Rep. Kurt Zellers blasts Kelliher for not allowing debate on $1B bonding bill
House Minority leader Kurt Zellers (R-Maple Grove) took issue with the tactics the House Speaker Margaret Anderson Kelliher (DFL-Minneapolis) used to limit debate on the recent bonding bill.
The last few minutes of the House session
Laura Brod's thoughts as the end of the session nears
Minnesota's gay marriage battle
We don’t need to go to California to find a spirited battle about the gay marriage issue, we only need to look at our own state legislature. There are seven House bills and three Senate bills currently introduced ranging between acceptance and proposed constitutional amendments against.
Updates on a few Legislative bills
HF 520 (Olin, DFL 01A) Goes before committee on March 24. We don’t need to sponsor grass growing research for golf courses.
HF 1210 (Urdahl, R 18B) Is being held for possible inclusion in bonding bill.
Did you know it is illegal to attach a GPS to your windshield? Didn’t think so. HF 85 (Juhnke, DFL 13B) will change that. It has cleared the house (131-0 vote), and has been introduced in the Senate as SF 323 (Tomassoni, DFL 05).
HF 22 (Juhnke, DFL 13B) will allow fisherman to use 2 lines. Likely to be included in omnibus game & fish bill.
You will make room for electric cars, and you will like it!
In another example of government choosing winners, we get HF 1250 (Hornstein, DFL 60B, companion: SF 0916, Dibble DFL60) from our wonderful legislators in St Paul. The bill calls for the building of infrastructure needed for electric and plug-in hybrid vehicles. The bill would mandate new construction housing and multi-family structures be complete with the needed 240v circuitry to plug in a car for each parking space. Any major home renovation would also require new charging circuitry. So would some parking lots. Owners of plugin/hybrids would also be entitled to use HOVs and shoulders scott-free.
While we are talking about absurd bills, add SF 915 (Dibble; HF 866, Hosch, DFL, 14b). Part of this bill reads
…A school employer that provides health coverage to eligible employees or contributes money to pay for all or part of the cost of health coverage for eligible employees, must purchase such coverage through the school employee insurance program…
If I’m reading this right, school districts would be required to use state developed health plans, removing the option to use a private plan.
No thank you, Mr Dibble. Neither off these should escape committee, but RRG will keep an eye on them anyway. Just in case.
One of today’s first-read house bills is HF-1210 (Urdahl, R, 18B), a bill to provide initial funding for the Little Crow Transit Way (LCT). The LCT is a high-speed passenger train project that would run between Minneapolis and Willmar. I’m not totally surprised that Mr Urdahl sponsored the bill, since the LCT would run through his district. He is simply bringing home the bacon, as politicians do.
Minnesota lawmakers are going on tour to hear the public’s state budget concerns. The schedule of cities, dates and times can be found here.
HF 0057 (Emmer 19B) was discussed at length this morning by the House Government Operations Committee , with testimonies heard from those supporting and opposing the legislation.
Rep. Emmer began by saying the bill is similar to a program in Indiana, which has been upheld by the US Supreme Court. The bill would provide provide voter ID’s to those who could not get drivers licenses, 143,000 total, at no cost to them. The card would cost $1.19 each.
David Schultz of Hamline University testified about research he has done about voter fraud. He noted that fraud is statistically irrelevant, accounting for less than 0.00% of votes, so laws like this are unnecessary.
Secretary of State Mark Ritchie also, spoke against the bill. He believes ID”s would slow down lines on election day, therefore precincts would need more judges and be more costly. Richie said that voter ID’s would have zero impact on the integrity of an election.
Josh Reed, a Minneapolis election judge, supported the bill. He said it would streamline a confusing process for college students, many of whom were deceived by people who were registering students on campus. When those students went to the polls, they were told they were not registered, and were turned away. Reed added this bill would “err on the side of accuracy.”
Morris Hansen, a SW Minneapolis election judge, remembered a pastor in his precinct attempting to vouch for several people without even knowing their names. Hansen also noted that same day registration caused unneeded bottlenecks.
Keesha Gaskins of the League of Women Voters testified against the bill saying that it fixes a problem that we do not have.
Lucky Rosenbloom testified that as an African-American, having a voter ID would make him and others in his community voters feel more empowered to vote.
The bill was defeated by a 11-8 vote.