Legislative Update 5.26.24

End of Session Update

Dear Friends and Neighbors,

The 2024 Legislative Session is over! After nearly three relentless days of floor sessions, the Democrat majority rammed their entire agenda through in a disgusting 1,400-page bill that was not available in print or online at the time of passage.

We are still digging through this last-minute bill to uncover exactly what has been shoved into law. Earlier this week, House and Senate Republican Leaders sent a letter to Governor Walz demanding he veto the bill due to this blatant abuse of power and mockery of the legislative process, but just today he ended up signing the bill.

Now that we are out of session, my updates will be less frequent. I hope you all have a wonderful summer, and I look forward to seeing you around!

1,400 Page Disaster Bill

As mentioned, this year's session ended in absolute chaos. The DFL Majority, in a flagrant departure from House Rules and decorum, shoved through a bill in the last moments of session and passed it before anyone in our caucus even had a chance to see a copy. This bill started as the tax bill but, under the cover of night, the majority crammed nearly ten other outstanding omnibus bills into this one bill.

Some of these additional bills had been debated in the House as Omnibus bills from other committees but had not been taken up by the Senate. One of the new bills (SF 5019) had NEVER been heard in the Senate and didn’t even have a House companion!

Here’s a list of the bills included in the Tax bill:
- HF 3436 – Transportation Policy
- SF 5326 – Higher Ed Conference Committee Report
- SF 4942 – Energy & Agriculture Conference Committee Report
- SF 4399 – Human Services Conference Committee Report
- SF 4699 – Health Conference Committee Report
- HF 5363 – Paid Family & Medical Leave “Fix-It” bill ($887 million tax increase!)
- HF 2609 – Straw Purchase Penalties and Binary Trigger Ban
- HF 4247 – Scope of Practice bill (doesn’t include optometrists)
- HF 4259 – Property Tax provisions
- SF 5019 – State Employee Compensation Plans (no House version, never heard in Senate)

What Passed and What Didn't

Bills that Passed:

- Uber/Lyft bill interfering with private contracts, holding up Senate work for over 13 hours on Saturday
- Felony penalty for straw purchases and ban on binary triggers
- $887 million payroll tax increase on employees and employers for the new Paid Family Leave Program
- Ban on Historic Horse Racing
- $30 million stabilization funding for EMS Services
- State employee compensation plans (never heard in the Senate, no House companion)

Bills that Failed:
- ERAsure constitutional amendment (excluded religion or age, included protections for abortion up to birth)

-Gun Control Bills (safe storage and mandatory reporting of lost & stolen guns)
- Sports Betting
- Bonding Projects for local communities (funding denied for water treatment, roads, bridges, critical infrastructure)
- Tax Relief for Veterans (provisions for disabled Veterans and Veterans’ organizations removed in final bill)

Members and staff are still reviewing the bill, so there may be additional provisions yet to be discovered.