What to know about Legislature’s Monday special session to finish the budget

The press release all Minnesota Capitol reporters, state workers and others have been waiting for arrived Friday afternoon: Gov. Tim Walz has called  a special session of the Legislature for Monday and outlined  the agreements that would govern what will be discussed and how.

This ambitious one-day special session aims to tackle a mountain of work that lawmakers left unfinished when the Legislature ended its regular session on May 19 without completing numerous budget bills that must be passed to avoid a state government shutdown.

I’ve put together some key takeaways from the documents, a House leadership press conference Friday afternoon, and other reporting.

What will the Legislature focus on in its special session? 

Lawmakers failed to reach agreement on 14 bills before their May 19 deadline, and those will be on the special session agenda. After the regular session working groups continued discussing language, though in a less-public way, for budget bills that still needed passage. Speaking to the press Friday afternoon, the DFL and Republican leaders of the tied House said all but three of the bills have already been drafted. 

Lawmakers already passed bills on agriculture and rural broadband, housing, Legacy Amendment spending, public safety and judiciary, state government and elections, veterans and military affairs, cannabis, pensions, and human services policy.

Here are the special session bills, which won’t necessarily come up in this order:

• Modifying MinnesotaCare for Undocumented Adults Bill
• Health and Human Services Policy and Appropriations Bill (and Children and Families)
• Commerce and Consumer Protection Policy and Appropriations Bill
• Human Services Appropriations Bill
• Education Policy and Appropriations Bill
• Transportation Finance and Policy Bill
• Capitol Investment Bill
• Taxes and Local Aids Bill
• Data Center Bill
• Environment and Natural Resources Áppropriations Bill
• Jobs, Labor, Economic Development Policy and Appropriations Bill
• Higher Education Policy and Finance Bill
• Energy, Utilities, Environment and Climate Policy and Appropriations Bill
• Technical Revisor Corrections Bill

Will lawmakers really be able to get everything done in one day?

That’s the hope. Normal rules that require a bill be given three separate readings on three different days will be suspended, as well as “any other rules that would prevent passage of the above bills before 7 a.m. on Tuesday, June 10, 2025,” the agreement signed by the governor and all four caucus leaders said.

This suspension of rules requires a two-thirds super-majority in each chamber to implement, suggesting that the governor and caucus leaders have secured votes from at least 45 of 67 senators and 90 of 134 representatives. 

If, for some reason, the special session was called without enough votes lined up to suspend the rules, completing all 14 remaining budget bills in one day will be impossible. While the agreement states that lawmakers “must” complete their work by Tuesday morning, that is not binding. This will allow the special session to recess and return if needed to finish the work.

The agreement for the special session also notes that each caucus’ leadership would not support amendments. This does not mean that lawmakers cannot propose amendments, but simply that leadership will discourage it and not support the amendments. If issues remain unsettled through the weekend and lawmakers feel obligated to introduce amendments on Monday, it will gum up a process that may already be trying to do too much in too little time.

What are the chances they don’t complete the budget during the special session?

The stakes are high for both parties, because the unfinished budget bills would cause a partial government shutdown come July 1, the start of the next fiscal year. It seems that Gov. Walz and legislative leaders are confident they can force agreement on the outstanding issues – or have already reached agreements behind closed doors. 

House Speaker Lisa Demuth, R-Cold Spring, said they have pre-caucused “over half” of the 14 bills in consideration and will continue to do so through the weekend to assure swift passage on Monday. So if leadership is twisting enough arms to get a majority in place before Monday, the committee meetings and floor votes may be little more than tightly orchestrated political theater. But there likely remain some unsettled issues that have very vocal opponents who could derail or slow down the process.

What is the most controversial issue lawmakers will vote on?

The best example is the first item listed in the agreement: the “Modifying MinnesotaCare for Undocumented Adults Bill.” This piece of the original global budget framework agreed to by the governor, House DFL and Republican leadership, and Senate DFL leadership is a significant reason that framework was unable to move forward as originally planned. Progressive DFL lawmakers, led by the House’s People of Color and Indigenous (POCI) caucus, made clear they would not support a budget that ended subsidized health care for low-income undocumented adults. 

Even this deeply emotional dispute may end up just a particularly raucous scene in Monday’s one-day show, if the show’s producers have their way. This is because now the change to MinnesotaCare has been pulled out into its own bill. This allows progressives to vote against it, Republicans to vote for it, and moderate DFLers to take either position as they see fit. Demuth said Friday that Senate Majority Leader Erin Murphy, DFL-St. Paul, and Minority Leader Mark Johnson, R-East Grand Forks, have agreed that Republicans will provide “the overwhelming majority” of the votes for the bill. If all Republicans vote for the measure, only one member  of the DFL caucus would have to join them in each chamber. On the House side, Speaker Emerita Melissa Hortman, DFL-Brooklyn Park, said if she needed to cast the lone DFL vote, she would do so. 

In another sign of the behind-the-scenes wrangling that took place before the special session’s announcement, Demuth said there would be a contingency in the broader Department of Health bill that would require the passage and enactment of the bill ending access to MinnesotaCare for undocumented adults, or else the health budget bill will fall apart. That’s intended to ensure Republicans get the concession they negotiated last month with Walz and DFL leadership regardless of how the MinnesotaCare issue is packaged.

Did Minnesota lawmakers reach an agreement on the tax bill and increase the state cannabis tax?

Yes. This was another contentious issue, and there was speculation that lawmakers would punt on the measure after several attempts at compromise failed to gain traction. Passing a tax bill is not necessary to fund the government, but it helps clarify what revenue the state can count on in coming years. Demuth said its size and scope lie somewhere between the “skinny” tax bill that was briefly floated as an option and the tax committee’s original full bill. It will include the previously announced increase in the state cannabis tax to 15% from 10%.

The other contentious issue in the tax bill – how to tax data centers – will get its own bill following a heated debate in the tax committee. “There was a very strong push by (the) Senate DFL, House GOP, and the governor to achieve some movement on data centers,” Hortman said. “We finally relented, the House DFL, when it became apparent that this was how we would get both the bonding bill and a complete budget agreement passed.”

Did you say legislative leaders agreed on a bonding bill?

Yes. The capital investment bill will fund $700 million in projects, with roughly $250 million earmarked for roads, wastewater, and other infrastructure. Because it is funded through state general obligation bonds, it is known as the “bonding bill.” But because it requires a 60% majority to pass in both the House and Senate, it wasn’t clear if lawmakers could muster the votes. 

If the special session goes as planned, does it mean the state budget is complete for the next two years?

Likely not. There may well be another – maybe an even more special – session later this year, once Congress passes the federal budget in the fall, assuming they stick to their Sept. 30 deadline. At that point state lawmakers throughout the country will have to see how potential federal cuts will affect their states and make any necessary changes to their budgets.

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Editor’s note: This story was written by Shadi Bushra, who is MinnPost’s data journalist.

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

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