Good morning and welcome to Tuesday.
The Minnesota House of Representatives passed a bill with bipartisan support Monday that bans what’s called conversion therapy for LGBTQ youth and vulnerable adults. MPR’s Dana Fergson reports the House voted 81- 47 to prohibit mental health professionals from providing therapy aimed at changing a person’s sexual orientation or gender identity. Those who engage in the practice with vulnerable adults or those under the age of 18 would be subject to discipline from a professional licensing board under the proposal. The practice is widely discredited by physicians. Similar proposals have passed in the Minnesota House several times before but met a wall in the formerly GOP-led Minnesota Senate. With the DFL now n control of both chambers and the governor’s office, the bill’s supporters said they were hopeful that it will become law this year.
And the House passed a bill setting up an office for missing and murdered Black women and girls. “We matter and we deserve the same energy and coverage in our cases,” said bill sponsor Rep. Ruth Richardson, DFL-Mendota Heights. “We are worthy of attention. We are worthy of resources. We are worthy of protection and investment in prevention resources.” The bill passed by a vote of 110-19. A Senate bill is still awaiting a hearing. Here’s some background from MPR’s Nina Moini: A state report released last year revealed Black women in Minnesota are 2.7 times more likely to be murdered than their white peers, and while Black women make up only 7 percent of the state population, 40 percent of domestic violence victims in Minnesota were Black women. Nationally, cases of missing and murdered Black women and girls stay open and unsolved four times longer than other cases.
The House also passed a bill sponsored by Richardson designed to discourage thefts of catalytic converters. That bill passed 113-15. A similar bill gets a hearing in the Senate Finance Committee this morning.
Republicans say they won’t cooperate on an early bonding bill unless the DFL moves on tax cuts. MPR’s Brian Bakst reports: Bonding bills tend to be political puzzles because lawmakers try to keep them geographically balanced and make sure members of both parties come away with projects important to them. Sometimes the prospect of a ribbon-cutting back home serves as the grease to get other key bills passed. This is the one area where it’s difficult for majority party Democrats to go it alone. Because it involves state debt — in this case about a $1.5 billion bond issuance — it requires a 60 percent vote to pass. Even if all Democrats vote for it, they’ll still need at least 11 Republicans in the House and seven in the Senate to get it through. Another wrinkle here: There are actually two bills that make up the full slate of construction items. One authorizes the bond sale and the other pays for $400 million worth of work in cash. Democrats can pass that second one on their own if they choose. It might not be known if Republicans are willing to go along with the borrowing bill until the voting happens. Republicans have been part of negotiations but aren’t committing to voting for it yet. Republican Senate Minority Leader Mark Johnson and Republican Senator Karin Housley, the GOP lead on bonding, said their members aren’t ready to back a bonding bill until they see progress on tax cuts with a share of Minnesota’s $17.6 billion projected surplus.
The state Senate is expected to vote on two bills today that the House has already passed. One would restore voting rights to felons as soon as they are released from prison. Now they have to finish their entire sentence, including parole and probation, before they can vote. The other bill would allow immigrants living in Minnesota without permanent legal status to obtain driver’s licenses. That has been barred since 2003.
For the past two decades, Minnesota finance officials have estimated inflationary cost increases in state spending when issuing twice-yearly budget forecasts. But they’ve been forbidden from formally factoring it into surplus or deficit predictions. As Brian reports, a bill headed for a signature from Gov. Tim Walz will again make inflation a required ingredient in determining the top-line number in the forecast. At last check, inflation was expected to boost state costs by $1.5 billion in the next two years and another $3.3 billion in the two after that. But those numbers weren’t baked into the estimate of a $17.6 billion budget surplus announced in December. From a practical standpoint, the law change will make the likely surplus appear smaller when the forecast is released next Monday.
Cleveland-Cliffs says it is recalling some of the more than 400 workers it laid off last spring, idling one of the Iron Range’s key mining and taconite production operations. MPR’s Tim Nelson reports: “Cleveland-Cliffs is calling back some workers to Northshore Mining,” company spokesperson Patricia Persico told MPR News in response to an inquiry about the operation. “We will provide more details when we decide when and at what capacity this operation will be brought back online.” The layoffs have been a source of alarm on the Iron Range as well as in St. Paul, where lawmakers recently moved to extend unemployment benefits for the workers affected by the shutdown, many of whom had reached their 26-week unemployment benefit limit in November. A bill signed by Gov. Tim Walz late in January extended that for another 26 weeks and included retroactive benefits. The news was welcomed by officials on the Iron Range and across Minnesota. “This is a win for Silver Bay, northeastern Minnesota and the state as a whole,” Walz said in a statement released Monday afternoon.
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