The 2007 Legislative Session finished at 12 midnight on May 21. It was a flurry to finish voting on the Tax and transportation bills in the House of Representatives.
The Governor and Legislative leaders were not able to reach final agreement on the tax and budget bills. An over-ride attempt on the tax-laden transportation bill failed by about 5 votes. However, from comments that I have heard today, it appears that no special legislative session will be needed. This could be dicey. The Governor has major objections about one or two provisions in the Tax bill. But, he can’t get rid of them with a line item veto. If he vetoes the entire bill, cities would lose Local Government Aid increases which are in this bill. (For Northfield it would mean a loss of about $350,000).
The Governor will use the line item veto liberally (no pun intended 
.
Most of the other bills will be fine until next February when we convene again. The K-12 Education bill was not to my liking, and I voted against it. The bill increased statewide funding by $791 million, which is a 7% increase. However, the general ed formula increases only 2% the first year and 1% the second year. For Northfield, It’s about $550 per student over 2 years. By contrast, Minneapolis get about $1300 per student increase. Most of this is caused by special education formulas. The disparity between the school districts I represent and Minneapolis got larger with this bill, and I don’t think it’s fair. More money should have been put on the general formula, or in equalization aid.
There won’t be an income tax or gas tax increase. The metro sales tax for transit didn’t pass either.
I’ll prepare a more detailed summary of the Session and post it next week, after I recover from the long hours and catch up on my “other job” in the Northfield law office.
It was a productive session overall. I rate it as a 7 out of 10 as a first impression. Of course, we still have to study what was in all of the budget and tax bills that we passed yesterday.