We can't claim to offer any original insights into the collapse of the budget and tax cut agreements at the close of the Minnesota legislative session on Sunday.
Rather than engage in fingerpointing--as much fun as it is--we'll simply put together a digest of news reports.
Starting at the state capitol, Session Daily's Mike Cook reports Legislative session sputters to an end; special session probable:
At a press conference last Monday announcing a framework to finish out the legislative session, Gov. Tim Walz and legislative leaders were asked a number of times for more details rather than just grand total numbers.
The outline split the budget surplus into thirds: $4 billion for tax breaks, $4 billion for new spending, and $4 billion left on the bottom line in case the economy worsens.
Lacking specific on things like taxes, health care and education, Walz told the media it is their role to be skeptical, but he was “pretty confident” things would come together.
Um.
After another week of DFL and Republican members blaming the other side for the lack of success, the state’s top elected official said just before 1 a.m. he’s open to calling a special session — something he previously pledged not to do — in hopes of reaching agreement on myriad supplemental funding bills that also contain key policy across the spectrum.
“We’re 90-95% of the way there, we’re sitting on the proverbial 1-yard line. Just punch it in. Just get it done.”
Walz plans to meet with legislative leaders Monday morning, where presumably a timeline will be discussed. “The sooner the better makes the most sense,” he said.
[MORE: History of special sessions]
“The Minnesota House is ready to come back and get the work done,” House Speaker Melissa Hortman (DFL-Brooklyn Park) said after members left the House Chamber late Sunday, the last day bills could be passed in the regular session. She would like a special session this week. “We hope our Senate GOP colleagues will in the morning agree that we need to come back and finish the work for the people of Minnesota.”
“Minnesotans expect us to show up and get the job done. We have had a tendency in recent years to have a final agreement toward the close of session, come back in a special session and finalize that work,” said House Majority Leader Ryan Winkler (DFL-Golden Valley). “We still have an opportunity to do that.”
“We are not interested in a special session,” Senate Majority Leader Jeremy Miller (R-Winona) said mid-afternoon Sunday. He reiterated that post-session.
Also while it was still daylight, Senate Minority Leader Melisa Lopez Franzen (DFL-Edina) said she does not want a special session called unless there is pre-approved agreement. “We’re not going to come here as we’ve done in the past and just wait and see if there’s another agreement. That is a waste of our time and taxpayer dollars.”
“I think it’s good for everybody to go home and sleep on this for seven months and we’ll come back and do what’s right for Minnesotans,” House Minority Leader Kurt Daudt (R-Crown) said shortly after midnight.
Behind-the-scenes omnibus bill deal-making between the governor, legislative leaders and committee chairs mostly proved futile.
Health and Human Services? Denied. Public Safety? No deal. E-12 Education got an incomplete. Transportation crashed. Environment and Natural Resources? You get the drift. . . .
Read the rest at Session Daily. Senate Media Services noted in With Work Remaining, Special Session Discussions Begin:
Legislative leaders addressed the media Monday, May 23, following the adjournment of the Senate sine die. The budget framework agreement reached by Governor Tim Walz, Senate Majority Leader Jeremy Miller and House Speaker Melissa Hortman was left unfilled, as lawmakers failed to pass supplemental funding for education, public safety, the environment, public safety and state agencies. In addition, the major tax relief measure hailed by the tax chairs earlier in the week did not reach either House or Senate floors for a final vote.
Governor Walz said that negotiations throughout Sunday were productive, and he believed legislators will work to finalize the budget areas in the coming days.
Here's the YouTube of that media scrum:
At the Star Tribune, Jessie Van Berkel and Stephen Montemayor reported in Minnesota Legislature misses key deadline to finish its work early Monday morning:
The GOP-led Senate and DFL-controlled House reached Sunday's midnight deadline without passing numerous sweeping policy packages, including a previously agreed upon $4 billion tax deal and proposals for education and public safety.
Walz planned to meet with House Speaker Melissa Hortman and and Senate Majority Leader Jeremy Miller on Monday morning to hash out the details of a short special session to wrap up agreed-upon bills, which could happen as early as this week.
Only the governor can call a special session, a regular occurrence over the past decade as the Legislature frequently missed deadlines to complete its work. Walz had repeatedly said over the past couple months that he would not call another one.
"At the end of the session we are really close but not done and we need a little extra time," Hortman said.
But that possibility is still being met by resistance from Republican leaders.
"We're always happy to listen, but the reality is the deadline was midnight and that deadline has come and gone" Senate Majority Leader Jeremy Miller, R-Winona, told reporters early Monday.
