Legislative News:
Did you know that May 11 is Statehood Day in Minnesota? This is the day Congress ratified Minnesota's acceptance into the Union back in 1858. The great state of Minnesota is 152 years old today. In typical historical fashion, the Minnesota legislative session is in the midst of its traditional end of session train wreck this rainy and gloomy Statehood Day. Here is a brief update on important conservation issues on this Tuesday morning as the session careens to its sudden end.
Complete Streets. Legislation to provide more comprehensive street planning that will help reduce air pollution is now part of the larger Omnibus Transportation Policy Bill (SF2540). That conference committee wrapped up its work on Saturday and the final report by the conference committee will likely be on the floor of each body today or tomorrow. The governor has traditionally vetoed this particular omnibus bill in past years, but the chief authors of the omnibus bill, Sen. Steve Murphy (DFL-Red Wing) and Rep. Frank Hornstein (DFL- Minneapolis), have been working closely with the Department of Transportation and lobbying the governor hard to have this year's bill signed into law. We will likely know by the end of the week whether the bill will be signed. There are other avenues for Complete Streets to get signed into law if the governor throws a roadblock in front of SF2540, but we are hopeful that we will not need to take them.
Protecting Investments to Our Great Outdoors. The Minnesota Environmental Partnership (MEP) has been working to ensure that accounts dedicated for conservation and environmental protection are not raided to fix the short-term budget deficit. We are still working on the overall analysis, but generally the Legislature has been careful to honor the voter's intent in creating the dedicated lottery proceeds and sales tax proceeds to go to the great outdoors. There are two bills still moving through the process that we are watching. First, the conference committee on the LCCMR bill (HF2624) appropriating the lottery proceeds finished its work Monday afternoon. This is the bill in which Rep. Tom Rukavina diverted over $4 million of land purchases to preserve important environmental lands to state park maintenance for the purpose of creating more jobs. As a compromise, the conference committee reduced that to $850,000 and agreed to some language requiring the DNR to review all land purchases to make sure that they are of highest priority for conservation. The final report now goes to the full bodies for approval in the next couple days. There is still no word on whether the governor will sign the bill or possibly use some line-item vetoes. The governor did identify seven projects of concern, but with no direct threat to veto.
The second major bill on environmental financing is the Omnibus Environment, Energy and Natural Resources Policy and Finance Bill; Outdoor Heritage Appropriations (SF3275). As the torture title of the bill indicates, it is a mixture of the legacy sales tax appropriations and the remaining environmental and energy appropriations from other dedicated accounts, i.e., Game and Fish Fund, Environmental Fund etc.; essentially the non-general fund appropriations. A conference committee has been appointed and has met over the weekend without reaching compromise. Most of the funding provisions in the bill had been agreed to by the conference committee members and most MEP members are satisfied with the direction that the Legislature has taken with the dedicated accounts. The issues tying up the conference committee have to do with policy provisions in the bill. One of the biggest issues is the legislative definitions of the words "protect, enhance and restore" in the constitutional amendment. There is also language in the bill creating a moratorium on hazardous waste incinerators affecting a project 3M would like to move forward with that the governor has indicated would result in his veto of the legislation. Therefore, there is still great deal of uncertainty regarding the important appropriations contained within this bill being approved because of these policy language disputes. The legislators would likely have to reach resolution in the next three days in order to have a realistic chance of passage.
It has been reported that there is an additional $43 million in environment cuts in the latest recommendation by the Legislature after the landmark Supreme Court case on unallotments. This is somewhat deceptive. The Legislature has recommended authorizing a little over $3 million in the governor's unallotments in the environment area. The remaining $40 million comes from reserves in the closed landfill account. In April, the Legislature approved a one-time transfer of $8 million from an investment account that has been put into place to address the environmental impacts of closing our state's landfills and placed the money in the general fund to lessen the deficit. It's sort of like raiding your children's college fund to pay for an unexpected car repair. That was only a portion of what was in that account, and now the Legislature is recommending using the full account to solve their short-term problems. The Legislature did include language in the bill that would require them to pay back this raid starting in 2014, with interest, from the general fund when there are future needs to pay for the closed landfill program.
The Moratorium on Nuclear Power Plant Construction. The repeal of the moratorium on the construction of new nuclear power plants in Minnesota was added to SF2971 a bill making technical changes to energy law. Rep. Bill Hilty (DFL-Finnlayson) offered an amendment repealing the moratorium on the construction of new nuclear reactors in Minnesota because he felt it necessary to make a preemptive strike with an amendment to repeal the moratorium that required some conditions to be met. Those conditions were protection for ratepayers and taxpayers from cost overruns from the construction of nuclear power plants, but unfortunately did not include any requirements to find a permanent storage site for radioactive waste. The Senate version of this bill does not include the repeal and the Senate committee responsible for energy issues sent a strong message earlier this session that they wanted more expanded conditions including permanent storage of waste.
Coal Power. There were attempts to repeal the moratorium on new energy coming from coal power plants in Minnesota or imported from other states as amendments to energy bills in both bodies. In 2007 Minnesota approved a law does not allow for the construction of coal power plants or the importation of dirty coal power from our neighboring states until there is a regional or national energy policy regulating carbon emissions. Both the House and Senate rejected these amendments to repeal the good 2007 law. Therefore, efforts to embrace dirty coal again are likely dead for the session.
Environmental Review and Permitting. There was a strong push by the Minnesota Chamber of Commerce to make significant changes to Minnesota's environmental review and permitting laws. Thanks to Land Stewardship Project (LSP) and the Minnesota Center for Environmental Advocacy (MCEA) what language survived in the above-mentioned Omnibus Environment, Energy and Natural Resources Policy and Finance Bill will only result in minor adjustments that should not affect our environmental protections. The governor has indicated in his letter to the conference committee that he was disappointed with the Legislature in this area and had some concerns with the language MCEA had put in the bill on the floor during the debate. It is not clear whether this will be grounds for vetoing the bill, and negotiations continue.
Protecting Minnesota from Dangerous Mining. Legislation seeking improvements in our mining laws to protect us from dangerous sulfide mining did not advance in the Legislature this year. Recently we have been defending against efforts by the mining industry to change our wetlands replacement law to give mining special treatment. The PolyMet project in northeastern Minnesota would be the largest wetland destruction in Minnesota history if it goes forward. The industry wanted to reduce their wetland replacement obligations through special legislation. HF3494 contains a special exemption for mining companies and MCEA has been working aggressively with the agencies overseeing wetland replacements to ensure that the integrity of our wetlands laws are not changed to give a special exemption to a particular industry. The bill has yet to pass off the House floor and we are working with the authors to resolve this issue. Most disconcerting about these provisions is that they were never introduced as a bill and were amended onto other provisions late in the process without adequate notice for the public.
Therefore, there is still some important work for environmental protection in the last few days of session.
John Tuma is government relations associate for Conservation Minnesota.
