Dear Neighbors, Last week was a success! We passed our budget proposals in the following areas: Higher Education, Legacy, Environment and Clean Energy, Housing, Veterans, Elections, State and Local Government, K-12 Education, Agriculture, Transportation, and Early Childhood. These are all great bills, and I’d like to highlight a few for you, starting with a K-12 Education budget proposal. All Minnesota students deserve a world-class education. House DFLers deliver on this promise with historic new investments in education while also ensuring stable funding in the future by tying formula increases to inflation. Included in our K-12 Education budget is my proposal to invest $25 million for high quality after-school programs, focusing primarily on underserved communities and providing opportunities for academic enrichment. Other notable highlights of our budget include the following:  The Environment and Natural Resources BudgetWe passed our Environment and Natural Resources budget proposal this week, which was included with our Climate and Clean Energy plan. This is a crucial component of our overall budget, focusing on building a cleaner, greener Minnesota. There are a lot of important components in this bill. I’m especially proud of our proposal on the cumulative impacts of pollution. Specifically, the bill requires a cumulative environmental impacts analysis to be conducted for certain permit decisions that may affect an environmental justice area and requires the commissioner to deny a permit application if the analysis shows that issuing it would contribute to cumulative adverse environmental stressors in the area. It’s crucial that we no longer allow our communities to carry the burden of pollution. Other components of the bill include:  |