Is the Minnesota House’s power-sharing agreement unraveling?

So much for bipartisan harmony.

On Wednesday, the House Rules and Legislative Administration Committee met to advance the biennial education spending bill to the House floor.

The $26 billion bill had already cleared the Education Finance and Ways and Means committees by voice votes. Getting through Rules is almost always a procedural formality.

But committee co-chair Jamie Long, DFL-Minneapolis, had other ideas.

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“We spoke about this proposal yesterday and this morning and we don’t have an agreement,” Long said. 

Long and his seven DFL colleagues then voted to not put the bill on the House floor schedule. 

The eight annoyed and angered Republicans on the committee voted to advance the bill. But with neither party enjoying a legislative majority, the spending package is indefinitely stuck in the Rules committee. 

“I’m just really confused about where we find ourselves today trying to disagree on a bill that was already agreed upon,” said Rep. Jim Nash, R-Waconia. 

Related: Lawmakers vexed and divided on funding Minnesota schools

As of late Thursday, there was talk at the Capitol of Republicans trying to move the bill to the House floor, anyway. 

The gambit would not have the votes to succeed. But it would be a vehicle for Republicans and DFLers to “yell at each other for the next eight to 12 hours,” according to Speaker Emerita Melissa Hortman, DFL-Brooklyn Park. 

The DFL leader predicted a “throwdown” on the House floor. 

Power-sharing fears realized?

This is what was feared when the Minnesota House ended up in a 67-67 split between DFLers and Republicans. 

A power-sharing agreement between DFLers and Republicans has largely worked in advancing bills that will then be reconciled with the DFL-controlled Senate. 

But it has not worked at all for the state’s Department of Education budget, which was weeks late in getting hearings on a final bill.

The stated holdup is entirely around an unemployment insurance fund for school workers paid by the hour who cannot find summer jobs. 

Signed into law by Gov. Tim Walz in 2023 (the transformational and bonkers year), the fund is less than 1% of the total spending package. It benefits teachers aides, food service workers and bus drivers, many of whom are represented by Service Employees International Union Local 284.

At the Rules committee hearing, Republicans got in their jabs about DFLers’ “obstruction.”

“I’m not sure what happened overnight. This is gravely concerning and gravely disappointing,” said Rep. Peggy Scott, R-Andover.

“Does the far left hand not know what the left hand is doing right now?” said Rep. Eliot Enger, R-White Bear Township.

DFLers mainly steered away from discussing their procedural tactics. They focused on the stability that they say summer unemployment benefits provide to workers and school districts. 

As to what happens next, there are a few ways forward, or further backward, according to the Minnesota Legislative Reference Library:

• The Rules committee could reconvene at a later date to move the bill to the House floor. 
• Rules could also refer the bill back to Ways and Means in the hopes the bill could be amended to DFLers’ satisfaction (though a jobless benefits amendment failed to pass that committee just 24 hours ago).
• Also, the bill could languish, as higher level discussions take place between Walz and legislative leadership on a biennial budget. 

Hortman said that in a closed door session with Walz and other legislative leaders today, compromises are starting to be reached on overall spending targets for each budget bill. 

A compromise on education spending, though, is not exactly imminent, even though the House and Senate bills are only $44 million off from each other in total spending, or .1% of the overall package. 

Stay tuned.

Editor’s note: Matthew Blake wrote this story for MinnPost.com. 

This article first appeared on MinnPost and is republished here under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

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