By: Charlie Kyte
This audioblog is 10 minutes long. Information on the Pension Bill is at the beginning, Meetings with US Congress persons is at 4 minutes. A recap of the House Education Finance Bill begins at 6 1/2 minutes.
PENSION BILL: This bill accomplishes 3 things. (1) Limits post-retirement annual increases to 5%, (2) Provides a benefit increase, going forward, for active employees, and (3) Merges the Minneapolis Teachers Pension Fund into TRA and provides the funding to do so.
SENATOR NORM COLEMAN AND REPRESENTATIVE COLIN PETERSON: MASA's meetings with our Federal Representatives continue. A group of 9 members led by Federal Advocacy chairs Patty Phillips of North St. Paul and Jerry Williams of Rochester met with Senator Coleman. A large group of MASA members from NW Minnesota met with Representative Colin Peterson. Both meetings were on Tuesday and the messages were the same: (A) Federal money is flat, or decreasing, (B) NCLB regulations are overwhelming us without appreciable positive results.
Superintendent Jim Hesse-Bemidji, Superintendent Diane Lehse-Clearbrook-Gonvick, Rep Colin Peterson, and Superintendent Bruce Jensen-Kittson Central
HOUSE EDUCATION FINANCE BILL IS APPROVED: The House Bill contains $6.6 million in permanent money and almost all of it is for new initiatives to promote academics. There is also $117 million in tax relief, primarily in changing the capitol outlay levy back to 'aid', some equalization of effort and some debt redemption help.
There was an amendment to change the Integration Aid formula. This resulted in 40 districts losing funding (about $11 million) and another group of districts becoming eligible to receive Integration Aid. This change still has a perilous course in front of it as it needs to both survive on the House floor and in the Conference Committee process.
Finally, there is much lobbying taking place by Ed Watch (the old Maple River Coalition) and the Family Council against the proposed strengthening of the International Baccalaureate and Adv Placement Programs (IB/AP). They somehow see these as unamerican. MASA supports IB/AP and sees this as a good way to bring added emphasis to the academic curriculum. The House Bill wasn't amended, but this issue will probably appear on the House Floor next week.
RUMORS STILL ARE FLYING ABOUT STATEWIDE HEALTH INSURANCE: I can hardly believe all the rumors that swirl about the Capitol on this subject. The Mandatory Statewide Insurance Bill will be heard on the Senate Floor today (Wednesday) and will most likely pass. The voluntary PEIP Insurance Bill, which MASA supports, will be heard in another House Committee today as well. We hear that there may be an attempt to change this Bill to have a mandatory requirement. We remain vigilant, but don't think this is going to happen.
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