Legislative session could be the most consequential in years

The 2023 Legislature could be the most consequential in years for promoting prosperity, equity, health, brainpower, housing and safety. And add tax givebacks to the list.

The DFL Party controls the governor’s office, the House and the Senate for the first time in a decade. Its top priority is a law codifying legal abortion in Minnesota, a right enshrined only by a 1995 state Supreme Court ruling. DFL leaders have also supported putting the issue to voters as a constitutional amendment; our editorial board prefers the amendment for changing abortion law.

We’re pleased that a paid family leave program, another of the DFL’s top priorities this session, is finally within reach after lingering for years under Republican opposition. A Senate bill already introduced would  ensure all workers in the state have access to up to 12 weeks of leave for family care, pregnancy, serious health conditions and other purposes, according to Sen. Alice Mann, DFL-Edina.

Minnesota would join 11 other states and Washington, D.C., that have paid family leave in law, Mann said. The U.S. is the only industrialized country that doesn’t guarantee paid family leave.

Workers and employers would finance the program by paying into a fund similar to the state’s unemployment insurance fund. Access to family leave would become a right, not a benefit subject to the whim or size of an employer.

In another ambitious proposal, the DFL would give parents of children 5 and under tax credits of $3,000 per child or up to $7,500 per family.

After failing in 2022 to secure a supplemental K-12 education bill, DFLers will be spoiling in this two-year budget-writing session for hefty increases that begin to dent the “cross-subsidy” school districts pay for required but underfunded special education and English language programs. The effort deserves a  robust slice of the surplus pie.

DFL legislators on the House and Senate housing committees will seek one-time funding to build more workforce and affordable housing. And, according to the Star Tribune, they want to create an ongoing state rental assistance program. Gov. Tim Walz is harboring a list of housing priorities, including more money for Minnesota Housing, the state housing finance agency, which receives less than 1% of the state budget.

Look also for DFL proposals on voting, including a repeat of last year’s House proposal to impose criminal penalties for intimidating or threatening election workers. DFLers also tried to double the current one-week period for absentee ballot counting; other proposals include restoring voting rights for released felons.

We were pleased to see unity and swift action to pass the tax conformity bill in the early days of the session, showing that bipartisanship is possible.

However, Democrats may fight among themselves, and with Republicans, about whether to end state taxation of Social Security income for all beneficiaries. The state already relieves lower-income recipients of the burden; skeptics are right to question whether their most well-off counterparts deserve the same.

Democrats may fight among themselves and will tangle with Republicans over other forms of tax relief. Last year, leaders from the DFL-controlled House and Republican-controlled Senate saw their compromise deal on $4 billion in tax relief crumble at session’s end, along with the bulk of the  2022 session’s work. We continue to support long-term tax relief for all Minnesotans.

Also left undone last year was a sizable outlay for investment in more police officers, firefighters and crime-prevention programs.

Well, the elections are over now. There is clarity, at least as much as Minnesota’s fungible and finicky electorate will temporarily allow. The current lingo of a DFL “trifecta” in the two chambers and the governor’s office is apt, as the term is associated primarily with gambling. Time will tell if power and ambition overstep the public mood.

But for now, let there be progress.

— An editorial from the APG of East Central Minnesota Editorial Board. Reactions are welcome. Send to: editorial.board@apgecm.com.