Saturday special session? Leaders in Minnesota Legislature hope to avoid layoff notices to thousands of state workers
Minnesota legislative leaders and Gov. Tim Walz hope there will be a special session of the Legislature this weekend before layoff notices will be sent to nearly 30,000 state workers on Monday.
They had pushed for mid-week, but by Wednesday they said negotiators still hadn't buttoned up outstanding issues, causing further delays. Walz will call a special session when the bills are complete, drafted and ready for passage. Leaders and key lawmakers have been working on the remaining parts of the budget for weeks, largely out of public view.
DFL Speaker Emerita Melissa Hortman said Wednesday they are "urgently" trying to finish by the weekend to avoid sending state employees that dreaded message. But other self-imposed deadlines have come and gone since the regular session ended May 19 and lawmakers began their behind-the-scenes work to finish everything up.
"We are making progress. It is as slow as molasses, but molasses is good, and we are going to get done. I cross my fingers," said Senate Majority Leader Erin Murphy, DFL-Saint Paul.
This is the most closely divided Legislature in Minnesota history, which makes the process uniquely delicate and difficult to get everything done. It's unclearif there are even the votes to pass some parts of the carefully crafted agreement they made in late May.
"We're at a point right now where, quite candidly, and the legislators know this—I'm not even saying as a pejorative—every single legislator is potentially a veto over the whole deal to get some of this done," Walz said.
Among the sticking points are how they will pass a rollback of state health coverage for undocumented immigrants—a compromise reached by GOP and DFL leaders. There is also some contention with a transportation funding package and provisions in a tax bill.
Many DFL lawmakers deeply oppose the cuts to MinnesotaCare for adults who are living in the country illegally. Murphy has said it needs to be a stand-alone bill to ensure passage, an acknowledgment of the many likely defectors she will have in her caucus, which only has a one-seat majority in the chamber. Republicans will need to support it.
House Speaker Lisa Demuth, R-Cold Spring, said for a stand-alone bill to happen, her caucus needs language in the legislation to ensure it won't be vetoed. Republicans, she said, want that assurance, even though Walz signed the agreement with leaders that included the change.
"Some of the things that we're looking at is if that would be broken out into a separate bill, there would have to be a guaranteed contingency—say, funding for MDH, or whatever that might look like—that would be a guarantee that that bill would both be passed and enacted," she said.
If lawmakers do not finish by the weekend, the layoff notices will be sent Monday morning, Walz said. Failure to pass the rest of the budget by June 30 will trigger a partial government shutdown on July 1, the start of the next fiscal year.
The governor told reporters he doesn't think that will happen, but nevertheless Minnesota Management and Budget—which oversees the state's finances and payroll and HR operations for state workers—is following protocols to prepare for that possibility.
Some state services, agencies and programs would remain operational in that scenario because the Legislature did approve some budget bills before session ended last month, like spending plans for the judiciary and state government offices like the secretary of state and attorney general.
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