A reader objected to our last post, What's coming, what's passing away, and what's enduring in Minnesota House committees, writing in an email, "What is discouraging is the absence of any reference to the minimization of omnibus bills! "
Our post focused on committee structure and leadership, but we reassured him that Speaker Hortman had discussed the issue since the election flipped the Minnesota House.
We'd included a bit about the issue. In House Democrats signal priorities in new committee structure, Minnesota Public Radio's Briana Bierschbach reports (and we quoted it in the post):
One new subcommittee will focus on changing the legislative process. Last session, Dayton vetoed a 990-page budget bill sent to him in the final hours of session by the Republican-controlled Legislature.
“The legislative failures of the past four years have revealed that the Legislature needs to reform the way it conducts business,” Hortman said. “I am hopeful the Minnesota Senate will partner with us to make the legislature more efficient, effective, and transparent.”
At Minnesota Lawyer, Kevin Featherly reported in Lawyers take top two House leadership posts:
. . .{S]he said that she will schedule more bipartisan activities and foster collegiality between the caucuses. And she will direct committee chairs to avoid constructing Omnibus Prime-styled mega-bills like the one Gov. Mark Dayton vetoed in May, she said.
“What I hope we will do—which we used to do under Republican and Democratic speakers—is pass a bunch of little bills,” Hortman said. “If we can pass a bunch of bills by 120-14 votes in the early going, we can get a pattern of working together and then use that later to attack the bigger, harder issues.”
In the Minneapolis Star Tribune, Hortman told J. Patrick Coolican that she's also mindful of the process of the conference committees that produce Omnibus Prime-styled mega-bills that reduce transparency:
Hortman said House Democrats are pursuing an agenda with all Minnesotans in mind and said she hopes for a new approach at the Capitol beyond just new faces and new issues. Recent legislative sessions have often ended badly, with major spending and policy decisions hashed out in private by a small coterie of legislative leaders and outgoing Democratic Gov. Mark Dayton. This process resulted in one state government shutdown, a legal battle between Dayton and GOP legislative leaders and frequent, bitter recriminations.
"It gets difficult when you have four guys solving issues in a backroom," Hortman said. "I think Minnesota will be far better off having all 201 legislators engaged in the lawmaking process."
The new Speaker's approach--far different from Daudt's end-of-session 1000-page, mega-bill approach--is one reason among several factors Why some Minnesota lawmakers are confident they can get an opioid bill passed in 2019, as Peter Callaghan reports in MinnPost.
Governor-elect Tim Walz has also made it clear as a candidate that he's not a fan of mega-omnibus bills. In Johnson, Walz spar in first governor's debate since primary victories, Forum Communications reporter Gabriel Lagarde wrote:
Both candidates decried a recent wave of giant omnibus bills in the state Legislature that don't give politicians or constituents enough time to properly review legislation. Walz said he would look to ban the anti-constitutional bills, while Johnson said he would veto any multi-topic bill, irrespective if he agrees with its purposes or not.
While anything is possible in politics in these interesting times, Bluestem hopes that these statements ease our reader's mind.
Photo: Incoming Speaker of the Minnesota House, Melissa Hortman. Via Hortman for State House.
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