For the past 2 months, the Minnesota Senate has been accumulating bills on its General Orders Calander. The G.O. Calander is where the entire Senate gets to debate and offer amendments to bills. This is an important opportunity for members to amend bills, when they don’t sit on the Policy committee which finally approved the bill.

 

Yesterday and today, the Senate considered and approved about 60 bills. Tomorrow we will have the final Senate vote on these 60 or so bills. Most of the bills are not controversial or partisan. We are reducing the number of bills on our calander. By the end of the week, I expect that most of the bills remaining for consideration will be more controversial, and “defining”. These are the bills where philosophical differences between Democrats and Republicans start to become more pronounced.

 

Today I had three bills approved by the entire Senate. The first was a Child support bill (SF 1271)  which clarified some of the changes I have authored during the past 2 years, and a few additional policy changes.One would allow a court to “deviate” from the child support guidelines if the child lived outside of the United States in a country which had a substantially different cost of living.  

Second, was a bill (SF 1605) which would establish a “graduated drivers license” for new drivers under age 18. The bill would limit how many passengers could be in the car with a new driver for the first 12 months after obtaining a license, and would restrict driving between the hours of midnight and 5 am. during the first 6 months of driving.

 Thirdly, I authored a bill (SF 794) which increases the homestead exemption from $200,000 to $300,000, and made changes in how creditors can foreclose their judgments against homestead property to satisfy debts.

Most of these bills enjoyed bi-partisan support. Our days are getting longer now. I also expect that conference committees will be appointed for the major budget bills and begin meeting next week.  

 

We still have 72 bills remaining on the General Order Calander for April 18, 2007.