Legislative Update
THE FACTS ABOUT “IMPEACH WALZ”
Regarding impeachment of the Governor, it is a high legal bar, and an impeachment resolution, if brought up for a vote, would likely fail in the Democrat-controlled House. It would take all the House Republicans and 4 Democrats to vote for the impeachment resolution to pass. If it miraculously passed in the House, the impeachment articles would go to the Senate for a full legal trail based on the laws broken and evidence to support the claims. It takes a 2/3 majority vote of the Senators, or 44 Senators to remove him. Republicans have a one seat majority or 34 Senators, thus 8 Democrats and 2 Independents would need to vote to remove the Governor.
Furthermore, if we were to miraculously impeach Governor Walz, then the Lieutenant Governor, Peggy Flanagan, would ascend to the Governor's office. I would encourage you to do some research on her extreme views and priorities. After Peggy Flanagan becomes the Governor, the President of the Senate would become the new Lt. Governor and the Republican one seat majority would be lost. It is very likely at that point that Senators Tom Bakk and David Tomassoni who were once Democrats turned Independents, would control the agenda moving forward. One thing is sure, Republicans would no longer control the Senate, and Democrats would control the House, Senate and the Governor’s office. Governor Flanagan would be far more extreme than Walz has ever been. If we successfully impeached Walz, Republicans would lose - we all would lose.
EMERGENCY POWERS – CHAPTER 12
Throughout the past year and a half, I have heard from constituents concerned about the Governor's emergency powers and what we at the legislature are doing to rein them in. First, I'd like to let you know that after over 20 votes to end the Governor's emergency powers, House Democrats finally joined Republicans to vote unanimously to end this vast overreach on June 29th, during the last special session. Prior to this, I voted affirmatively every single time a motion was brought to end the Governor's emergency powers, as well as pushed the Governor to relinquish this unacceptable level of power via press conferences, letters, social media posts, and bringing a resolution myself to force votes on the House Floor.
We have seen proof over the past year that our emergency powers statute, Chapter 12, needs drastic reform so that no governor can ever consolidate such widespread power into one office again. I served as part of the Subcommittee on Legislative Process Reform this past year, and we heard many bills aimed at just that. Unfortunately, the Democrats, who control the House and therefore the committee process, stopped the advancement of any meaningful changes. They even went so far as to blame the death of former Senator Jerry Relph on the Senate’s actions and concluded that the Senate now and forevermore could not be trusted to end a Governor’s emergency powers. That was their reasoning behind not changing Chapter 12 to require both House and Senate to vote to extend the emergency powers.
I am a co-author on multiple bills aimed at reining in the Governor's emergency powers and addressing the restrictions he imposed throughout the course of his emergency powers declaration. One such bill is by Rep. Steve Green, HF101, which would allow a governor to declare a state of emergency for up to seven days. We know that there are instances where a governor does indeed need the power to respond to emergencies quickly, such as natural disasters or public safety emergencies, where the time it takes to call the legislature into session would not allow for the immediate actions needed.
In HF 101, after the initial 7 days, the legislature would take control and be required to affirmatively approve the state of emergency, as well as continue to affirmatively approve these executive powers every thirty days. This would give the Governor a narrow window to respond with immediate action, but would ensure that actions beyond 7 days have the support of the legislature.
There are other proposals at the legislature that, while the idea behind them may be similar to the aim of other Republicans, are being used as a fundraising push rather than a sincere solution to reining in gubernatorial powers. The bill being touted by some as a magic bullet to end government overreach would stand no chance of passing the DFL House, and would be vetoed by the Governor if it ever reached his desk. On its merits, the bill would also render the state unable to respond quickly to real emergencies like natural disasters and other serious emergencies.
The author of this bill can't even get this bill heard in committee, let alone the majority vote needed to pass at any level of the legislative process. In order to rein in these Chapter 12 emergency powers, we need honest leadership and commonsense changes, not ill-thought out bills that would hamper the ability of the Governor to respond to legitimate emergencies. It is disingenuous to say the least, for a legislator to sell this type of poorly written policy as a miracle cure to the problems we face with Chapter 12, all the while raising money and inciting anger at the people who are actually working to solve the problem.
|
