Dear Neighbors,
I want to start off by saying that I know that I’m not keeping up with my correspondence, right now. When I first learned that I would only have three committees, this year (instead of my usual five) I thought that I’d have more time available for constituent service, including correspondence. Then I learned that two of my committees would be meeting three times a week instead of two and that each meeting would be 15 minutes longer. Then I was appointed to the Fraud Prevention Committee, making it four committees. Among them, I now spend 20 hours a week just sitting in Committee meetings and prep sessions, not counting floor sessions and their prep sessions. About the only times that I have free time to meet with constituents at the Capitol are Tuesday and Thursday afternoons.
If you’re waiting for an email response from me, I will get to you, just not as quickly as you or I would like.
Thank You for Participating!
I want to give a big thank you to everyone who stopped by our second town hall of the year! It was standing-room only with special guest MN Chief Deputy Attorney General, John Keeler, our Senator, Dr. Alice Mann and my colleague State Representative Julie Greene from Edina. Your engagement and community discussion are really appreciated. We are in this work together! If you couldn’t make it, I hope to see you at the next one.
I recently held a well-attended Saturday morning coffee gathering with the Bloomington League of Women Voters and we’re working to make this a regular event, as well.
Legislative Status
Last Monday evening, DFLer David Gottfried was sworn in as the House’s 134th member after winning a special election for an open seat in Roseville. That means the House is back to the 67-67 tie voters delivered in November, and the previously negotiated co-governing agreement is now in effect. House committees now have DFL and Republican co-chairs who take turns wielding the gavel and, on my committees (Health, Commerce and Taxes) the co-chairs are collaborating on setting their respective committee agendas and bill hearings. On the Commerce and Tax committees the Republican co-chairs, Tim O’Dricoll and Greg Davids, respectively, are experienced institutionalists who have excellent personal relationships with our DFL co-chairs. We’ve been able to have meaningful and productive discussions about insurance reforms and tax policy, even when there are significant differences of opinion.
However, we’ve lost a significant amount of time getting to this point. We lost over three weeks at the beginning of the session while we Democrats denied quorum while insisting that Republicans honor the earlier power-sharing agreement. In the wake of the State Supreme Court’s ruling that it takes 68 votes to form a quorum and pass bills, the Republicans finally agreed to honor the agreement and the session formally began on February 10th. To be clear, this was the same agreement that was on the table before the session was to begin.
However, we then wasted another five weeks where only Republican “messaging bills” were heard while they exercised their temporary one-seat majority. Nothing of consequence that will pass into law was advanced during that period. This left only three weeks until the deadline to move all bipartisan policy bills through their committees in both the House and Senate and four weeks to complete all budget bills before Spring Break begins at noon on April 11th. Since budget bills will take priority in the remaining time until the deadline, relatively few policy bills will clear all of their required committee stops by the end of next week. All but the most urgent policy legislation will be carried over until next year. For a “policy wonk” like me, this is deeply disappointing. I had almost all of my important policy bills, including my bills addressing health care and housing issues, ready to go in January and several of them won’t even be heard this year – there just isn’t time left on the calendar.
Fraud Prevention Committee
I volunteered to serve on the new House Fraud Prevention Committee which meets on Monday mornings at 8:15 am. This means that I spend Sunday afternoons reading reports from the Office of the Legislative Auditor (OLA) and drafts of fraud prevention legislation. While there is a lot of political theatre in this committee we are learning things that will result in meaningful legislative action to address the problem – a problem that every state in the country is experiencing.
For example, we’ve learned that the vast majority of fraud is perpetrated by service providers (e.g., Feeding our Future), not individual program participants receiving services, and there are patterns to their behaviors that can be detected using artificial intelligence technologies. According to the OLA, it is unheard of for state employees to be complicit in these frauds.
In our first week we heard from the Office of the Legislative Auditor about their 2023 recommendations for improving the integrity of our grant-making processes and, the following week, we learned that the Office of Grant Management has already developed policies implementing most of their recommendations which are now being rolled out in each agency.
