This one goes out to the Minnesota politics nerds.
It's for the readers on a first-name basis with omnibus bills and vexed by Minnesota's decision to ignore inflation in financial forecasts.
The action at the State Capitol is looking different this year with Democrats controlling the House, Senate and governor's office (if you've read this far, you're probably aware). DFL leaders are racing through policy changes from abortion access to clean energy requirements.
But will they fall back on lawmaking habits routinely condemned as nontransparent or misleading?
For those unfamiliar with an omnibus bill (no shame), it's where a bunch of measures are merged into a mega bill. Ideally, they are focused on one subject, like education, and include only policy measures or only spending provisions.
In reality, the final versions of those bills are often negotiated behind closed doors in the final days of session and crammed with policy and spending changes, many unrelated to the main thrust of the bill. They can top 1,000 pages.
"The session ends and even we as legislators read the paper the next day and say, 'Oh, what passed?' Because you don't know what's in the final package in the end, because it's all crammed together at the last minute," said Sen. John Marty, DFL-Roseville, who has long crusaded against what he calls "garbage bills."
As the new Senate Finance Committee chair, Marty is in a powerful position to play good-governance goalie. He plans to block any unwieldy omnibus measures that merge spending and policy.
His House DFL counterpart, Ways and Means Chair Liz Olson of Duluth, said lawmakers want to get budget work done earlier to reduce the end-of-session crunch.
Those two legislators also back bills to end another long-standing gripe among those seeking transparency in the state budget.
Two decades ago, lawmakers facing a projected budget deficit changed the state's twice-a-year budget forecasting process to paint a rosier picture. They continued to have the projections account for inflation in state revenue, but stopped including estimates of inflation in spending.
"It was a tool to make things look better than they were during bleak times," Olson said.
Legislators are now pushing to account for growing dollar figures on both sides of the ledger. The move is estimated to reduce the state's projected $17.5 billion budget surplus for the next two years to around $16 billion.
With House Speaker Melissa Hortman and Senate Majority Leader Kari Dziedzic signed on as co-sponsors of the inflation legislation, it appears poised to pass. Marty hopes that could happen before the next forecast at the end of the month.
"Bad process hurts us all," he said. "We're making some change for the better. I'm hoping they'll be as significant as I'd like them to be. But we'll see."
