Dear Neighbor,
Minnesota has 5.7 million residents waiting for our Legislature to address any number of major concerns, from soaring prices in a wobbly economy to violent crime that remains too high and beyond.
Meanwhile, House Democrats convened a floor session that started yesterday afternoon and lasted past 5 a.m. this morning mainly to approve one bill that impacts zero Minnesotans and another that kicks a small town that’s already down. Again, we have 5.7 million Minnesotans counting on the House to take action on issues to help the most people … and this is the best House Democrats can do?
Let’s start with the bill that helps zero Minnesotans. It’s H.F. 146, which makes Minnesota a sanctuary state for gender-affirming care – for children. Regardless of where you stand on gender-affirming care – we could spend hours analyzing that phrase itself – this bill does nothing, zero, nada, zilch to help Minnesotans. It specifically caters to people living beyond our borders, in so many words saying that if you're a parent in another state, Minnesota is going to ignore your rights as if we are another country. This in itself is a clear violation of the U.S. Constitution’s full faith and credit clause, which compels states to respect the laws of other states.
I voted against this bill for many reasons, the main one being that it fails to include any reasonable guardrails to protect kids. This proposal undermines the rights of parents and gives others authority over these life-long, life-changing decisions for children. It will make Minnesota a magnet for child custody victims, giving power to the courts in cases when one parent does not agree with gender-affirming care.
In the end, House Democrats approved this bill on party-line vote early this morning while most Minnesotans were still asleep. That happened after House Democrats last night also passed a bill (H.F. 1200) prohibiting state prisons and local jails from contracting with private corrections vendors or being housed in private prisons or jails.
There could be a sizeable number of Minnesotans that disagree with the concept of a privately run prison which stands to gain financially from someone else’s incarceration. Fair enough, but there’s more to this story: House Republicans offered an amendment to the bill providing some flexibility by allowing the state to lease and staff (exclusively with public employees) privately owned facilities to house inmates.
This is significant because Appleton, a small town in western Minnesota, is home to a currently vacant private prison. Our state is projected to experience a shortage of prison beds in the near future, a problem that could be mitigated if the state were able to lease space in a relatively new, currently unused prison – again, staffed exclusively with public employees just like the other prisons in our state.
This option not only would help proactively address a potential problem in our state, it also would give Appleton hope that someday this facility could once again be opened, providing hundreds of local jobs, a significant boost to the local tax base and maybe even saving a town that has lost half its population since the private prison closed a decade or so ago.
House Republicans made strong arguments on the House floor supporting this amendment and pled with the majority to consider the damage their bill will cause Appleton. Unfortunately, the majority blocked our amendment and passed the bill, sticking a pencil in the eye of a small town and ignoring our state’s looming shortage of prison beds in the process.
It’s another bill where you are left to ask, “how is this helping Minnesotans?”
Democrat budget
House and Senate Democrats and Gov. Tim Walz announced this week they have reached agreement on the framework for our state’s next two-year budget plan. It increases state spending by almost $18 billion for the next biennium, blowing through the state’s $17.5 billion surplus and then some. This represents a nearly 40-percent increase to the state’s current $52 billion biennial budget, bringing our new General Fund spending total to $71.9 billion.
Also of note, tax relief accounts for a rather small portion of their proposal, and Democrat leaders have not committed to fully repealing the state tax on Social Security. It is concerning that, despite a $17.5 billion surplus, they propose increasing taxes, such as sales taxes and license tab fees, while not providing relief to overburdened families and businesses.
How is increasing the state budget by almost 40 percent while taking more from taxpayers already facing higher prices across the board helping Minnesotans?
Have a good weekend and I’ll be back with more on these and other developments as the session progresses.
Sincerely,
Shane