Capitol comment: Minnesota's dysfunctional government needs to be fixed – Albert Lea Tribune

Peggy Bennett's comments at the Capitol

There is a lot that can be written about as we close out the 2024 legislative session.

Peggy Bennett

Let me talk about the good things that have been signed into law. Thankfully, we passed a bipartisan bill to bring School Resource Officers back into our schools. Additionally, we passed $24 million in temporary emergency funding to address Minnesota's emergency medical services crisis. It's important that when people need an ambulance, there's an ambulance there.

Two bills I authored made it into the final education bill. My Purple Star Schools provision provides local schools with options to help and make life easier for military children who frequently change schools due to a parent's military service. Additionally, I worked with local special education directors, MDEs, and my legislative colleagues this year to make the Special Education Teacher Pipeline Grant Program (my provision included last session) more effective and flexible to help schools recruit and train special education teachers.

Let me talk about some of the very harmful things that have been approved this year. Just to give you one example, last year the Democratic majority passed a one-size-fits-all paid family leave program. Republicans warned at the time that the program was hugely underfunded. This year a report was released showing that the program's costs had been grossly underestimated. I find it outrageous that the majority is going to foot the bill for this cost difference by raising Minnesotans' payroll taxes by almost $750 million. Can you afford to have more taxes taken out of your paycheck?

Someone making $20 an hour will have $80 in taxes deducted from their paycheck every other week to cover the costs of this expensive new program and the massive new government bureaucracy that runs it. Others will pay even more, and costs will only go up.

“I am also extremely concerned that the majority of states are continuing to spend nearly $1 billion this year, despite having used up last year's $18 billion surplus and increasing government costs by 40 percent. This is completely irresponsible, especially considering that Minnesota faces a budget deficit next year.”

I could go on and on about the good and the bad, but what I really want to talk about is our government. Minnesota's legislative process is extremely broken.

You've probably already heard about the chaotic outcome of the 2024 session. Even members of both parties outside of Congress are saying they've never seen anything this bad.

Just two hours before the midnight end of the Congressional session, Democrats quietly convened a mini-conference to combine all of the large omnibus bills (and who knows what else) waiting to be passed into one giant omnibus bill. 1,494 pages to be exact, this giant omnibus bill was brought forward in the House with about 20 minutes left in the Congressional session, and then sent to the Senate.

The lawmakers had no chance to even read, let alone see, this gigantic bill when it was voted on in the chamber, as there was no paper or online version available. They rammed through the bill without reading it, without debate, and ignoring the pleas of the minority.

The House Majority Leader was quoted as saying, “We did what was necessary to pass our agenda.” It seems the ends justify the means. So sad.

Democrats will say that Republicans took too long and wasted time with too many amendments. Republicans will argue that Democrats were extremely poor time managers, refusing to work with Republicans and wasting two full days in the final week without meeting. On top of that, due to infighting within the Senate, Senate Democrats called a 12-hour long recess with two days remaining.

Despite majorities in both the state Legislature and the Governor's office, the bond bill has never even come up for a vote on the floor. This is the year of the bond.

Pushing through such a frightening and ominous bill without even giving it a chance to be looked at is just plain wrong on so many levels. This is a bipartisan issue. Republicans did something similar a few years ago with the “Omnibus Prime” bill, but not on this scale. I'm not trying to point the finger. Both parties have done this to one degree or another.

I didn't agree with that then, and I don't agree with that now: the ends do not justify the means.

Where is the respect, the civility, the honesty? Or at least the willingness to listen? We may not agree in the end, but we'd both be much better off if we just listened. And who knows? Sometimes we'll find some surprising agreements that actually improve the law, so that when these bills come up for a vote, they won't have to be amended over and over again.

Our government is dysfunctional, and it's time to bring the adults to the table and fix it.

Peggy Bennett (R-Albert Lea) represents District 23A.