House Passes Free Breakfast and Lunch Bill.  The House gave final approval to HF 5 this afternoon and the bill will now go to the Governor for his signature.  This measure was included in the Governor’s budget, but rather than incorporating it into the omnibus bill that will be constructed and passed later this session, legislative leadership decided to pass the bill as a single piece of legislation.  The bill first passed the House on February

Equalization Gets Its Own Day! Four property tax-related bills were heard in the Senate Education Finance Committee this morning.  The meeting started with two bills authored by Senator Rob Kupec.  The first was SF 1330, a bill that would expand the use of Long Term Facilities Maintenance Revenue to include the remodeling of buildings acquired by a school district.  Moorhead school district purchased a Sam’s Club facility that had closed and Fergus Falls had purchased

Education Policy Bills Pass First Deadline.  Both the House and Senate Education omnibus policy bills–HF 1269 and SF 1311–cleared their respective committees last week and were referred to the Education Finance Committees in both instances.  It remains to be seen whether these bills will be folded into the omnibus education funding bills to have a single bill addressing almost all of education funding and policy this session or if the education policy bills will be passed

Look Down and a Week Has Passed!  I apologize for letting the blog lag for a whole week.  The legislative schedule has been hectic with committees working overtime to get as many policy bills heard before the first policy bill deadline of Friday, March 10.  Both the House and Senate Education Policy Committees have released the first draft of their omnibus bills (more on those later) and they will be out of their respective committees by

Aha!  I’m Nostroeconomicus!  I’m not an economist (although I’ve taken quite a few economics courses) and I don’t play one on television (although I have been a game show contestant and I was “The Weakest Link”), but I distinctly remember when asked during my comments at the February SEE meeting what I thought the February forecast would look like I said I thought that the amount of one-time money (or the short-term surplus attributable to the