By Rep. Paul Anderson
Daily schedules around the Capitol have changed dramatically since we returned last week from the Easter break. Committees such as Education, Public Safety and Agriculture have, for the most part, finished their work by passing their major spending bills. All of the finance bills have been passed out of both the House and Senate. So the schedule that’s been in place for the entire session, with committees starting their work at 8:15 in the morning and finishing for the day at 5 p.m., is no longer in effect.
Last Tuesday, on our first day back after the Easter break, no fewer than 10 conference committees were selected to begin working on negotiations to come up with compromise language. It’s hoped the governor’s staff will also take part in these discussions so we can craft bills that Gov. Dayton will sign.
I am serving on the conference committee dealing with the agriculture finance bill. We have met once so far and did a side-by-side comparison of the bills that came out of the House and Senate. In the case of ag, the two bills are similar but contain several significantly different articles. For example, the House version contains funding for research at the University of Minnesota to look at habitat and related issues dealing with bees and pollinators. The Senate bill doesn’t have any funding for this project, but it does contain language relating to farmers and the controversial “verification of need” issue brought up by the governor last summer in relation to spraying pesticides. Issues such as these must be worked out and compromise language agreed to.
After joint spending targets have been announced and the two bills have been thoroughly gone over and made exactly the same, those who served on the conference committee will sign what’s called a conference report. Only after all this work has been completed will the bill be sent back to both chambers for re -passage. Then it’s off to the governor and, hopefully, his signature to complete work on the bill and make it state law.
There has been a great deal of discussion concerning a special session and if the state will go into a shutdown, which would occur if no budget agreement is reached by the end of the fiscal year, which is June 30. I certainly hope we finish our work by the time we adjourn our regular session on May 22. The governor has taken a hard line in some areas, such as the buffer law, where he has stated there will be no more compromise. However, just last week he seemed to soften his stance on a transportation bill, when he said a gas tax increase may not be necessary to get the bill signed.
My concern about all this talk about a shutdown is that these things sometimes become self-fulfilling. It has been mentioned as a possibility ever since the session began in January, and I think the more it’s talked about, the more likely it is to occur. No one wants a shutdown, and we will do our best to make sure it doesn’t happen.
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