I. Session summary

SESSION SUMMARY

Session Summary The 2021 Legislative Session actually seemed like an extension of the series of monthly special sessions, the pandemic-shortened 2020 Legislative Session, and the resulting gubernatorial executive orders.

Starting with the declaration of emergency, Governor Walz issued a series of executive orders that helped ease some of the regulatory burdens in long-term care. He also issued others in housing, that limited the ability to evict tenants. A complete list of the executive orders can be found at: https://mn.gov/governor/news/executiveorders.jsp.

Although not an exhaustive list, the executive orders which assisted in long-term care included the following: • Executive Order 20-11 Securing Federal Authority to Continue Human Services Programs During the COVID-19 Peacetime Emergency • Executive Order 20-12 Preserving Access to Human Services Programs During the COVID-19 Peacetime Emergency • Executive Order 20-13 Authorizing National Guard Assistance to COVID-19 Response • Executive Order 20-15 Providing Immediate Relief to Small Businesses During the COVID-19 Peacetime Emergency • Executive Order 20-16 Directing Non-Hospital Entities to Inventory and Preserve Vital Medical Equipment During the COVID-19 Peacetime Emergency • Executive Order 20-23 Authorizing Minnesota Health-Related Licensing Boards to Modify Requirements During the COVID-19 Peacetime Emergency • Executive Order 20-28 Allowing Out-of-State Mental Health Providers to Render Telehealth Aid and Permitting Certain Licensing Boards to Provide License and Registration Relief During the COVID-19 Peacetime Emergency • Executive Order 20-32 Ensuring that Healthcare Providers Can Respond Quickly and Safely During the COVID-19 Peacetime Emergency • Executive Order 20-46 Authorizing Out-of-State Healthcare Professionals to Render Aid in Minnesota during the COVID-19 Peacetime Emergency • Executive Order 20-51 Requiring Facilities to Prioritize Surgeries and Procedures and Provide Safe Environment during COVID-19 Peacetime Emergency • Housing Eviction o Executive Order 20-14 Suspending Evictions and Writs of Recovery During the COVID-19 Peacetime Emergency

o Executive Order 20-73 Clarifying Executive Order 20-14 Suspending

Evictions and Writs of Recovery During the COVID-19 Peacetime

Emergency o Executive Order 20-79 Modifying the Suspension of Evictions and

Writs of Recovery During the COVID-19 Peacetime Emergency

Clearly, legal and lawmaking issues in 2020 and 2021 were far from “normal” process.

Once the legislature was no longer in regular session, by law, the governor had to call them back into special session each time he extended his emergency powers. This meant that the legislators would return monthly to, at a minimum, vote on the extension of the emergency powers. This reconvening meant that legislators, advocates, and executive branch (in our case primarily MDH and DHS) could continue to work on concepts that were introduced, but unfinished, during the regular session. These topics included a potential delay of the assisted living licensure, increased assisted living regulations, and technical changes to the assisted living laws.

Elections In the midst of the pandemic, we held the November 2020 elections. With the domination of the presidential election and the presence of COVID-19, Minnesota held elections for both the Minnesota Senate and the Minnesota House of Representatives. After the June civil unrest in Minneapolis following the police murder of George Floyd, the election dynamics took on additional dynamics. With the some of the local and national discourse devolving into Black Lives Matter versus Blue Lives Matter, the national election became increasingly contentious.

In the end, Minnesota retained the same balance of power, with the DFL retaining a slim majority for control of the Minnesota House, and the Republicans retaining a one seat majority and control of the Senate. Governor Walz was not up for election, so he retained his position. Then, an announcement that surprised some in the political world, DFL Senators Tom Bakk (Cook) and David Tomassoni (Hibbing) announced that they were leaving the DFL and forming an independent caucus that would primarily caucus toward the GOP. DFLer Tom Bakk had been the majority and minority leader for the DFL Senate in recent terms, and had recently been ousted from the DFL minority leader by Susan Kent (DFL-Woodbury).

Following the elections, the state had one more “special session” which was required if the governor were to extend the peacetime emergency. During this

December special session, the legislature did pass several important technical changes to the assisted living licensure laws.

Regular session begins Amidst the pandemic, January marked the start of the 2021 Legislative Session. The session had a very different feeling from the start. In the first place, both the House and the Senate began with “virtual” hearings, where we used technology of “zoom” as well as the House and Senate multimedia stations to attend and watch the hearings. Although they had been having virtual hearings during the interim special sessions, the feeling of participation was very distant.

