Legislative score card: Who won and who lost in $52 billion state budget

After months of wrangling, many missed deadlines and partisan gridlock, DFL Gov. Tim Walz signed into law a new $52 billion budget on Wednesday just hours before parts of the state government were set to shut down. 

Walz held a ceremonial bill signing in the Governor’s Reception Room, the first public event in the ornately decorated room since the state’s first COVID-19 case was announced in March 2020. Surrounded by students, teachers, small business owners and other advocates, Walz touted the ability of the country’s only divided Legislature to pass a compromise balanced budget that he said would help the state recover economically from the pandemic. 

The final outcome of the session resulted in lots of compromise, which is the nature of divided government. With the work now done, who won? Who lost? The Reformer has your rundown. 

Winners

Walz: Despite all the negotiating and political grandstanding that happens in the Legislature, many Minnesota governors tend to get much of the budget they propose. Walz was no different. The budget negotiations started with a comprehensive and detailed proposal from the governor that took months to develop as agencies formulated their requests. 

In the end, Walz received a number of his top priorities, including funding for summer school programs intended to help with disruptions to schools caused by the pandemic. Another big win was his health commissioner keeping the authority to declare a public health emergency. And Walz has authority over $500 million of about $2.8 billion federal COVID-19 relief funding the state received with the rest controlled by the Legislature.

But not everything went Walz’s way, including his plan to increase taxes on wealthy Minnesotans and corporations. But tax hikes aren’t critical to keeping the lights on.

“We’ve shown we can overcome political differences to come together to do what’s right for Minnesota,” Walz said. 

POCI Caucus: Formed in 2017, the People of Color and Indigenous Caucus has become a political bloc to be reckoned with at the Capitol in just a few years, much like the Iron Range delegation, which once wielded considerable influence during budget negotiations. Minnesota became the epicenter of a conversation about racial justice after ex-Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin murdered George Floyd on May 25, 2020. 

Since then, the POCI Caucus has rallied to push for police reforms, some of which were adopted last summer. This year, they pushed again, at one point calling for budget negotiations to halt until more police accountability measures became law. While they didn’t act on the threat, they were able to push Walz into using some of his executive authority to require that statewide police agencies allow families of police shooting victims to view body-cam footage of incidents within five days. They also extracted one additional policy change to the public safety bill: the issuance of sign-and-release warrants that would be granted to low-level offenders who miss court dates because of summons sent to incorrect home addresses.

The health and human services bill also contained a number of policy changes sought by POCI caucus legislators. The bill aims to address racial disparities in maternal mortality rates, foster care and other key service and includes cost-of-living adjustments for the state’s welfare program, the Minnesota Family Investment Program, as well as one-time checks to those participants. 

Law enforcement: Despite considerable public pressure from reform activists, lobbying groups representing police officers prevailed in blocking the most stringent police accountability measures this year. Efforts to create civilian oversight boards, end qualified immunity and ban officers from affiliating with white supremacy groups died in the GOP-led Senate, which staunchly allied themselves with police all year. “To be clear: our Republican allies who control the Minnesota Senate will not hear or pass these extreme bills, so they will not become law,” the Minnesota Police and Peace Officers Association said earlier this year. 

Rising violent crime in the Twin Cities also aided police officers as Democrats struggled to articulate a clear message on how to curb the trend and also reform police departments without impeding their ability to do their jobs effectively. 

Losers

Walz: The special session seemed over, as the DFL-led House adjourned to end it and the Senate indicated it would stick around to wait until Walz signed all the bills, including the tax cut package. Now the governor’s commissioners are on the chopping block. Senate Republicans intend to hold hearings this week on outstanding commissioner nominations and suggested one or more could be fired. The GOP-led Senate has not acted on the nominations in over two years, giving them leverage that they used last summer in ousting two commissioners. One commissioner likely to face a confirmation vote would be Laura Bishop, the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency commissioner who has begun implementing new Clean Car rules that Republicans fought all session long.

Walz reacted angrily on the news, calling on Republicans to forgo their daily per diem.

“Because Senate Republicans put this work off for two years and are choosing to conduct their work in overtime, I am calling on them to forgo the thousands of taxpayer dollars they take each day in per diem, and I expect that they will conduct their work expediently, professionally, and free of any political theater,” he said on Friday.

Senate Republicans: All session long, Senate Majority Leader Paul Gazelka, R-East Gull Lake, served as a foil to Walz, calling for an immediate end to emergency powers, lifting all public health restrictions and reimbursing businesses who faced any fines for violating public health orders. The political reality was that the Senate GOP caucus was negotiating with a DFL governor and a DFL House majority, making it particularly difficult for many of their policy proposals to become law. Voter ID, one of their top issues, never received a vote in the House and Walz likely would have vetoed the measure anyway, making it a nonstarter in negotiations. Their fight over Clean Car Rules also ended in defeat, particularly after a May court ruling that allowed the agency to move forward without legislative involvement.

In the end, Senate Republicans agreed to a much larger budget than they had proposed and their biggest victory was securing tax cuts for businesses who received Paycheck Protection Plan loans. But Gazelka focused on the wins.

“We got our top three: end emergency powers, a billion dollars in tax relief, and reinsurance, which stabilizes the health insurance market, but the rest of it was more about how we govern to the middle,” he said. 

House GOP leader: In an embarrassing rebuke to House Minority Leader Kurt Daudt, R-Crown, nearly all of his colleagues voted against his current job as public affairs director for a lobbying firm in Arlington, Va. A last minute amendment to the tax bill offered by state Rep. Steve Drazkowski, R-Mazeppa, would ban sitting legislators from working as lobbyists or working for firms that primarily lobby. It becomes effective in January 2023, so Daudt has time to start looking for new employment. Daudt declined to comment after the provision was adopted, and he abstained from the vote.