The following legislative update was written by Elaine Keefe, library lobbyist for the Minnesota Library Association (MLA) and Information Technology Educators of MN (ITEM).

Received Tuesday April 21, 2015 at 5:35pm

House Legacy Bill:  Yesterday the House Legacy Committee competed work on its omnibus bill and passed it out of committee.  Rep. Dean Urdahl, chair of the committee, made it very clear in his opening remarks that no group was entitled to any particular amount of Legacy funding, regardless of what they had received in the past.  As such, there is no such thing as a “cut” in Legacy funds.  We all start out at zero for the biennium, and the amounts we receive will fluctuate – sometimes they will be higher and sometimes they will be lower than in the past.  He said that some groups needed an “attitude adjustment.”

I spoke with Rep. Urdahl today and he expressed annoyance at the number of e-mails he had received about the level of library funding in the bill.  I assured him that his message was loud and clear and that I would convey it to the library community.  I also thanked him for including funding for libraries in his bill, acknowledging that he has long been a strong library supporter.

So, thank you to those of you who contacted your legislators and members of the House Legacy Committee.  However, we need to stop complaining about the level of funding provided in the House Legacy bill.

Broadband:   I reported last Thursday that the House was providing no new funding for broadband grants, while the Senate had $17 million in its budget and the Governor had $30 million in his budget proposal.   However, on Friday when the omnibus jobs and energy bill was heard in the House Ways and Means Committee, $8 million was added for broadband grants.  Funding for the Office of Broadband, which had been eliminated in the bill, was partially restored.

Library Construction Grants:  Today I met with Rep. Jeff Howe (R – Rockville), a member of the House Capital Investment Committee.  He agreed to introduce our bill to provide $10 million for Library Construction Grants.  The bill is intended to put Library Construction Grants under consideration for inclusion in the 2016 bonding bill.  We need to have it introduced this session so that it is on the radar of the House and Senate Capital Investment Committees as they tour the state this fall to look at proposed capital projects.

House Omnibus Tax Bill:  Today the House Tax Committee passed its omnibus tax bill.  Yesterday the committee took public testimony.  The bill makes deep cuts in local government aid for Minneapolis, St. Paul and Duluth, but not for any other cities.  Among the witnesses in opposition to these cuts were Kit Hadley, director of the St. Paul Public Library, and two branch managers. They spoke very eloquently about the impact these cuts would have on library services in St. Paul.

Other provisions of interest in the bill are as follows:

A sales tax exemption for building materials purchased by a contractor under a lump sum contract for buildings used by local governments.  This was strongly supported by cities and counties.

An expansion of the current K-12 education expense subtraction to include pre-K expenses and private school tuition.  The inclusion of private school tuition was strongly opposed by various school organizations.

A Property Tax Payers’ Empowerment Act, which allows a reverse referendum if a city or county increases its property tax levy over the previous year. The referendum is triggered if a petition signed by 10% of the voters in the last general election is filed by June 30. The referendum must be held on the first Tuesday after the first Monday in November.  This was opposed by cities and counties.

A working group to make recommendations on revising the county program aid distribution formula.

Repeal of library debt service aid for Minneapolis.

Data Practices Training for Local Units of Government:  The Senate omnibus state government funding bill passed on the Senate floor yesterday.  It includes $100,000 in each year of the biennium for the Department of Administration’s Information and Policy Analysis Division, commonly known as IPAD, to conduct training for local units of government on data practices laws.  This was initiated by the League of Minnesota Cities.  The funding is not included in the House omnibus state government funding bill.

Elaine Keefe
Capitol Hill Associates
525 Park Street, Suite 310
St. Paul, MN 55103
(office)651-293-0229
(cell) 612-590-1244
elaine@capitolhillassoc.com

Image credit: http://tinyurl.com/p4m2ool, licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 2.0