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When Nolan West rose to co-chair this year of the Minnesota House Children and Families Finance and Policy Committee, his first edict was a seating chart.
Typically, West explained in his Capitol office adorned by statuettes of Abraham Lincoln, Ronald Reagan and an elephant, Republicans sit by Republicans and DFLers perch by DFLers.
But on a committee with seven DFLers and seven Republicans, the Blaine Republican decided that each DFLer would sit between two Republicans and vice versa.
“Normally when someone says something stupid that you disagree with you lean over to your colleague and say, ‘Isn’t that stupid?’” West said. “Now, if you’re going to say anything you can actually have a side conversation and say ‘Well, what about this?’ instead of digs and snarky comments.”
The House is two months into a power-sharing truce between Republicans and DFLers, a deal that was brokered because there are exactly 67 members of each party in the legislative chamber, the first House tie since 1979.
It took not one, not two but three trips to the state Supreme Court to confirm the House was, indeed, tied. Even when the power-sharing agreement was implemented, House leaders were skeptical the deal would take hold.
“They are very suspicious of us. We are very suspicious of them,” Melissa Hortman, the House DFL leader, said at the time.
Fast forward to today and Hortman and her GOP colleagues see a split House as a secondary concern to hammering out a two-year budget to fund Minnesota’s government.
“For the most part, it is working really well,” Hortman told reporters before lawmakers took off for spring recess (legislators came back to the Capitol Monday). “I was pleasantly surprised that we had budget targets on time. I’ve also been pleasantly surprised by the number of bills that are complete.”
The bipartisanship is remarkable in an era of national politics where members of Congress fall in line with party leaders, and public opinion polls suggest voters see the parties as representing different value systems.
It also comes as the state stares down a long-term budget imbalance and braces for possible federal cuts.
Here is what has happened so far.
What the House has accomplished
House committees have advanced most of their spending bills.
First, to review, the power-sharing resolution made GOP Leader Lisa Demuth of Cold Spring House speaker and moved Hortman of Brooklyn Park from speaker to speaker emerita. And each of these committees has an equal number of DFL and GOP lawmakers, plus a chair from each party.
An early test of cooperation was budget targets, which is where legislative leaders instruct committees on how much money to put into each spending bill.
For example, DFL and GOP House leaders told West’s committee to spend $25 million more for the Department of Children, Youth and Families over the next two years, compared to the Minnesota Management and Budget’s February forecast. (Gov. Tim Walz’s budget recommended a $21 million increase to agency funding.)
That brings that part of the budget to $2.1 billion for the two-year period that begins this July.
West and co-chair Carlie Kotyza-Witthuhn, DFL-Eden Prairie, then wrote a bill proposing where the $2.1 billion should go across areas like child care, early learning and food banks.
The resulting legislation kept social services funding steady, while adding a critical provision for West: surveillance camera footage at child care facilities.
“That issue was very important to me, and I was willing to spend on other things that I don’t necessarily like,” West said.
West proposed such monitoring after he revealed that his own child came home with bruises from a day care center. The language that passed committee makes care centers already hit with a maltreatment report take video footage and retain that footage for 60 days.
West said his partnership with Kotyza-Witthuhn “went smoother than I anticipated.”
The Eden Prairie DFLer concurred.
“Though we had a rocky start to the session, I’m glad our GOP colleagues recognized that to do the critical work of funding state government, we will need to work together,” Kotyza-Witthuhn said in an email to MinnPost.
Other spending bills passing through committee include the biggest budget area: funding the Department of Human Services, which runs the state’s Medicaid program.
The House Human Services Finance and Policy Committee agreed to an $18.5 billion two-year package that undid scheduled increases in long-term care spending for Minnesotans on Medicaid.
During the hearing where the bill was finalized, committee leadership was not exactly elated.
“It’s not fun,” said co-chair Joe Schomacker, R-Luverne. “This isn’t easy. This isn’t fun.”
But each side was able to find common ground on largely preserving Medicaid benefits amid federal threats to slash the program.
“This is not something we can say we’re proud of,” said co-chair Mohamud Noor, DFL-Minneapolis. “But we’re getting there.”
As committees agreed to bills, House leadership met weekly with their Senate counterparts and Walz.
“I’m really grateful for the conversations that have been taking place,” Demuth told reporters before the recess, later adding, “I’m really impressed by the work that is being done with our co-chairs.”
What the House hasn’t accomplished
Not every House spending bill has passed its initial committee. The biggest is the K-12 education bill, which has ignited passionate and at times surprising debates over stagnating student test scores, charter schools, and subsidized school meals.
House Education Finance Committee co-chair Cheryl Youakim, DFL-Hopkins, said Tuesday, “We are having productive discussions and are close” on a final bill.
The House Health Finance and Policy Committee, which funds the Minnesota Department of Health and initiatives like infectious disease prevention, has also not meted out a spending package.
And once spending bills are passed, they go through the ringer of the House Ways and Means Committee, the full House, and the so-called conference session where House spending measures are reconciled with Senate bills.
At each step, lawmakers must keep an eye on writing a bill that Walz will like enough to sign into law.
Asked if his House DFL brethren might jump ship and take DFL-controlled Senate positions in budget talks, West said, “That’s a question I have too.”
But he added that the Senate and governor “can’t do it without us” and that he expects “the House to be much more aggressive than normal” since its leadership represents all of Minnesota and not just a little over 50%.
West’s committee counterpart actually had similar thoughts, and wondered if the most difficult part of negotiations had passed.
“In a ‘normal’ session the majority party is able to include their priorities and move through the House without much compromise,” Kotyza-Witthuhn said in her email to MinnPost. “Power-sharing required that we essentially pre-conference policy and budget items to pass a bipartisan bill out of committee.”
Such optimism is being heard outside the House. Neither Walz nor Senate leaders have indicated that a split House will keep the Legislature from passing a budget before they leave the Capitol the third week of May.
“I keep hearing people talk about a special session in June,” said Sen. Minority Leader Mark Johnson, R-Grand Forks, at a press conference before the legislature recessed last week. “But as of right now, things are looking promising to get to that May 19th deadline.”
