Wintry mix spreads across Minnesota

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Early Friday morning, the Minnesota House passed two bills that spend more than $1 billion on public works projects across the state. Later in the day they are poised to pass another round of tax cuts, as well as a bill that legalizes medical marijuana and a bill that increases spending for schools, health care and broadband.

Assuming all those bills pass, the session should end Friday.

The House took up the bonding bill at 2 a.m., roughly five hours after legislative leaders in the House and Senate cut a deal on which projects would be in the public works borrowing bill. Key among them is $126 million for the renovation of the State Capitol, $279 million for the University of Minnesota and Minnesota State Colleges and Universities and $113 million for roads and bridges.

A companion bill also dedicates $200 million in cash for civic centers in Mankato, Rochester and St. Cloud and funding for the 

DFL Rep. Alice Hausman of St. Paul acknowledged the difficulty of negotiating a bonding bill.

"We had to accommodate House and Senate and in the last days some additional requests from House minority and of course, the governor. And every time we did it, some bills fell by the wayside," Hausman said.

Republicans, who have spent the last several months criticizing Democrats for their spending in the bonding bill, were more muted in their critique. In fact, the biggest complaint came from lawmakers, such as Republican Representative Anna Wills of Apple Valley, who weren't happy that their projects missed the cut.

"My concern is that projects that were further down in the ranking were included and the Dakota County Technical College was not included."

Even though several Republicans like Willis lost out, GOP legislative leaders won big.

Eight Republican votes were needed along with every Democrat in order to get to the supermajority needed to pass the bill. And Republicans used that leverage to their advantage by securing full funding for the Lewis & Clark pipeline. They convinced Democrats to pay $22 million in cash for the project, promise state aid in the tax bill and grant taxing authority to local communities to finance it in the long term.

DFL House Speaker Paul Thissen said the pipeline was the linchpin to securing a successful end to the legislative session.

"That was the thing that was the most important to the Republicans and a very important thing to the state too. So figuring out a mechanism for doing that is what got us an agreement to move these things forward," he said.

Republicans also secured a few other commitments, key among them an agreement that Democrats drop their push to require manufacturers to disclose the presence of toxic chemicals in children's products -- a measure called the Toxic Free Kids act.

"What we agreed to do is suspend the rules to take up these things and get them done more quickly so everyone can get done and get out of here tomorrow," Republican Senate Minority Leader David Hann. "In exchange for votes to do that, we asked for some of the bills that probably aren't going anywhere anyway to just be set aside so nobody has to worry about them and they agreed to do that."

DFL Gov. Mark Dayton made a last minute push to include the Toxic Free Kids act in a supplemental budget bill, but legislators eventually rejected that effort. But the budget committee did agree to accept several of Dayton's other requests before wrapping up their work earlier Friday morning.

DFL Sen. Dick Cohen of St. Paul said the budget bill spends roughly $260 million on early childhood and K12 education, funding for home and community based health workers and funding for rural broadband. Cohen says the budget bill will also provide debt service for the Bell Museum project.

That was a key priority for the House Capital Investment Chair but it was cut from the bonding bill in order to accept a greater number of Republican projects. Cohen said it would have been easier if Republicans would have just agreed to a larger bonding bill instead of holding to a pledge that the bonding bill be no larger than $846 million and forcing public works spending in tax and budget bills.

"We're going through all of these somersaults in what would be a very fiscally responsible number which is clearly within Minnesota's debt capacity to avoid right wing political talking points," Cohen said.

House and Senate leaders appear confident that they will finish their work today, a couple days short of Monday's constitutional deadline.

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Tom Scheck

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Early Friday morning, the Minnesota House passed two bills that spend more than $1 billion on public works projects across the state.

Minn. House OKs billion-dollar public works bill

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