Promoting Environmentally Friendly Boat WrappingMinnesota leads the nation in boats per capita with an estimated 14,500 boats per 100,000 people. And for around $400 every Fall, many boats get shrink-wrapped to protect them from Minnesota winters. However, once the lakes and rivers thaw, the vast majority of that plastic ends up in landfills. That’s why I introduced a bill to create a product stewardship program to responsibly recycle and reuse the estimated 180,000 – 300,000 wrappings every year. I’m happy to report the bill has been passed by both the Environment and Commerce Committee. You can view my testimony at the Commerce Committee here. This concept was brought to me by a constituent - so consider this an encouragement to engage with me if you have an idea. Building a Clean Energy FutureIn 2023, lawmakers answered the call from Minnesotans of all generations to take urgent action addressing our climate crisis by enacting a goal of 100% carbon-free electricity by 2040. To achieve this benchmark – one of the most ambitious in the nation – we need wind and solar farms to generate clean energy and transmission lines to carry that energy to the electric grid. There’s a big problem though: too many clean energy projects are stuck in a slow approval process. Today, about 51% of Minnesota’s electricity comes from carbon-free sources, but according to research, to reach our 100% goal, Minnesota must double the current pace at which new solar and wind energy sources are being developed. That’s why I support the Minnesota Energy Infrastructure Permitting Act. This legislation – which has earned broad support from Minnesota utilities, clean energy advocates, and our partners in labor – will eliminate redundancies, increase transparency, and make Minnesota’s permitting process more efficient and consistent. Given Minnesota’s unpredictable weather, shaving even a couple of months off the permitting process could mean a difference of an entire year when it comes to construction. As addressing climate change becomes increasingly urgent, saving this time is more critical now than ever. Without upgrades to our decades-old energy permitting laws to meet the challenges we face today, our carbon-free ambitions may not become reality. The Minnesota Energy Infrastructure Permitting Act will help us meet this critical moment and remove barriers to the clean energy future all Minnesotans deserve. By the way, several of my bills that address the grid (HF3457 - agency permitting, HF3704 - Grid Enhancing Technologies, and HF3900 - transmission in MnDOT right of way) which I spoke about in my last legislative update continue to progress. Expanding Access to Affordable, High-Quality Health CareAll Minnesotans deserve to live healthy lives with economic security, and DFLers at the Capitol are committed to expanding access to affordable, quality health care. Unfortunately, too many Minnesotans currently can’t afford health insurance or have health insurance they can’t afford to use. Working families without employer-based insurance often face outrageous premiums and other out-of-pocket costs. For instance, many plans on the individual market have annual deductibles of $7,000 or higher. This puts Minnesotans in an impossible predicament, which leads to people avoiding care and results in poor health outcomes – sometimes with tragic consequences. One plan to solve this problem impacting middle-class Minnesotans is the MinnesotaCare Public Option. It would allow all Minnesotans to access comprehensive health insurance coverage – with vision, dental, and more – with low out-of-pocket costs and a large network of quality medical providers. People enrolled in the Public Option would pay their own premiums – with significantly lower prices than what’s available currently on the individual market – determined on a sliding scale based on income. MinnesotaCare has been a nation-leading, highly successful, and trusted health insurance program serving low-income working Minnesotans for over 30 years. The bill creating a MinnesotaCare Public Option – which would expand affordable health insurance to thousands of more Minnesotans – is advancing through the committee process in the House. Some Additional Legislation This week I had seven bill presentations in committees. Some highlights include: HF2717, Excavation Safety: When excavators are digging, underground gas lines, cable lines, phone lines, power lines, water mains, pipelines, and more and more fiber and broadband are often nearby. Digging in the wrong place can result in impacts ranging from a nuisance to putting lives at risk. This bill would modernize the way buried pipelines and cables are marked and identified, to give those on site a better real-time knowledge of potential subterranean surprises. This legislation was heard in the Transportation Committee this week, and will improve processes, gather better data, provide for the increased use of technology, and improve the way the different parties exchange information and work together. Thank you to everyone that has been involved, from MnOPS, to all the utilities, to Gopher State One Call, and especially to the Association of General Contractors, who have taken a leadership role in helping pull this bill together. I also participated in a press conference on the bill and it got some coverage from Kare11. HF4242, Residential Energy Codes Buildings are responsible for about 40% of our greenhouse gas emissions in Minnesota, and residential buildings generate over half the amount. This bill is about addressing new homes by accelerating efficiency improvements in our state's residential energy code in a responsible way. The energy code is our tool to make sure that when new housing gets built, it is built right to maintain comfort, health, safety, and minimize energy waste. We already have this for commercial buildings, and this bill sets us on a path so that new homes achieve a 70% reduction in energy use by 2038 as compared to the 2006 code. Here’s an article that touches on this issue and the work we did last year. And here’s my testimony in the Labor Committee. HF4068, 16 & 17 Voter Information This bill builds on legislation I carried last session that became part of the Democracy for the People Act, which was voter pre-registration for 16 and 17 year olds. HF4068 will have school districts provide paper or electronic voter registration applications in May and September to all students who are eligible to register or pre-register to vote (today they provide them only to students who can vote in the next election). St. Louis Park sophomore Tess Machalek testified on the bill and did an amazing job. The sooner we can encourage young people to think of themselves as voters, the more likely they will make it a lifelong habit. HF3836, Long Term Disability Insurance & Mental Health Almost 30 years ago, led by Minnesota’s Paul Wellstone and New Mexico’s Pete Domenici, Republicans and Democrats came together to pass the Federal Mental Health Parity Act of 1996 to address the significant disparity between insurance coverage for physical and mental health conditions. Originally, the 1996 Act included a provision requiring mental health/physical health parity for Long Term Disability Insurance policies. However, insurance companies were able to get that removed before the bill passed. Almost 30 years later, we still don't have federal legislation requiring parity in LTD insurance policies. My legislation requires insurance companies to include a disclosure and notify potential policyholders or plan sponsors if a plan being purchased limits the duration of coverage for mental health or substance use disorder conditions. This disclosure must be acknowledged and that acknowledgment must be kept on file for a minimum of two years. I’d actually prefer to see us mandate parity in mental and physical health coverage, but sometimes compromise is needed, and this is a start. My testifier did a great job of explaining the issue, and you can hear her comments here. HF 4989, Regenerative Agriculture I’m working on this bipartisan bill with two other legislators, Rep. Kristi Pursell and Rep Bjorn Olson. This legislation would repurpose an existing fertilizer fee to create a new clean water, climate-smart, and soil-healthy farming program based on regenerative agriculture concepts. The program would start with a pilot focused on the Karst region of Minnesota where there are nitrate water quality issues. Meeting with ConstituentsThank you to everyone who attended our great Senate District 46 town hall earlier this week with Sen Ron Latz and Rep Cheryl Youakim! We engaged in a wide range of topics, including medical aid in dying, SROs, teacher pensions, Southwest Light Rail, right-to-repair, climate change, recycling, ranked-choice voting, and more. |