By: Charlie Kyte
This audioblog is 5 1/2 minutes long.
MINNESOTA'S CAPITOL BUILDING: The capitol, designed by Cass Gilbert, is widely regarded as the finest state capitol building in the nation.
FINANCE CONFERENCE COMMITTEE BEGINS MEETING: Senate proposes $45 million for K-12 schools including about $35/pu of one time money. The Senate is somewhat in line with the Governors original proposal plus the one time money. The House proposal is $0.00-no help! Nada! There is a real chance that we will see no additional funding at all this session. In addition, the Policy Bills are not moving either and may not pass.
STATEWIDE HEALTH INSURANCE AND MINNEAPOLIS PENSION FUND: Neither of these bills have been moving, but could pass at the last minute. There was a meeting on Thursday on health insurance, but the parties did not find a way to compromise.
The recent expose by the TV media on public pension funds, and there focus on the Minneapolis Teachers Fund chilled the chances of passage of a solution to this problem. If the legislature waits another year or two, the problem will be much more expensive to fix, or may simply become unfixable.
It is possible that both the Pension issue and the Mandatory Health Insurance will be traded back and forth with other issues in the closing days of the session.
NEW LEADERSHIP FOR THE MINNEAPOLIS FEDERATION OF TEACHERS: Louise Sundlin has led the Minneapolis Teachers union for 22 years and has had a reputation as a reformer. In a recent election, she was replaced by Robert Panning-Miller. He won 56% of the vote with 1/3 of the teachers voting. The governing board of the federation is dominated by Sundlin supporters, so this may foretell some rough sledding ahead.
Comments