Virtual File - Item

Text: May 22, 2024
The Honorable Tim Walz
Governor, State of Minnesota
75 Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Blvd.
St. Paul, MN 55155

Dear Governor Walz,

We write to urge you to veto HF5247, the 1432-page conference committee report that was jammed
through the legislature in mere minutes on Sunday evening in violation of House rules, Senate rules, Joint
Rules of the Legislature, and the Constitution of the State of Minnesota.

Article 4 Section 17 of the Minnesota Constitution states that "No law shall embrace more than one
subject, which shall be expressed in its title." The title for HF5247 alone is six full pages, including
dozens of individual subjects expressed in the title. It is inconsistent with the oath you swore to uphold
the Minnesota Constitution to sign this bill into law.

Furthermore, signing this bill would signal to Minnesotans that you explicitly endorse the outrageous and
unprecedented breach of process that put the bill on your desk.

On Sunday evening, the bill was assembled in the HF5247 Conference Committee with fewer than three
hours remaining in the session. In her motion, the Chair of the Committee reported incorrect bill numbers
when listing the bills that were set to be adopted, causing further confusion for anyone attempting to track
the contents of the bill. While the Revisor of Statutes website indicates that the conference committee
report was posted at 10:49PM, legislators and the public were unable to access the report itself online
until hours later, and legislators were unable to obtain a copy of the bill itself prior to the vote.

Despite this stunning lack of transparency, the bill was brought immediately to the House floor, and
pushed to a vote despite dozens of objections and privileged motions ignored by the Speaker of the
House. The Senate followed suit soon after.

Joint Rules are quite clear that conference committee reports "must be limited to provisions that are
germane to the bill and amendments that were referred to the Conference Committee. A provision is not
germane if it relates to a substantially different subject or is intended to accomplish a substantially
different purpose from that of the bill." This bill plainly violated Joint Rules, as well as the rules in each
respective chamber.

Governor, your party has had two years of single-party control, and utilized every one of the 120
legislative days permitted in our Constitution. The claim that the minority parties in the House and Senate
somehow obstructed the work of the majority, to the point that such drastic action was required, is simply
untrue.

Over the course of the final weeks of session, numerous bills were passed with minimal debate - some in
as few as three or four minutes. The amount of time spent debating more controversial bills over the past
two weeks was neither unprecedented nor unwarranted. Both chambers spent appropriate time
scrutinizing bills that contained hundreds of millions of dollars in tax increases, brand new language
added in conference committees, and provisions that had never been debated in one or both chambers.

Additionally, both the House and Senate Majorities contributed to the time crunch thanks to their
mismanagement of the floor schedule. On Saturday, May 18 the Senate spent more than 13 hours in
recess while the House continued to debate and pass bills. The House opted to spend substantial time on
debates for the ERA Constitutional Amendment and Ranked Choice Voting - bills that ultimately were
not even brought up in the Senate.

Sadly, it seems that Democrat leadership has decided that this flagrant abuse of the legislative process and
utter contempt for Republican legislators who collectively represent millions of Minnesotans is acceptable
in the pursuit of partisan priorities. We hope that is not the case for you. You still have a chance to
demonstrate that in Minnesota we are better than this, and that you still believe in the "One Minnesota"
spirit upon which you campaigned.

Signing this bill will be an endorsement of a process that will have serious consequences for both
chambers for years to come. Creating a legislative environment where rules, transparency, and process are
second to the whims of partisanship is unhealthy for our state and for the legislature as an institution.

We urge you to do what is right - not just what is politically expedient for you and your party - and veto
HF5247.

Sincerely,
Mark T. Johnson, Minority Leader, Minnesota Senate
Lisa M. Demuth, Minority Leader, Minnesota House of Representatives