Chaotic End to Session
“Kitchen-Sink” Bill: As mentioned above, this year's session ended in chaos. In a departure from House Rules and decorum, the DFL Majority pushed through a “kitchen sink” bill that contained all of their “omnibus bills” in a one giant 1400-page bill before anyone could even read it.
We had a constitutional deadline to adjourn by midnight on Sunday, May 19th.
At 9:45 p.m. on Sunday night, the Tax Committee on which I served called for a Conference Committee between the House and Senate to go through the final differences between the two versions of the Tax Bill. Although no House Republicans were appointed to serve on the Conference Committee, I went to find out what would be in the final bill. For context, the Tax Conference Committee had not met for 6 days.
I expected there to be fairly quick agreement on all of the outstanding tax provisions and that we would bring the tax bill to the floor for a quick debate. We were all very surprised when, without discussion, the Chair moved to adopt a final version of the tax bill AND add in ten other bills that were unrelated.
Some of the additional bills had been debated in the House as Omnibus bills from other committees, but they had not been taken up by the Senate. One of the new bills added into this “kitchen sink” bill had NEVER been heard in the Senate and didn’t even have a House companion (SF 5019)!
It was outrageous, and a clear violation of the Constitution’s “single subject” requirement, to put all of these bills together into an enormous 1400-page bill. Here’s a list of the bills that they dumped into the Tax bill:
- HF 3436 – Transportation Policy
- SF 5326 – Higher Ed Conference Committee Report
- SF 4942 – Energy & Agriculture Conference Committee Report
- SF 4399 – Human Services Conference Committee Report
- SF 4699 – Health Conference Committee Report
- HF 5363 – Paid Family & Medical Leave “Fix-It” bill ($887 million tax increase!)
- HF 2609 – Straw purchase Penalties and Trigger Activation bill
- HF 4247 – Scope of Practice bill (doesn’t include optometrists)
- HF 4259 – Property Tax provisions
- SF 5019 – State Employee Compensation Plans (no House version!)
After the Tax Conference Committee created this giant bill, it then went to the House Floor at about 10:50 p.m. House Rules say that Conference Committee Reports have to be available to Members before they are voted on. There were no copies of the bill in the Chamber and when I went online to try to read it, I got a message saying the link was not available.
I rose to make a “Parliamentary Inquiry” and ask how we could get a copy of the bill – since we still had a little more than an hour left, I assumed we’d get copies and have at least a small debate on the bill.
Instead, the Speaker ignored inquires by myself and others, “called the question,” – ending debate and moving right to the “final passage” vote. She ignored many higher order motions and points of inquiry, which as supposed to take precedence and never gave us ANY explanation why she was taking this course of action.
It quickly turned to chaos, with the Speaker just pushing the House Clerk to take the vote and ignoring all procedures and points of order, including undebatable motions to adjourn and a call for “division,” which would require Members to stand to cast their votes.
A few minutes later, a similar scenario played out in the Senate.
Not a single Member of either party was able to read or access a 1400-page “kitchen sink” bill that will now be state law in Minnesota. This is an unconscionable breach of House Rules and decorum.
Bonding Bill: After a brief recess to calm things down, the Democrat Majority then brought a “cash-only” bonding bill to the floor. This was apparently a “slimmed” down version of the usual “general obligation” bonding bill that contained only “agency” projects. Since it was a “cash” bill, it would only require a Majority vote – not the Super Majority required by the Constitution for issuing debt for bonding.
This time, Minority Leader Demuth was given a single copy of the bill, but it didn’t contain any information about the total cost. No other Members had copies of the bill and again it was not available online.
It was now about 11:50 p.m. and the House again erupted in protest against not being able to see the bill, know what projects were in it or know the cost. The Speaker again refused to answer questions, “called the question” to end debate and pushed it through.
The Senate was even more chaotic. They also rammed the bill through without anyone having access to it, but they also mismanaged the clock. Even though they had the votes to pass the bill (34), they failed to close the vote before midnight, so the bill did not pass.
It was truly a sad way to end the session. This level of abuse of power and lack of transparency has not occurred in the Legislature in our lifetimes. Trust was broken between the Majority and the Minority not as much over policy as over the absolute abuse of the Rules, which are specifically intended to protect the Minority. If we cannot even be guaranteed a fair process, our limited role in checking the power of the Majority is obliterated.
The Majority also broke faith with the people of Minnesota, who expect their Representatives to at least have access to the bills they are passing and to uphold the institution of the Legislature.
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