Speaking to reporters after midnight, Hortman and Miller shared contrasting visions for how close — or far apart — the two sides were on multiple key pieces of legislation. On public safety, a top priority for all three state leaders, Hortman expressed optimism that a deal could be close. Yet Miller, moments later, described being "pretty far apart" on the bill and cited differences over funding for police and community nonprofits.
Hortman described reaching an agreement on health and human services spending to be the most difficult task still before lawmakers. Senate Minority Leader Melisa López Franzen, DFL-Edina, had earlier said that legislators were nearing agreement on health and human services spending.
"We are trying to unclog the logjam here," she said, accusing Miller of not bringing Senate Democrats to the table to get work done. "We're willing to work. We're willing to get that logjam freed up. But no, there is fault on both sides."
Meanwhile, House Minority Leader Kurt Daudt, R-Crown, blamed Democrats. He said they "are not letting go of the unnecessary spending that they want to do right now."
Over the weekend, legislative negotiators reached a $4 billion tax deal that would eliminate state taxes on Social Security income, lower the bottom income tax tier from 5.35% to 5.1% and expand tax credits for homeowners and renters. But the fate of the tax agreement is tied to a broader deal that includes an additional $4 billion in proposed spending.
Sen. Jason Isaacson, DFL-Shoreview, pressed Miller around noon Sunday on the logistics of completing the various bills. Isaacson said that if deals were reached Sunday afternoon, he believed that could be too late for Capitol staff to do the work needed to prepare bills for votes before the midnight deadline. . . .
Later the same day, Van Berkel and Briana Bierschbach reported in Billions in spending, tax cuts in limbo as retiring legislators say farewell:
Minnesota legislators spent hours giving fond farewell speeches Monday as billions of dollars in tax and spending proposals remained in limbo — and the campaign trail blame game that will dominate the next five months was underway.
"I'm hearing pretty clearly from Minnesotans, 'Give us the money back from this and invest in the things that make our lives a little easier,'" said DFL Gov. Tim Walz, who has sole power to call legislators back into a special session to finish the tax, education, public safety and other bills that state leaders failed to wrap up during their regular session. "It shouldn't be that hard and we can get win-win-wins across the board."
But he ended a meeting with top legislative leaders Monday with no timeline or clarity on next steps. Walz said he's ready to call legislators back, but Senate Republicans asked for a few days to "decompress" after a marathon of legislative work over the past week.
Lawmakers' official work slammed to a halt at 11:59 p.m. Sunday, the deadline to pass bills this session. Formally, they could do little at the Capitol on Monday apart from retirement speeches. Some wandered around the building waiting to hear whether they should keep working or go home, while interest groups aired their frustrations that lawmakers left so much work undone.
"The collapse is imminent," said Sen. Jim Abeler, R-Anoka, who proposed spending $1 billion to boost pay for long-term care and group home workers, personal care assistants and others in the midst of a health care staffing crisis. "People are going to come to harm, and everybody knows it."
As key dealmakers met privately to determine next steps, Republican gubernatorial candidate Scott Jensen gathered his supporters for a rally outside the Capitol. He was joined and endorsed by Kendall Qualls, one of the candidates Jensen recently bested in the fight for the Minnesota Republican Party's backing.
"I'm going to ask you to remember Forrest Gump, one of my heroes. His mother taught him, 'Stupid is as stupid does.' I don't know if our present governor got that message," said Jensen, a former state senator. "We've got a lot more problems coming down the pike because we've got someone who thinks they're a king and you're his subjects. And that's got to stop." . . .
Readers can draw their own conclusions about the efficacy of that sort of imaginary hero worship.
At the Forum News Service, capitol reporter Dana Ferguson reports in Minnesota lawmakers left St. Paul without passing $8 billion in tax and spending bills. So now what?:
The Minnesota legislative session fizzled to a close on Monday, May 23, without resolution on a number of issues, including how to dole out the historic $9 billion budget surplus.
Ahead of the Sunday, May 22, deadline for passing bills at the Capitol, lawmakers finished writing a nearly $4 billion tax bill that would've cut the lowest income tax bracket and eliminated the tax on social security benefits.
They also agreed to spend $4 billion on spending for schools, public safety, long-term care facilities and group homes.
But partisan disagreements over the biggest spending bills kept them from getting done on time. And without those pieces of the end-of-session agreement, Democrats said the tax bill shouldn't move forward.
Now, Gov. Tim Walz and leaders in the Minnesota House of Representatives, along with groups that wanted to see lawmakers pass those bills before the deadline, say lawmakers should come back for overtime.
But Republicans, frustrated about not being able to pass the tax bill before the clock ran out, say there's little point since lawmakers couldn't reach deals in the four-month regular session.
