Final Committee Deadline Reached

The Minnesota Legislature has now passed its final committee deadline for the 2011 session. All policy bills for the session are now required to be out of committee in both houses of the Legislature to remain alive this session. With the committee deadline looming, this past week saw a flurry of activity with bills being added to or removed from committee schedules with short notice.

Meanwhile, the pace of legislative deliberations on the budget side of things was decidedly slower. Facing a deadline for adjournment on May 23, little apparent progress has been made on resolving overall differences between the Governor and the Legislature on the overall size of the State budget. So far, only one of the session’s major tax and budget bills has become law, the Omnibus Agriculture and Veterans Affairs Appropriations Bill. Conference committees on the other tax and budget bills will resume next week, but without agreement between the Governor and the Legislature on an overall budget target, little real progress will be made, and a legislative special session becomes more and more likely.