This morning, we will be hearing a presentation from the Walz administration about their initial proposals for fraud prevention legislation. I will be carrying one of their bills to facilitate the sharing of data among agencies to help prevent fraud. In the OLA’s report about the State’s Frontline Worker Pay program, it was pointed out that the administration of the program required data from the Department of Labor & Industry (which ran the program), income data from both the Department of Revenue and the Dept of Employment and Economic Development and assistance from MN IT Services. One of the findings in the OLA report was that there were barriers in state law to the sharing of some of the necessary data among these agencies that could have prevented fraud in that program. Data silos are a general problem inhibiting the effectiveness of state government and I’m already serving on a MN IT Data Sharing work group.
My biggest concern about this committee is that a narrative is being spun to the effect that, if state employees were just more conscientious, we could close our looming budget shortfall without increasing taxes or cutting essential services. In reality, we’re going to have to invest in improving our databases and our systems to prevent fraud before it happens before we see any real savings from fraud reduction.
Prescription Drug Affordability
For too long, drug manufacturers, pharmacy benefit managers (PBM) and health plans have taken advantage of flaws in federal drug policy to squeeze consumers for ever increasing amounts of profit. I’ve worked on legislation for years, specifically crafted to target the strategies keeping cheap and affordable drugs out of the hands of Minnesotans. I’m happy to say two of my bills related to these efforts were heard in committee last week.
- HF 1652 would prohibit a health plan from forcing patients to switch drugs in the middle of the year because they’re now getting a bigger rebate from the manufacturer of a competitive drug. If a patient and a doctor find a drug that works, they should be allowed to stick with that drug for the rest of the plan year.
- HF 1075 says that health plans and PBMs must use the rebates that they received when patients bought their drug to buy down their price at the pharmacy counter in the form of a “Point of Sale Rebate.” This will ensure these rebates are being used to make expensive life saving drugs more affordable to the patients who need them.
I have a third bill in the mix, but time ran out before it could be heard:
- HF 1076 is an innovative approach not yet adopted by any other state. It requires PBMs and health plans to include the lowest price drugs in a category in their formularies and construct their formularies so that the drugs with the lowest prices for the patient (rather than the drug generating the biggest kick-backs to the insurance company) receive the best placement in their formularies. The goal of this legislation is to redirect competition away from rebates towards lower prices.
If these were passed into law, patients who need expensive branded drugs would see significant decreases in the price they pay at the counter.
Our State Senator, Dr Alice Mann, is my Senate partner in these initiatives and has these bills moving in the Senate, so I am still hopeful that we may be able to pass these bills this year. I’ll be sure to keep pushing for their passage and will let you know of any progress!
Real ID Taking Effect in May
Beginning May 7, 2025, Minnesotans 18 years of age or older will not be able to use their standard driver's license or identification card to board domestic flights or enter certain federal facilities, and this time they really mean it (the date has been postponed multiple times). Instead, they will need one of three options:
- Minnesota REAL ID driver's license or identification card.
- Minnesota Enhanced driver's license or identification card.
- Other federally-approved forms of identification. They are listed online here, but include:
- U.S. passport or passport card
- Foreign government-issued passport
- U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services Employment Authorization Card (I-766)
- Permanent resident card
- Border crossing card
- Federally recognized, tribal-issued photo ID
- U.S. Department of Defense ID, including IDs issued to dependents
If you are not sure which license type is right for you, check out the Driver Vehicle Services’ website here. If you intend to apply for a REAL ID, I highly recommend submitting your documents to DVS in advance via their website to secure pre-approval. That way, when you present your credentials in person (the closest location is the Hennepin County Service Center at Southdale in Edina) you can be assured of their acceptance. Many people have been turned away at the counter because of mis-understandings about which documents are acceptable.
Keep in Touch
Don’t hesitate to reach out if I can provide any assistance. Please follow me on my Facebook page for further updates and invite your friends and family to do so as well.
Thanks for the honor of representing you at the Capitol.
Sincerely,
Steve Elkins
Representative, District 50B
Minnesota House of Representatives
rep.steve.elkins@house.mn.gov