Dear Neighbors,
As we enter the final stretch of the 2024 legislative session, I'm proud of the progress we've made together, building a stronger Minnesota for working families. We're committed to securing fair wages, affordable healthcare, and investments that empower our communities.
Keeping you informed: Here are some recent developments from the Capitol:
House Floor Action
The House continues to debate and pass supplemental budget and policy bills on the floor, covering important issues such as education, labor, housing, the environment, and more. Our work this year builds on last year’s historic successes and works to improve the lives of working and middle class Minnesotans. Recently, the House has passed:
- A broadly bipartisan bill investing $240 million in our outdoors, clean water, parks and trails, and cultural heritage from the Legacy Amendment fund.
- A K-12 Education bill that boosts resources for the READ Act to improve literacy, moves forward solutions for student wellbeing, and enhances support for teachers.
- 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.
As Chair of the Legislative Commission on Pensions and Retirement, I’m especially proud that we passed a Pensions and Retirement bill with bipartisan support, which prioritizes educators’ retirement security, improves our pension systems’ health, and strengthens the benefits retirees can expect. The bill provides three distinct appropriations to the Teachers Retirement Association (TRA), the St. Paul Teachers Retirement Fund Association (SPTRFA), and the IRAP to TRA transfer account. The bill also makes a number of important policy changes to strengthen Minnesotans’ retirement prospects, including:
- Ensuring TRA and SPTRFA members can continue working to aid our state’s workforce shortage;
- Codifying a program Minnesota State Patrol members can use to continue working for their unit until age 60 without being penalized by earnings caps;
- Allowing workers to count student loan payments as the employee contribution to retirement savings to receive their employer match; and
- Matching the Public Employee Retirement Association (PERA) Correctional Plan Benefit Multiplier to the statewide correctional plan at 2.2%.
While we can’t fix decades of underfunding overnight, we can continue to improve the health of our pension system and improve the benefits offered to ensure that all public employees know we value their work.
Also passed was a bill addressing the “kidfluencer” industry that safeguards young content creators with protections for safety, fair compensation, and future financial security.
Passing Gun Safety Legislation
Last night we passed more legislation addressing gun safety, including my bill H.F. 601, to help prevent gun trafficking, assist in recovering lost or stolen guns, make firearm owners more accountable for their weapons, and give our law enforcement another tool to help keep our communities safe and free of gun violence by requiring lost or stolen firearms to be reported to law enforcement within 48 hours after they are known to be lost.
Lost and stolen guns are often used in crimes, or end up in the hands of those who may cause harm to themselves or others. According to the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, roughly 266,000 guns were stolen across the U.S. per year from 2017-2021. Of these, only 3% were stolen from federally licensed gun dealers, while 95% were stolen from private citizens, equivalent to one every two minutes, and a quarter are never reported to law enforcement.
We also passed legislation strengthening Minnesota’s laws around straw purchases, which occur when an individual buys a firearm for someone ineligible to purchase or possess them. H.F. 2609 updates the state’s straw purchasing law to increase the penalty from a gross misdemeanor to a felony.
Finally, we passed H.F. 4300, which requires the safe storage of firearms, an important step to prevent access by children and others who should not have access to guns. This bill requires firearms be stored either unloaded and equipped with a locking device or placed in a locked firearm storage unit (e.g., a gun safe) or a locked gun room, where it may be either loaded or unloaded. The safe storage of firearms will save lives.
All Minnesotans deserve to be safe in their communities, and this legislation is a step in the right direction. I was proud to vote yes on these bills.
Minnesota’s Climate Progress!
You may have seen MPR’s recent climate story - Report finds Minnesota outpacing the country in carbon-free electricity. Minnesota has produced more than half our energy from carbon-free sources for the fourth year in a row, and seen a 10% annual drop in greenhouse gas emissions from the electricity sector!
The report, released by Clean Energy Economy Minnesota and the Business Council for Sustainable Energy, shows clearly that the steps we are taking at the Legislature to address and combat climate change are working. We can’t afford to backtrack on our progress.
Minnesota is leading the way toward a cleaner, greener future! House Democrats are taking action on climate change with the urgency required, and we will keep working to accelerate our transition to carbon-free energy sources.
Stay Connected
If you have any questions, comments, concerns, or ideas for our work this year, always feel free to reach out to my office at 651-296-8799 or rep.kaohly.her@house.mn.gov, and you’ll hear back from me or my Legislative Assistant, Madisyn. You can also follow along on my official Facebook page, and subscribe to these regular emails if you haven’t already.
Sincerely,
Kaohly Vang Her
State Representative