By Rep. Paul Anderson
After nearly four hours of testimony last Thursday, the Job Growth and Energy Affordability Committee passed a bill that deals with the pre-emption of locally passed employment regulations.
Aspects of employee benefits covered by this bill are minimum wage standards, employee-required paid or unpaid leave, and work hour scheduling. At least two cities in Minnesota – St. Paul and Minneapolis – already have passed such regulations. Each has approved a $15 minimum wage standard, and both have also passed measures that deal with mandatory sick time and/or maternity leave.
The bill we debated, H.F. 600, would prohibit local governments from adopting and enforcing laws and policies relating to the employment relationship in the private sector. The aforementioned ordnances already passed by Minneapolis and St. Paul are scheduled to go into effect July 1, and if this bill were to become law, it would preempt those local regulations and render them null and void.
Testimony became heated at times, with local residents saying that cities should be allowed to enact their own labor relation laws. They spoke of local control and were against the state nullifying regulations already passed by duly-elected city officials.
Testifying in favor of the bill were the Minnesota Chamber of Commerce and several other business groups. The Associated General Contractors, representing some 400 construction contractors, said a patchwork of local labor regulations was “inherently unworkable” for the construction industry. A representative of the Minnesota Trucking Association said the 675 motor carriers in his group “would be negatively impacted” if local regulations were allowed. If trucks made stops in multiple cities on their daily routes, for example, keeping track of the time drivers spent in each city and the various wage scales would be a difficult bookkeeping job.
After all testifiers were heard, the bill was passed on a straight party-line vote with all Republicans voting in favor. Its next stop is the Government Operations Committee.
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Gov. Mark Dayton recently was in Morris, where he addressed the opening session of his second water summit. I was disappointed when he announced that he would compromise no more on the buffer legislation originally passed two years ago.
Clarifying language was added to the bill last year, but in my opinion more work needs to be done to address concerns brought forth about the bill by farmers and other affected land owners. There are lingering questions about public waters on the maps being produced by the DNR, and we still have no definitive word on what type of alternative practices that will be allowed in place of buffers. Counties are being asked to take on the enforcement role concerning buffer implementation, but the state so far has not allocated any funding for them to carry out such duties. In addition, counties face a quickly approaching March deadline to opt-in for local enforcement, although officials from the Board of Water and Soil Resources have talked about that date being a “soft deadline,” in that counties could opt-out at a later time.
And maybe the biggest unresolved item in this whole issue is that of compensation, which has not been addressed to any great degree. The governor in his budget message called for payments of $40 per acre for five years to landowners who must install buffers. Well, that’s something, but it’s a far cry from what that land is really worth. We’re talking about a total of $200 per acre in state payments for land that’s worth thousands more. I read of one farmer who figures he’ll lose close to $100,000 worth of productive land because of 50-foot buffers being required along the entire length of both sides of a public water designation on his property.
This is a constitutional issue, one that needs to be resolved, either through further legislation or through other means.
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