Dayton Signs Minn. Budget Bills, Other Legislation
Gov. Mark Dayton has signed a pile of state budget bills and other legislation into law, including $2.1 billion in tax increases.
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Gov. Mark Dayton has signed a pile of state budget bills and other legislation into law, including $2.1 billion in tax increases.
Adults who suffered childhood sexual abuse and want to file civil lawsuits will have much wider access to the courts under a bill awaiting Gov. Mark Dayton's signature.
Gov. Mark Dayton used his line-item veto Thursday to strike two controversial provisions from the bill that uses state sales-tax money for grants to environmental and arts programs.
There was a lot of debate at the Capitol this year about pay raises for Minnesota lawmakers. But a WCCO investigation found soaring salaries are actually going to state employees who work as staff members.
The group that pushed Minnesota lawmakers to legalize gay marriage disclosed Wednesday it invested more than $2 million in the successful lobbying effort.
There are few other places in the historic Minnesota State Capitol where beer drinking should be more welcome: The basement cafeteria, styled as a German Rathskeller. Now, for the first time in almost 100 years, alcohol may be available on certain occasions.
Critics of silica sand mining had hoped the Minnesota Legislature would adopt aggressive statewide rules to protect people and the environment. What finally emerged from the just-finished session, however, was a compromise that still leaves much of the authority for deciding how and whether to regulate the industry up to local governments.
Minnesota Gov. Mark Dayton has signed an education package that boosts spending on schools and scales back high-stakes testing. Dayton and Democratic legislators on Wednesday celebrated the $15.7 billion bill, which is about $485 million more than the state spends now.
A narrow band of Minnesotans will pay a higher income tax under the new state budget. How much more? That depends. Officials say the average cost of the new tax for 54,400 filers is just shy of $7,200. But that figure can be misleading.
The late flurry of bills the Minnesota Legislature passed in the session's final hours now sit on Gov. Mark Dayton's desk. The final batch was formally delivered Wednesday. That step starts a window for him to sign or veto bills. One budget bill, an economic development finance package, reached his desk Tuesday.
Here's where Minnesota Democrats and Republicans agree: The just-finished legislative session sent the state and its government on a dramatically different course than it traveled the last couple of decades.
Minnesota state lawmakers promised when the legislative session began that their top priority was setting a new state budget. To that end, they produced a $38.3 billion two-year spending plan that hikes taxes on top income earners and on cigarettes, and distributes hefty spending increases to public schools, freezes tuition at state colleges and steers new money to job-creation programs.
Top Minnesota lawmakers purposely delayed the start of a new sales tax on warehousing services until next April in case they need to revise or undo it before then. The storage service tax, which doesn't apply to mini-storage rentals, became a point of dispute.
Gov. Mark Dayton and Democratic legislative leaders call the just-finished session a success and that they accomplished what they set out to do. Dayton and the lawmakers held a Tuesday news conference at the Capitol, just a few hours after the session wrapped at midnight.
Minnesota lawmakers worked right up to the end Monday before adjourning a session that produced $2.1 billion in tax hikes and a historic vote on gay marriage. The gavel fell after a frenetic final push to wrap up major issues.
