St. Paul, MN -This morning Governor Walz announced the start of a two-month “bonding tour”. In response, State Representative Pat Garofalo, R-Farmington, issued the following statement to Governor Walz and legislative leaders.
“Bonding helps finance critically important asset preservation projects across our state,” said Garofalo. “Unfortunately, the take-it-or-leave-it, all-or-nothing approach to the bonding bill has failed Minnesota taxpayers. I expect that any bill that jams and crams all projects into one bill will fail to achieve the necessary support of 60% of the House of Representatives."
Unlike other bills, bonding projects require a super majority of legislators to pass. Because of this, the DFL needs Republican votes for the bill to be enacted.
Garofalo also added, "The 'one bill' strategy has failed. When everything is jammed into one bill, legislators who support good projects are forced to vote for wasteful spending in that same bill. Likewise, legislators that oppose wasteful spending are forced to vote against good projects. Any legislator who insists that all bonding be crammed into one bill risks that no bonding bill will pass at all during the 2020 session."
As opposed to 'one bill', Garofalo and others have proposed splitting the bonding bill into five smaller bills based on the following subject areas:
- Higher Education
- Transportation
- Infrastructure
- Asset Preservation
- Local government/other
“Splitting bonding into smaller portions will allow more people to participate in the process and produce better legislation for Minnesotans. It will give the public a greater ability to oppose wasteful projects while also allowing taxpayers to advocate for projects that are good for our state. This is the right thing to do and will produce a better result for the taxpayers of Minnesota."
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