| After a tumultuous five months, the 2025 legislative session closed out with a whimper. Lawmakers passed a couple budget bills but left the bulk of the budget to be finished in an overtime special session. Legislative working groups will start meeting Tuesday to hammer out bills covering education, health, social service programs, energy and transportation, among others. Once the groups reach compromises on those areas, Gov. Tim Walz says he’ll call them back for a special legislative session. Dana and Clay have this report about how the session closed out and what’s ahead for lawmakers in extra innings that will hone in on some of their deepest disagreements.
Gov. Tim Walz is the one who decides when a special session gets called and he didn’t make an official declaration Monday. Walz said he felt hopeful that lawmakers could wrap up remaining pieces of the state budget in the coming days to tee up a one-day special session. He didn’t provide a timeline but urged the Legislature to push for wrapping up before the end of next week. “Once we get past June 1, we'll be obligated then to start looking at `What does it look like if you shut down?’ That means we send out the layoff notices (to state employees) and things like that,” Walz said. ‘That is not without a cost, and I would just argue with all the time we've had to do this we've got plenty of time to finish this over the next few days.”
In the Minnesota House, the session ended with conversations about preventing fraud. Republicans attempted a last-minute effort to pull up a Senate-approved bill that would create a state office of the inspector general for a vote. They said the state needs to do more to prevent misuse or abuse of taxpayer dollars. Democrats, meanwhile, pointed to measures moving in other budget bills that would hike the penalty for intentionally misusing state government dollars and set a new requirement that people working with state funds notify the Office of the Legislative Auditor if they uncover suspected fraud or abuse. “That bill passed with wide bipartisan support out of the Senate. We could not get it to move in the house,” House Speaker Lisa Demuth, R-Cold Spring, said of the inspector general proposal. “We would have had time to debate that tonight. Fraud is something that has to be addressed.” Democrats said the proposal wasn’t properly vetted and could have unintended problems. “It’s a little bit disappointing that the session ends as it began with some very partisan antics on the floor,” House DFL Leader Melissa Hortman said. “But (it) shouldn’t obscure that it was a good day. We got some good bipartisan work done.”
Bring on the beaver (and constellation). Minnesota is about to get a couple new state emblems. The final state and local government budget bill makes official the state’s new fossil: the giant beaver. And Ursa Minor will become Minnesota’s official state constellation. The proposal to allow Minnesotans to eat nuisance beaver doesn't appear to have made it through this year (but there’s always the special session).
A finance bill for arts and legacy projects contains money for some tributes to famous people, places and things. Among them is an art installation celebrating Olympic gold medal gymnast Suni Lee that is designated for either the Conway Recreation Center or Lake Phalen, where a bust to her is located. There is a grant for a mural and statue honoring Tou Ger Xiong, a well-known Hmong-American comedian and storyteller who was killed in 2023. It contains money to restore or repair Opera houses in Fairmont and Litchfield. And there are grants to collect, document, archive and preserve the oral histories of Hmong veterans of the U.S.-sponsored Secret War in Laos. The bill awaits Gov. Tim Walz’s signature after winning solid passage votes over the weekend. The projects are funded through dedicated sales tax revenue for outdoors, arts and cultural heritage projects.
Minnesota’s law that restored the right to vote with felons no longer incarcerated has been used by about 1 in 5 of those newly eligible. That’s the conclusion of a study done after the 2023 law change that was in place for its first big election in 2024. Those with felony convictions used to have to wait until completing probation and other elements of their sentences before regaining voting rights. The 6,000 newly eligible voters who cast ballots in 2024 was deemed a success because the rate has been lower in other places with similar law changes. Groups that pushed for the change say they’ll do focus groups to figure out how to boost the turnout even more in future elections.
See ya, Centennial! It’s not immediate, but plans are now in motion to tear down the spartan Centennial Office Building just down the hill from the Capitol and where House members have taken up temporary residence during a remodel of their usual digs. We’ve reported in the past that Centennial’s days were numbered. A new posting for demolition crews to bid on a nearly $10 million job puts more details behind the plan to tear it down. That would come in late 2027 or early 2028, according to the materials. The goal is to get the work done by May 2028. What takes the place of Centennial, which opened in 1958 on the 100th anniversary of statehood, is still to be determined. | 