Agreement Reached on Committee Budget Targets, Second Committee DeadlineAgreement Reached on Committee Budget Targets, and more

Gov. Walz, Senate Majority Leader Kari Dziedzic and House Speaker Melissa Hortman have reached an agreement on budget targets. The targets provide details to finance committees on how much money is available to spend in their omnibus budget bills. The budget targets provide the rough outline — but it is up to committee chairs to finalize details of how to spend their slice of the budget.

The agreement will use all the $17.5 billion surplus in the biennial budget. Here is a breakdown of the larger components of the budget framework:

• $3 billion in tax cuts
• $2.3 billion for infrastructure projects
• $2.2 billion for K-12 education and pre-kindergarten
• $2.2 billion fo capital/infrastructure projects
• $1.178 billion for children and families
• $1 billion for housing
• $650 million for public safety
• $255 million for energy and climate
• $100 million for broadband expansion

The full budget agreement can be found here. Or download a PDF.

Today is the second committee deadline, which means that committees must act favorably on bills that met the first deadline in the other body. The next deadline, April 4, is the last deadline and one that finance bills must meet. Committee deadlines are determined by an agreement of both the House and Senate and set restrictions for when committees can hear and decide upon certain types of bills and are important to keep the legislature on track for the end of session. But as is often said, “No bill is really dead until Sine Die.”

More information on upcoming committee deadlines can be found at the bottom of this newsletter in the “Dates to Remember” section 

The pace of introductions, hearings and passage of bills continues at an unprecedented rate, more than double the average for the past 10 years. Already, the House and the Senate have shattered the record for number of bills introduced in the first year in a biennium, with both bodies hitting over 3,000 bills introductions as of this week.

Here is a chart detailing the unusually high number of bills being introduced.

Gov. Tim Walz announced on Wednesday that he plans to deliver his annual State of the State address to the Minnesota Legislature on April 19 at 7 p.m. This will be his first address of his second term.

April 4: Third Committee Deadline (committees must act favorably on major appropriation and finance bills by 5 p.m.)
April 5-10: Legislative Break
April 19: State of the State address
May 22: Last day of the 2023 Legislative Session

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