Long Day’s Journey into Night (and the Next Morning)–Apologies to Eugene O’Neill

K-12 Bill Passes Both Houses.  I don’t know if any of you share my affinity for Western Swing Music from the 1940s and 1950s, but yesterday’s legislative floor sessions used Bob Wills’ “Stay a Little Longer” as an inspiration in accelerating the pace to finish the 2023 Legislative Session by the end of this week.  The K-12 bill passed the House on a party-line vote of 70-62 around 5 PM and the Senate took up the bill and passed it a over 12 hours later at around 6 AM (Legislative days run until 7 AM).

Discussion from opponents of the bill centered around a couple of topics, particularly the establishment of Ethnic Studies standrds and the provision that will allow between-term employees (bus drivers, paraprofessionals, food service workers) to apply for unemployment for the summer months.  The House Republicans mentioned their alternative proposal several times during the debate as a better route to funding Minnesota schools, but the voters were not there to send the bill back to conference.  It was pretty much a replay in the Senate.

The sequencing flipped for the Omnibus Jobs Bill, which includes provisions that will significantly widen the scope of school district negotiations by allowing bargaining units to negotiate over items like class-size and terms of employment.  The effort to promote these changes was a long and arduous one by its proponents as it took a circuitous route through the process before ending up in the his conference committee.  Part of the strategy was inserting the bill into a larger conference committee to escape being exposed to a straight up/down vote on the narrower provision.  As the character Mrs. Potts sang in “Beauty and the Beast,” it’s a tale as old as time.  The Omnibus Jobs Bill passed by straight party-line votes in the Senate and House of 34-33 and 70-61 respectively.  It’s technically not an abuse of the process because the process is what the process is, but there have been a number of instances this year where individual bills have been inserted late into conference committees late in the game.

You will be inundated with virtual paper explaining the bill in the next few days and I will join in with those efforts.  There is clearly a lot to discuss about the victories and disappointments.  I will use the blog to lay out a lot of these comments, but in the meantime, digest the text of the bill and the summary.  Data runs will be distibuted by email.

HF 2497 Conference Committee Report

HF 2497 Conference Committee Section-by-Section Summary

More to come I’m sure.