campus antisemitism. Education and the Workforce Chairwoman Virginia Foxx, R-N.C., said she plans to ask Cardona to explain the Biden administration’s “concrete plan” for tackling antisemitism on college campuses in a hearing Tuesday. “Jewish students deserve meaningful actions, not just empty words. Those should include directing the Education Department to make Title VI investigations of these campuses and consequences for any violations found a top priority,” Foxx said in a statement last week. The House passed, 320-91, a bill (HR 6090) last week that would require the Education Department to use the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s “Working Definition of Antisemitism” in investigating whether a civil rights violation has occurred in programs receiving federal financial assistance. The bill’s fate in the Senate is unclear. Opponents warn that it could chill constitutionally protected speech.
President Joe Biden has condemned the violence that broke out at campus protests over the Israel-Hamas war, and the White House has said it does not support the protesters’ calls for colleges and universities to divest any financial links to Israel. Both the Biden administration and lawmakers have expressed deep concern that the pro-Palestinian protests criticizing the Israeli government’s war against Hamas and the humanitarian crisis in Gaza have in some cases bled into antisemitism. But House Republicans say Biden has not adequately responded to the rising antisemitism. A House Education and the Workforce subcommittee is also examining antisemitism in K-12 schools on Wednesday.
Haaland Testifies Amid Critiques of Federal Land Policies
The Interior Department is facing tough critiques of its federal land policies and accusations of playing election-year politics as it pushes stricter protections for U.S. lands and waters. Interior Secretary Deb Haaland is set to return to the Hill on Wednesday to testify to the Senate Interior-Environment Appropriations Subcommittee on the department’s fiscal 2025 budget request. Appearing before both Senate and House committees last week, Haaland faced few questions about next year’s appropriations. Instead, much of her time was spent defending recent land policy announcements. These include a Bureau of Land Management rule that the administration said puts conservation on equal footing with other uses such as grazing, logging, and oil and gas drilling, as well as a decision to restrict oil and natural gas leases in the National Petroleum Reserve in Alaska. Members of natural resources committees in both chambers accused Haaland and the Biden administration of attempting to appease environmental organizations that have pressed for swifter action on climate change and renewed their charges that the administration would rather rely on foreign-produced fossil fuels and minerals. “Getting this administration to celebrate the abundant resources our country has been blessed with, whether that be oil, gas, coal or minerals, that we can produce cleaner and safer than anywhere else in the world and that we and our friends around the world rely on should be an easy lift,” said Senate Energy and Natural Resources Chairman Joe Manchin III, D-W. Va.
Congresswoman Greene Plans to Trigger Vote to Remove Johnson
Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., plans to trigger a vote this week to oust Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La. The move comes after months of butting heads with the speaker over his bipartisan dealmaking, as well as him putting a Ukraine aid package to a vote in the House. But the motion to vacate is expected to flop. Democrats have officially decided to come to Johnson’s rescue, committing last week that they would vote to table Greene’s resolution (H Res 1103) when it’s offered. Solid Democratic support would offset any GOP votes against tabling, ensuring that Johnson would keep his gavel for now. Greene has struggled to round up backing from fellow GOP lawmakers for the motion to vacate. As of last week, just two other Republicans had publicly gotten on board: Congressman Thomas Massie of Kentucky and Congressman Paul Gosar of Arizona. Greene told reporters last week that if her motion to vacate does not win support, “that is not a failure. It’s a win for the American people because that’s a list of names. . . . I believe in recorded votes. That is our job.” Johnson, meanwhile, has called Greene’s decision “wrong for the Republican Conference, wrong for the institution and wrong for the country.”
On the Radar: To Seize or Not to Seize, That’s the Question for the G7
Washington’s prospects for securing multicountry support to seize Russian assets to support Ukraine could be tested in three weeks at a meeting of the Group of 7 leading industrialized nations. U.S. lawmakers, officials, and experts are hopeful that if the G7 finance ministers and central bankers can agree at the May 24-25 meeting in Stresa, Italy, on a plan for confiscating the sovereign Russian financial assets in their respective jurisdictions, it could finally unlock the collective political will needed to do so.
