Legislative Update
Bills Approved on the House Floor
On Monday, the House met in session to vote on two bills. The first was an elections bill that makes one-time changes to the 2020 state primary and general elections, and authorizes over $14 million of Federal Help America Vote Act (HAVA) funding to be used for cybersecurity and other changes in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. It gives flexibility to local jurisdictions for designating polling places, allows hospital and healthcare facility employees to administer absentee ballot procedures for residents, increases the time allowed for processing absentee ballots both before and after the election, and other changes in response to the current crisis. I voted aye.
We also debated a bill regarding education, making changes in how hourly workers are treated and waiving some testing requirements. While many people have said this bill would prevent layoffs, that is not true according to the Minnesota Department of Education. It also does not grant school districts the flexibility they need during this unprecedented challenge for schools. Unfortunately, due to the misinformation on what the bill actually did, and the fact that it did not adequately address our schools' needs, I had to vote no on the bill.
However, I did vote for an amendment offered by Rep. Ron Kresha, the GOP lead on the Education Finance Division, which would have kept most of the language of the bill the same but also would have offered some clarity on whether the guidance issued by the Minnesota Department of Education (MDE) is required by law. It would also have given school districts more tools to address the budget deficit many of them are looking at in the near future.
This is the same language as the guidance issued by MDE regarding the use and continued pay for school employees. By putting that guidance into Session Law, it would ensure that the guidance issued by MDE is being uniformly applied with no uncertainty by schools on whether the expectations set by the governor's administration are required by law.
In the underlying bill, schools would either have to pay employees for the amount of work they would be doing under usual circumstances, regardless of how much work there actually is to do, or lay them off. Our amendment would have given schools additional flexibility to work with hourly employees to pay them the agreed-upon hourly rate for the work actually being performed. Unfortunately, it did not pass.
Committee Approves Harassment and Stalking Changes
On Monday, we had a meeting of the Judiciary Finance and Civil Law Division where we discussed a bill to make changes to our state's harassment and stalking statutes. Several portions of our current statutes have been struck down by the courts, and the underlying bill attempted to fix those statutes.
Unfortunately, the current law has issues that are very problematic for gun owners, including the potential for elevating the charge to a felony even if a weapon was not used in the commission of the harassment. This means that if a harassing email is sent, and the harasser also happens to own a gun, they could be charged with a felony. The bill did not change that aspect of current law, and also included references to federal language that did not have state statutory definitions, which would have made this statute very difficult for state courts to interpret and administer fairly. The amendment I worked on addressed that problem, as well as others brought up by concerned parties.
I worked hard with advocates on all sides, including victims rights groups and gun owners, to bring language in an amendment offered by the bill's author that made this bill acceptable to all stakeholders, able to be interpreted by the courts properly, and addressing the underlying issue the Supreme Court had with the language of the statute. Once the amendment was adopted, even the most vehement opponents to the underlying bill testified in support of the new language. I am very proud of the work I did on this bill, and after the amendment was adopted, the bill passed unanimously out of committee.
Latest Actions from the Governor
This week, the governor signed an executive order protecting CARES Act payments from garnishment. According to the governor,
Executive Order 20-50 exempts federal, tribal, state, and local COVID-19 relief funds from being automatically intercepted by creditors and debt collectors.
If you would like more information, you can read the executive order here.
Interestingly, Rep. Mary Franson from Alexandria had a substantially similar bill to this executive order that she introduced last week. The fact that legislators were on top of this issue before the governor even issued his order underscores just why the governor's emergency powers should come to an end. Instead of requiring unilateral action from the governor, we could have voted on this bill and had it signed into law.
We need to bring back the balance of power between all branches of government, and bring the legislature back into the discussion on the state's COVID-19 response. That's why I voted twice to end the governor's peacetime emergency powers, on April 14th and April 28th.
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