Dear Neighbors,
The 2023/24 session came to a raucous end at midnight on Sunday night. To get our remaining unfinished business over the finish line as the clock ticked down, we bundled all of our remaining bills to be passed into the Tax conference committee bill (which is traditionally the last bill to be passed). The resulting Tax conference report was over 1400 pages long, but it must be noted that everything within that bill had already been thoroughly vetted through the committee process in each chamber before it was included in that conference report. This was necessitated by a month-long series of minority filibusters in a failed effort to “run out the clock” on our legislative agenda, including an extensive discussion of “hamburger” during the floor debate on the bill we passed outlawing “junk fees”.
The bill containing my Minnesota Consumer Data Privacy Act was passed late Saturday night (in the House) overnight into Sunday morning (in the Senate) – both chambers worked through the night. The act is already gaining national attention.
Delivering the opening statement for my Minnesota Consumer Data Privacy Act on the floor of the House on Saturday night. Watch here.
The formal wrap-up came with retirement speeches on Monday morning – some of them quite touching.
Session wrap-up
We’ll put together a summary of our key 2024 legislative accomplishments as soon as we can. These are some of the bills that the House had passed before the final weekend of the session. Most of this work was reflected in the bills that passed at the end of the session.
- A broadly bipartisan bill investing $240 million in our outdoors, clean water, parks and trails, and cultural heritage from the Legacy Amendment fund.
- An Environment and Natural Resources bill with new investments in tree planting, improving air quality, holding repeat polluters accountable, and tackling solid waste and recycling.
- A Children and Families bill that reforms our child protection system and builds on historic investments in economic support for families, food security, and emergency shelter.
- A Transportation, Labor, and Housing bill that invests in railroad safety and public transit, enhances worker rights and safety, improves housing stability for renters and seniors, and funds homelessness prevention.
- A Workforce and Economic Development bill, securing investments for employment and training programs.
- A Taxes bill improving the tax system for working class Minnesotans by expanding the Child Tax Credit and creating a direct tax filing system.
- An Elections bill that strengthens our elections for local units of government.
- A Health bill which expands access to health care coverage, makes care more affordable by reducing cost sharing, and reforms medical debt to ensure all Minnesotans have the quality health care they deserve.
- And an Energy, Commerce and Agriculture bill which speeds up our clean energy transition, increases data privacy standards for Minnesotans, and improves critical agriculture programs.
The two biggest disappointments were our failure to pass either the Equal Rights Amendment or the Bonding Bill. Our bill to place the Equal Rights Amendment before the voters in 2026 passed the House after 12 hours of debate spread over three days but was not taken up by the Senate. The House passed a very small cash-only capital investment bill in the waning hours of the session, but the Senate was unable to pass this bill before the clock struck midnight on Sunday.
The minority conditioned their support for a full bonding bill (which requires a 60% supermajority in both chambers) on a demand that we drop the Equal Rights Amendment and gun safety measures from our larger agenda. This strategy is inexplicable to me. The purpose of the Capital Appropriations bill (aka the “Bonding Bill”) is to provide the funding needed to maintain the State’s basic infrastructure in both Democratic and Republican districts. Traditionally, this has been the main focus of the Legislature’s agenda in even-numbered years. The bipartisan Bonding Committees in both chambers had put an enormous amount of effort into crafting this year’s bill – including a twenty day tour of the entire state last summer. Today’s Strib column by Lori Surdevant says it all.
Upcoming Town Hall
Join us for our Senate District 50 Legislative Town Hall on Tuesday, June 11th from 6-7pm at The Edina City Council chamber! I look forward to seeing you there and answering any questions you may have about the 2024 session and what lies ahead.
Statehood Day
Last Saturday, May 11, 2024, Minnesota celebrated 166 years of statehood. The Minnesota State Flag and Seal approved by the State Emblems Redesign Commission early this year became the official state emblems. This is a culmination of months gathering input from and engaging with Minnesotans to find consensus on a flag and seal that represents the best of all of us.
Keep in Touch
Don’t hesitate to reach out if I can provide any assistance. Please follow me on my Facebook page for further updates and invite your friends and family to do so as well.
I’m making progress on working down my backlog of constituent emails. If I haven’t responded to your email, yet, you should expect to hear back from me soon.
Thanks for the honor of representing you at the Capitol.
Sincerely,
Steve Elkins
Representative, District 50B
Minnesota House of Representatives