An Update Before We Hit the End of Session
by Senator Steve Green

We’re quickly approaching the end of Session. We will be ending this year on May 18. Time is short, but Democrats are still pushing a lot. The last few weeks have focused on omnibus bills, which continue to be a blight on the process. I wanted to give everyone an update on where things stand.

I tend to focus a lot on the Environment committee and its bills. So far, we’ve been waiting for bills to come up for weeks, but they’re buried somewhere else. This is very frustrating and makes the process harder to follow.

One thing I’ve been critical of is the state purchasing more land. Each year, more acres come off the tax rolls, hurting counties and driving up property taxes. This year alone, proposals total roughly 35,000 acres. It needs to stop.

There’s also a major issue in Roseau County that I’ve been speaking out on. A watershed district is pushing forward a project that will flood back up to 12,600 acres of private land, much of it farmland, with no plan for compensating the landowners. There’s already a lawsuit underway. Yet the board continues seeking legislative funding without clear updates. This year’s Outdoor Heritage Fund includes $3 million for them to continue a project we have no transparency on. It’s a bad deal. The legislature shouldn’t fund something with so many unanswered questions.

There are also signs Democrats are preparing another large end-of-session omnibus bill. Some of you may remember back in 2024, for the few weeks leading up to the end of session, nothing was getting done. Then just minutes before midnight on our last day of Session, Democrats dropped a 1400+ page bill that they we didn’t even get to see before they forced it through. There was so much in that bill, many of us were not even given a copy until after we adjourned. That was a disgrace to the process.

This year, we’re seeing a similar setup. Bills are being parked in Finance, then bundled together into massive, unrelated packages before being passed out of committee.

Given the billions in taxpayer dollars that Minnesotans have seen wasted away to fraud, and the near-doubling of state government in 2023, people are more in tune than ever to irresponsible spending in these bills. This needs to stop.

The good news is that most of these proposals face slim chances of passing, but we know Democrats will still try. We have a split government, and House Republicans are in a good position to stop the bad bills Senate Democrats have been pushing. I’m hoping this means we can get out of here without too much damage done to our state. I will continue providing updates as the session winds down. Reach out to my office if you have any questions at Sen.Steve.Green@MNSenate.gov.