Dear Friends,
I hope your week is off to a good start. We have had a long and very tiring weekend here, and will be wrapping up the 2015 legislative session around midnight this evening. It's our plan to get the remainder of our budget passed on time before we adjourn by our midnight deadline.
The long hours have been worth it. I am honored, no matter if it's three in the afternoon or three in the morning, to be your voice at the legislature and to work on legislation that's going to make a difference for thousands, if not millions of Minnesotans.
The budget we passed represents the good bipartisan work that gets done when Minnesota has shared government. Rather than each side digging its heels in, the DFL Senate and the GOP House came to an agreement and passed a bipartisan budget that will be good for our state.
The two items that excite me the most are the great things we are doing for our aging loved ones and for our students. The Health and Human Services bill that was sent to the Governor includes tremendous reforms to the way we fund our senior care facilities. Under the bill, nursing homes would receive more than $130 million in increased funding, which will be a huge benefit especially in Greater Minnesota.
It's important that our elders have quality care and quality facilities that are close to home. With this bill, we can keep the doors open for many facilities who are struggling financially and make sure our aging loved ones stay closer to their families.
On education, our bipartisan education bill boosts funding for our schools and early learning by $400 million. 70% of that funding goes toward per-pupil funding increases for our schools, and the remainder focuses on targeted, proven early learning programs that will help close our state's achievement gap. We also reduce the amount of state-mandated testing, a bill I worked on throughout this session.
It's my hope that this bipartisan compromise that will do great things for our schools and help put our students on a path to achievement will get signed into law in the coming days.
Please contact me with any questions. There are of course many other items to cover from the budget, which I will have more information on in the coming weeks.
Peggy Bennett
State Representative, District 27A