Earlier this morning, we received an emailed update from the Session Daily Digest that began:
The omnibus jobs, agriculture and natural resources bills are scheduled to make their final committee stop Wednesday when they are heard in the House Ways and Means Committee. There they are expected to be combined into one piece of legislation before heading to the House Floor.
The discussion of HF3888 will be streamed on Live Video HTV 1 at 12:45 (other legislative business will be streamed on the channel before and after the Ways and Means Committee).
Since the channels are shared, not every committee hearing is recorded on video and streamed, but all official committee meetings are at the very least audio recorded. While the public can't watch these meetings live, the audio archives are accessible to the public.
Such is the case with the House Agriculture Committee on April 14, 2016. Agriculture is important in our stretch, so we listened to the archived audio. Close to the end, some plain talk about the money for agriculture caught our attention. We've clipped it and put it on Youtube:
A bit of context:
The moment comes after the committee has considered various amendments and sections in the bill. Chairman Rod Hamilon, R-Mountain Lake (above, left) has asked committee members for their final thoughts before a vote is taken.
Much of the discussion is light-hearted or self-congratulatory for the work the committee has done this year. There's been a running joke started by the chair about how the shared name of Karen Clark, DFL-Minneapolis, and Clark Johnson, DFL-North Mankato, confuses him.
More seriously, the bill takes money the legislature approved to fight avian through 2017 and moves it into a more general disaster relief fun. We'll hold our breath and hope none of that air-borne flu virus gets caught in a funnel in Kandiyohi County. But we digress.
Rep. Rick Hansen, DFL-South St. Paul (and on the right in the image above), isn't in the mood for this Rodfooley:
Thank you Mr. Chair, and following up on Rep. Clark's comments, a lot of times we use jargon here. That exchange with staff about providing a "placeholder"; maybe to the folks watching at home, it's important to use plain language that this budget actually has a $1.9 million cut.
There's actually a cut to the budget, and so what we're talking about with urban ag, talking to people, talking to the Governor and talking to the Speaker, is trying to resolve that there's not additional money for other priorities. . . .Folks at home watching might not be clear about that.
So what we're talking about in trying to provide a hook in the bill is to try to provide the process that happened last year at the end of the session--which is that something comes back from the conference committee--so we're really counting on the DFL to save us from ourselves by providing more money for these projects rather than taking money from different projects or having a budget target that provided for these projects.
So what we're talking about (that we're going to by talking to people and having these conversations), but when it goes into conference committee and the bill comes out, there's no opportunity for amendment. And as we learned with many issues last year, we didn't even know what the consequences were of some of them.
...We could have a bill in front of us that had a higher target that funded things. And it would be clear--the people's representatives (who we are) that have the vote down there. What we're doing here is providing a procedural process where we're not going to vote on it until the deal is done.
And I can't think of how many time in the last year since the special session ended where people referenced deals, but who knew who was involved in the deals? When we vote here today, people can see that. We could have moved amendments and we chose not to have amendments [inaudible].
As a legislature, we have to do a better job not defaulting to the conference committee. We move too much to the end that the leaders make the decisions rather than have a public process where we can make the decisions. I hope, Mr. Chair, that many of these ideas actually get vetted before the final vote here--as it never does when it appears at three in the morning--so that we don't have to have a long discussion on the floor about "What does this mean?". We've been down that road already. [inaudible]
Chair Hamilton picks up the gauntlet:
Well, Representative Hansen, I'm going to open this up. The time is the middle of the day, so it's 11 o'clock, you had the opportunity to offer up amendments and you chose not to, you just said that. You know, if you want to turn this partisan, I'm not going to do it here in this committee, but I'm ready for the House floor, it would be on the House floor.
And some of the things last year was the budget year. We increased the budget from right around $80 million up to $117 million for the ag budget. We took the Department of Ad, with the wonderful people over there were struggling to make their statutory requirements as it pertained to food safety, and we passed a bill-a bipartisan bill that allowed the Department to increase the FTs [full time employees] by almost 40 people to protect the consumers of this great state. We invested in research. We also invested in farm business management, which was on life support with the individuals who controlled the House prior to us. We have done a number of things in this bill in the budget year which was last year.
And we want to do more--I agree we want to do more--and that's why we're doing some of the things that we're currently because we also understand how this place works and through negotiations etc. But I have a host of great things that we collectively have done in this committee for agriculture. Collectively.
If we're going to have this discussion, I'm going to refrain at this meeting today but I am eager to have this discussion on the House floor.
Eager to have it on the House floor.
Sounds like a threat, but Hansen doesn't back down:
Mr. Chair, you know that we can't--your target is your target--we can't spend anymore than that target. And I don't think we want to engage in taking money from other pots of money. That's what the bill does.
It takes money appropriated less than a year ago for a crisis. We don't know if there's going to be another crisis. This is a huge roll of the dice. I think we should reflect back to what Representative Poppe said. We have this conversation about not what happened last year, not what happened the last two years, but what's in front of us right now.
And what's in front of us right now is appropriating money that was appropriated for other purposes. A budget target is a cut. It doesn't allow us [to amend the target]. Now I could make a motion, but it's out of order with the budget target.
We can't spend money we don't have.
That takes you to about the 5:55 marker on the Youtube--and you can listen to the remainder as you wish.
The exchange illustrates the sort of gimmicks and shifts the Republican House caucus have to futz around with to achieve their agenda.
For more on the supplemental budget situation, check out Not adding up: Halfway through session, legislative leaders remain far apart on key issues.
Photo: Rod Hamilton and Rich Hansen.
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