Minnesota House seat gets filled as Legislature begins confronting new budget reality
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Minnesota’s House enters its third act this week.
After a January lockup and slumping through much of February and early March, a special election offers the latest restart. That along with a fresh economic forecast provide the foundation for lawmakers to get down to the Legislature’s main task: Setting a new state budget.
The state will have less flexibility in its budget, as Thursday’s forecast painted a darker picture. Lawmakers have little extra to pad the new budget down to $456 million, from the $616 million projected to be there in a report just a few months ago.
As this budget gets tighter, the projections for the next budget cycle grew worse, with a projected $6 billion deficit.
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And that’s before the federal government makes significant changes that could ripple through the states, including possible cuts to Medicaid, education aid and other pots of funding. Officials say just a 10 percent cut in Medicaid dollars would cut more than $1 billion from the state budget.
Tuesday’s special election will determine who is in charge of the Minnesota House.
A Republican win would provide the party a clear majority and powerful perch for end-of-session budget positioning. A DFL win would put the House into a tie and a shared governance situation.
Democrats won the House 40B seat in November, but their candidate was found not to have residency in the district. That’s left it open through the first eight weeks of session (including the DFL boycott for the first few weeks). Republicans have had operational control with a 67 to 66 edge.
DFL candidate David Gottfried and GOP candidate Paul Wikstrom are the nominees for the seat, which covers parts of Roseville and Shoreview. It’s an area that tends to back Democrats.
If Gottfried wins, it will put the House into a 67 to 67 tie. That would mean the majority of House committees would have shared leadership, meaning bills will have to have bipartisan support to advance.
If Wikstrom wins, it would give Republicans 68 members, which is the number needed to pass bills. It would give them a much-stronger hand through the rest of session.
Majority Leader Harry Niska, R-Ramsey, said Republicans aren’t waiting for the election to bring their preferred bills up for votes.
“We’re going to be, again, moving forward a number of our priority bills,” he said. “There are going to be some bills that I hope we do have bipartisan support on, and some bills where we have heard Democrats continue, even on things that are common sense proposals, to oppose. We think it’s important that where there are those areas of difference, that the people of Minnesota see what responsible Republican governance looks like, and what Democratic opposition to those ideas looks like.”
Rep. Jamie Long, a Minneapolis lawmaker who is the House DFL floor leader, said he feels like it has been wasted time.
“We haven’t seen very many attempts at bipartisanship on the floor. It’s mostly been rehashing old fights, and so we’ll see,” he said. “They haven’t told me what they’re planning yet, but I know that our side is eager to get to work together and try to actually come up with solutions for some of the challenges we may be facing.”
The House will debate a bill Monday afternoon dealing with reports from the Office of the Legislative Auditor. The goal is to assess whether agencies have addressed findings and recommendations the auditor has made in the last five years.
It would also require a committee hearing on the auditor’s report findings before the committee takes on legislation approving money to the entity.
The House bill has 32 sponsors, all Republicans. A companion bill in the Senate has bipartisan support.
MPR News senior politics reporter Dana Ferguson contributed to this story.