Legislative recap: With heavy hearts, lawmakers begin legislative offseason
By Amanda Bilek
Senior Public Policy Director, MCGA
As I set out to write this legislative update, it is after the unspeakable tragedy that occurred this past weekend where Speaker Emerita Melissa Hortman and her husband, Mark, were murdered and Senator John Hoffman and his wife, Yvette, were gravely injured. The weight of the tragedy weighs heavy on the hearts of the capitol community and Minnesotans as a whole. MCGA mourns the loss of Speaker Emerita Hortman and husband. It feels a little trite to be writing a wrap up of the legislative session and special session, which just ended a week ago. However, we place great value on the role our members entrust in us to advocate for Minnesota corn farmers and a part of that role is keeping you informed about the work we are fortunate to do on your behalf.
In our last update, Legislative update: Legislature adjourns; special session coming, we recapped the work that was done by the end of the regular session, largely summarizing the agriculture budget agreement. Following adjournment negotiations continued to close up nine other outstanding budget agreements along with a capital investment and tax bill. These bills were all taken up in a one-day special session that began the morning of June 9 and adjourned in the early hours of June 10. In total, the Legislature delt with 14 separate bills during the special session enacting a $66 billion budget that made changes to previously enacted spending in an effort to reduce the projected $6 billion budget deficit for the 2028/2029 budget. We had our eye closely on the tax bill, including an expansion of Minnesota’s Sustainable Aviation Fuel (SAF) tax credit and the environment budget, which was to include environmental permitting reform.
One of the largest disappointments was the final tax bill. We were already disappointed the neither the House nor the Senate tax bill addressed changes to property taxes for state mandated buffers, but the bill tax bill was unable to deliver important changes to the Beginning Farmer Tax Credit or expand funding for the MN SAF tax credit or enact policy language to the credit. The final tax bill did manage to include a technical change ensuring that funding appropriated for the SAF tax credit in 2023 would be available in future years.
The final environment bill did include some important changes to improve Minnesota’s environmental permitting system. Notably public petition signatures for an Environmental Assessment Worksheet (EAW) must be from the county where the proposed action is taking place or an adjoining county. A project will also not have to complete an EAW if the project falls within a mandatory Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) category. The other permitting change to note is that permit applicants will be given five business days to remedy any deficiencies to the permit application before the Commissioner can decide if the permit is complete or incomplete. In the past, permit applications sometimes had to start the process over to correct application deficiencies.
MCGA advocacy staff have put together a complete summary of legislative session outcomes important to corn farmers and is available here.
