PASSED AND SIGNED INTO LAW
Bonding bill – HF 4425
Lawmakers negotiated a deal to spend $825 million in general obligation (GO) bonds, $41 million from the general fund, and an additional $98 million in appropriation bonds financed via the environmental and natural resources trust fund (ENRTF). Appropriation bonds are more expensive than GO bonds. The annual debt service on $98 million will cost approximately $7.84 million per fiscal year from FY2020 to FY2039. In a letter to lawmakers, the Governor said that “… legislators invaded the Trust Fund to pay for another $98 million of projects, through issuing Appropriation Bonds … it can only be understood as a devious attempt to the circumvent the arbitrary GO Bond limit the Legislature foolishly imposed on itself.” Despite his reservations, Governor Dayton signed the bill into law.
http://www.senate.mn/departments/fiscalpol/tracking/2018/CapInv_Enacted.pdf
DID NOT PASS
Bonding bill – HF 4404/SF 4013
The House passed its own version of a bonding bill, but the Senate failed to do so. When lawmakers debated the bill on the Senate floor, DFLers introduced an amendment to improve the proposal, but Republicans killed it on a party-line vote. As a result, the Senate Republican plan never received the 41-vote supermajority needed to pass the bill and send it to a conference committee.
VETOED
Bonding bill line-item veto
Governor Dayton exercised his line-item veto authority to remove a $1 million grant for a new and unnecessary layer of bureaucracy to review the scientific work of the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency (MPCA).