Here's a look at what happened this weekend and where things could go from here. . . .
Read what happened at the Duluth News Tribune or another Forum news chain paper. The paper's editorial board decided Our View: Lawmakers fail Minnesotans once again this session.
At the Minnesota Reformer, Ricardo Lopez reported in Billions left unspent as divided Legislature flounders in final hours:
In the end, the Minnesota Legislature ran out of time early Monday to strike deals on how to spend the state’s historic budget surplus, leaving billions on the state’s bottom line unless DFL Gov. Tim Walz and legislative leaders finish the work in a special session.
Lawmakers blew past a midnight deadline, failing to pass new spending for public safety, schools, health and human services, tax cuts and a capital infrastructure bill.
Because they passed a two-year budget last year, they don’t have to pass anything this year, but the state’s burgeoning problems in education and public safety had constituents clamoring for a fresh infusion of money, while both parties also sought to give some of the surplus back in the form of tax cuts and credits.
Last week, House Speaker Melissa Hortman, DFL-Brooklyn Park, Senate Majority Leader Jeremy MIller, R-Winona, and Walz announced they had reached a broad framework for the state budget.
The framework, which sets spending on the surplus for the next three years, included: $1 billion for education; $1 billion for health and human services; $450 million for public safety; $1.4 billion for a bonding bill; $4 billion for a tax bill and $4 billion left unspent in case of any future disruptions to the state economy.
“We hope our Senate GOP colleagues will in the morning agree that we need to come back and finish the work for the people of Minnesota,” Hortman told reporters in a post-session press conference, arguing that lawmakers should return in a special session to finish passing bills. “There’s a lot of really important work that we can do for the people of Minnesota.”
Miller, for his part, called the process frustrating, blaming the House DFL for not finishing on time. He seemed less interested in a special session, even though the bills outstanding contain some of the Senate GOP’s top priorities, including full exemption of Social Security income from state taxation and an income tax rate cut.
Walz told reporters that he expected to meet with legislative leaders on Monday to try to negotiate a special session agenda.
“We’re happy to continue these discussions, but the reality is… we’re not interested in a special session. For goodness sake, get your work done on time,” Miller said.
The sticking points were numerous. On public safety, Miller said Senate Republicans pushed for more funding for law enforcement and tougher penalties for certain crimes. House DFL lawmakers, Miller said, relented on more funding for police but pushed back against harsher criminal penalties.
“That just wasn’t acceptable to Republicans,” Miller said.
Still, the session was not a complete wash. Lawmakers approved new money for higher education, veteran services and agriculture, which includes a drought relief package. Previously, lawmakers found compromise on replenishing the unemployment insurance trust fund and approving pandemic hazard pay to frontline workers.
Despite recriminations between lawmakers of slow-walking offers and bad-faith negotiating, Hortman struck an optimistic tone for finishing bills in a short special session. She cast the inability to finish on time as a byproduct of a part-time Legislature whose calendar was set decades ago.
“This has become a fairly typical occurrence,” she said. “We have a very complicated state budget, and a big state with a lot of people in it and the length of the legislative session set that we decided in 1970 has shown us over the last 20 years to not be long enough.”
Minnesota special sessions have occurred fairly regularly in the past few years, including monthly during the worst of the pandemic.
The failure of lawmakers to approve the budget bills threatens to derail top priorities for the Senate GOP, House DFL and governor as the 2022 fall elections get closer.
Senate Republicans started the session focused on supporting law enforcement, announcing a series of packages to bolster police departments with recruitment and retention bonuses. They also frequently pointed out rising violent crime in the Twin Cities to justify their tough-on-crime agenda.
House Democrats, meanwhile, pushed hard for increased education funding to help address funding shortfalls in special education, as well as advocating for more affordable child care and health care for lower-income Minnesotans.
The governor, who pitched direct payments to Minnesotans as a centerpiece of his economic agenda, compromised on several of his priorities, but still stood to see many of his proposal incorporated into a final budget deal.
Walz appeared ready to call lawmakers back to the Capitol to finish the budget deal struck last year.
“We’ll finish this. We have to. The ball is on the one-yard line,” Walz said. “This is the nature of deliberative bodies. They tend to be this way. It’s not an excuse, but it’s a reason.”
Monday is the last full day of the 2022 legislative session, but under state law, lawmakers cannot pass any bills in the last 24 hours. Instead, lawmakers will meet to send off a long list of retiring House and Senate members who will not be running under the newly drawn legislative maps.
Photo: The statue on the dome of the Minnesota state capitol. A pretty place where good and bad policy ideas and spending sometime go to die. Or linger.
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