Session also had a different flavor because in a typical year, legislators would begin meeting with various lobbyists after elections in November and December— but this year, everything being virtual made meetings challenging.

Although the state had received better (less of a deficit than previously anticipated) fiscal news in the November forecast, the legislature is constitutionally-required to balance to the February forecast. The Minnesota February budget forecast showed a significantly improved economic environment for the state. There is a surplus of $940 million for the balance of the state's current budget cycle, an improvement of $546 million from the November forecast. The projected surplus for the 2022–23 budget, which takes effect July 1, is $1.6 billion, a change from the $1.27 billion deficit projected in the November forecast.

This budget news allowed the legislators and the governor a sigh of relief. This forecast did not include the federal money that was sent to the state from the American Recovery Act stimulus—that accounting would take place later in the session and add extra wrinkles to end of session negotiations.

While the legislature began zoom and virtual hearings, much of the early floor debate revolved around the governor’s emergency powers. Because of the ongoing public health emergency associated with ongoing COVID-19, Governor Walz had retained his emergency powers. The Senate majority and the House minority wanted to end the governor’s emergency powers. After multiple lengthy floor debates at different times of the session, the moves to limit the governor’s powers failed repeatedly.

Hearings were conducted virtually, which meant time limitations, remote testimony, and general lack of personal interaction. As the session wore on, legislators started to find their way and hearings became more routine. As with most sessions, the work starts to take shape as the governor introduces their proposed budget and the legislators start to have hearings on proposals. The legislators

begin introducing their own bills and the bills begin making stops in the different committees of jurisdiction. Ultimately, the bills end in the last committee of jurisdiction and may be “laid over for possible inclusion” in an omnibus bill.

This year, as the hearings were taking place, the legislators found out there would be an influx of federal stimulus money. Although they had an estimate of the amount, they lacked the regulatory guidance implementation. Without the guidance, legislators lacked the ability to allocate the federal funds. The guidance finally arrived in late April, which did not give them much time to finalize their budget bills.

As the session came closer to the end, it became apparent that the end of session influx of federal money was making the finalization of the financial side of omnibus bills difficult, and would make finishing by the constitutionally-mandated timeframe difficult, if not impossible. Nevertheless, both the House and the Senate passed their respective omnibus bills and moved to conference committees.

Ultimately, and too near the end of session to finish on time, the House, Senate, and governor announced a “global agreement” on financial numbers, which would determine how much each committee had to balance their spending. However, the policy issues would remain unresolved and in need of further negotiation. There were plentiful policy issues which the two bodies did not agree. These issues included: clean car standards, voter ID measures, and especially public safety reforms (resulting from the George Floyd murder and the summer civil unrest).

Because the governor planned to extend his emergency powers in the middle of June, the legislators need to be called back into session in the middle of June to vote on this extension. In anticipation of the June special session, legislators began “working group” negotiations to resolve differences in omnibus bills as they sought to avert a government shutdown at the end of the state fiscal year of June 30.

This year, unlike the past, because of the 2017 Minnesota Supreme Court Case, which held that the legislature and not the courts must allocate the money, there were many questions about how to determine who would be deemed essential providers and how or if any money could be spent after the June 30 end of fiscal year. This looming question infused a bit more urgency into the end of session and averting a state shutdown.

Ultimately, the legislators reconvened June 14 and marched toward passage of final budgets and resolution of the policy questions. As they moved closer to the deadline, legislators and the governor arrived at agreements on many of the

smaller budget bills. As these bills were brought to the House floor, because the minority party had not been included in the final decision making, the proposals had extended floor debates which were designed to slow down the process and make even the smaller budget bills subject to lengthy debate and emphasize the lack of process and participation of the minority party and lack transparency for public participation.

Ultimately, the governor and the legislators resolved all of their budget bills and many of their policy differences and passed the final omnibus bill, the tax bill, in the early morning hours on July 1, narrowly averting a shutdown. Following passage of the tax omnibus bill and all other omnibus bills, the House adjourned sine die. The Senate on the other hand, continued to meet as they wanted to hold a “confirmation hearing” on a couple of Governor Walz’s appointees. Frustrated by some actions of the administration, the Senate threatened to reject the confirmations. Eventually, the Senate did adjourn. There is an anticipated special session in September, that would include the report from the “hero pay bonus” working group.