Good morning. Your Tuesday Digest is ready for a read. 1.Walz wants hearings on gun legislation. Gov. Tim Walz said Monday he pressed the Minnesota Senate’s top Republican to convene hearings on stalled gun legislation prior to next year’s session. But Walz said Senate Majority Leader Paul Gazelka made no commitments. Walz was already due to speak with Gazelka by phone on other topics. The DFL governor says the weekend’s mass shootings in Ohio and Texas, which claimed 31 lives combined and injured dozens more, have again put needed focus on access to firearms.“Can we at least have a hearing, can we at least discuss this, can we at least look at if there is a combination of things?” Walz said. “I just think the deafening silence of not doing anything, of rejecting the call to hold a hearing just can’t go on any longer.” (MPR News) 2.Duluth lawmakers call for response to mass shootings. Duluth state lawmakers joined the call Monday for legislative solutions to the mass shootings casting a grim shadow over the country for the past 20 years. A nationwide appeal for new measures reached a pleading level after shootings last weekend in Dayton, Ohio and El Paso, Texas claimed the lives of 31 people and injured dozens more. “We will move the obstacles to a safe future,” state Rep. Liz Olson, D-Duluth, wrote on Twitter. “If they can't be moved, we’ll build the path around them.” Olson and Sen. Erik Simonson, D-Duluth, both referenced a pair of state-based measures which would require a criminal background check for the transfer of guns, and offer “red-flag protection,” meaning the temporarily prohibited possession of firearms to a person subjected by courts and law enforcement to an extreme risk protection order. (Duluth News Tribune) 3. Court says state mining rules are valid. The Minnesota Court of Appeals Monday dealt a setback to several environmental groups challenging the state's rules governing copper-nickel mining. The groups argued in a lawsuit that the state’s rules over mine waste disposal, mining areas and permits to mine for “nonferrous metallic mineral mining” are too vague for courts and regulatory agencies to enforce, and don't adequately protect the environment. It was among several suits filed by conservation and environmental groups after the state approved PolyMet Mining’s controversial proposal to build Minnesota’s first copper-nickel mine late last year. But the appeals court panel ruled that the state’s mining rules governing nonferrous mining — which includes the mining of all metals but iron ore and taconite — are valid. In its decision, the three-judge panel said the conservation groups' complaint that the law does not impose specific limitations on copper-nickel mining is more appropriately directed to the state Legislature or its Department of Natural Resources. (MPR News) 4.Contingency funds come in to state coffers. Lots of people — OK, some people — with an interest in Minnesota government pay close attention to the state’s monthly tax collection reports. Much of the business of the Legislature, after all, is about how to spend whatever state taxes bring in, and the monthly collections are an early indicator of whether they’re spending too much … or too little. After the 2019 legislative session, however, those involved in three areas of the budget paid especially close attention to the numbers. That’s because in order for legislative leaders to reach a budget deal this year, the appropriations for those three areas were dependent on how much extra money came in during the first half of 2019. And those programs aren’t insignificant. One is money for school safety grants; another is additional funds for Metro Mobility, the Twin Cities ride service for the elderly and disabled; the third is to help when natural disasters hit communities. In all, more than $63 million in appropriations were contingent on whether the state had extra money around at the end of its 2019 fiscal year, which closed on June 30. While state accountants still have to reconcile the books, it appears all three areas of spending will get that money. (MinnPost) 5. Gore wades into Line 3 debate. Former Vice President Al Gore and Gov. Tim Walz urged fast action on global warming Friday at an event in Minneapolis that showcased Minnesota’s changing climate, its split politics over the Line 3 oil pipeline and its plans to make the energy grid carbon free by 2050. Gore told reporters the Enbridge pipeline is “not a good project” and informed a crowd of more than 1,000 at the Minneapolis Convention Center about Walz’s legal challenge to Line 3. Walz, however, told the audience he does not plan to try and stop Line 3 by executive action since regulators on the independent Public Utilities Commission (PUC) have largely approved it. The DFLer was interrupted several times by anti-Line 3 protestors. “As governor, I am given certain inherent authorities, but the capacity to disregard things that have been done previously I don’t possess — and even if I did, we need to be very careful thinking about this when we say, ‘You just do it by executive order,’” Walz said. “We’ve seen what executive orders do when they’re in the hands of the wrong person.” (MinnPost) The Digest's irregular summertime schedule continues. We're off the rest of the week, back next week. | 