Dear Neighbor,
Greetings from the House as we brace ourselves for even colder temperatures to settle in over the weekend.
While students have started returning to the classroom in most area schools, House Republicans made a motion to fast-track a bill to further empower local school districts throughout the state to make the best decisions for their districts and remove the governor’s ability to unilaterally keep schools closed.
Distance learning has been quite difficult in many regards, impacting student achievement, mental health and beyond. The science and data show we can safely get our students back in the classroom — even President Biden’s CDC director said multiple times last week that we could safely return to in-person learning before all teachers are vaccinated.
The main thing is we need to get our kids safely back at school and decisions in that regard should be made by local families, teachers and school officials as they see fit. This bill accomplishes that but, unfortunately, the majority blocked our effort to declare urgency and take it up for a vote on Thursday.
In other news, a report was issued this week showing our state’s economy continues to outperform previous projections and is far surpassing dire expectations from several months ago.
Minnesota Management and Budget released the January revenue report on Wednesday and it shows $296 million more in tax collections than previously expected during that month. Net receipts from the individual income, sales, and corporate taxes were above the forecast, while net other tax receipts matched the forecast.
As of now, a modest biennial shortfall remains, and it will be interesting to see what the February forecast reveals in its much more detailed report. In any case, the $1.7 billion tax increase proposed by the governor is becoming more unnecessary than it already was.
I have received a significant number of emails regarding a bill (HF604) which puts the governor’s mask mandate into state statute indefinitely. It also puts the federal government – not legislators or even the governor – in charge of determining when the mask requirement ends, even if the data here in Minnesota suggests that the mandate could be lifted.
In addition, businesses who fail to enforce the mandate could receive hefty fines. The bill also exempts adult athletes from mask requirements while requiring them for children ages 5-18, a rather glaring inconsistency.
In addition to those concerns, it is difficult to recall a bill that is so prescriptive as this one in terms of dictating human behavior. This bill goes too far, and I do not support it.
On a final note, I encourage people to provide input on the governor’s push to bring California car standards to Minnesota. This is especially important since the governor is bypassing the legislative process to change our auto standards.
Judge Jessica Palmer-Denig will conduct video hearings on this issue at 3 p.m. both Feb. 22 and 23. Links to attend the online events can be found here. You also can provide comments on the OAH website until the March 15 deadline. I wrote more about this issue in a recent email and you can click here for that.
Sincerely,
Paul