Governor Tim Walz signs ‘One Minnesota Budget’ as Democrats celebrate their top goals becoming law

As hundreds of people cheered on the lawn around him, Minnesota Democratic Gov. Tim Walz signed a document to symbolize the passage of his $72 billion “One Minnesota Budget” at a celebratory ceremony on the front steps of the State Capitol Wednesday morning.

Earlier that day, Walz signed twelve bills into laws that are part of the One Minnesota Budget. The wide-reaching set of measures includes funding for: free school meals to children, free tuition at public colleges for students whose families earn less than $80,000 a year, a paid family and medical leave program, health insurance regardless of immigration status, gun violence prevention, abortion rights protections, voting rights expansion and more.

“It’s gonna mean a fairer, more inclusive, better and more prosperous Minnesota,” Walz said.

Democrats took full control of state government when the Legislature convened for its 2023 session, marking the first time in eight years they have held the trifecta of both chambers plus the governor’s office. This put them in position to pass a long list of legislative priorities that the previous Senate Republican majority had blocked.

Lt. Gov. Peggy Flanagan said to the crowd, “Today is a celebration — not only of the work of the last five months, but it is a celebration of the last several decades of organizing.”

Flanagan, a member of the White Earth Band of Ojibwe, said the record-setting diversity among lawmakers this session was a reason that Democrats were able to secure so many big wins. “Our democracy thrives, our democracy functions better, when it accurately reflects the people that it seeks to represent,” she said. “And so, we don’t need folks who say, ‘I wonder how this community feels,’ because those communities are now at the table in a major way.”

Other measures in the newly signed budget bills include: a child tax credit that will provide up to $1,750 per child to families with low incomes; increased funding for schools to boost resources; climate resiliency grants to help people prepare for extreme weather and upgrade old infrastructure; and improvements to roads, bridges and electrical vehicle infrastructure.

Republican House Minority Leader Lisa Demuth, of Cold Spring, said in an interview that the One Minnesota Budget is more like a “One Democrat Minnesota” budget, because it does not represent a unification of both parties.

Referring to the percentage of Republican lawmakers in the Legislature this session, Demuth said 48% of Minnesotans were not represented in many of the policies that Democrats championed and passed with their slim majorities in the Senate and House.

Now, three years since Floyd’s murder, proponents of federal actions — such as banning chokeholds and changing the so-called qualified immunity protections for law enforcement — still await meaningful signs of change. The beating death of Tyre Nichols at the hands of Memphis police officers in early January underscored just how long it could take. Democratic U.S. Rep. Ayanna Pressley, of Massachusetts, said during a recent press conference convened by a Black Lives Matter collective that she sees no evidence of a “racial reckoning.” “I don’t play with words like ‘reckoning,’” Pressley said. “That needs to be something of epic proportion. And we certainly have not seen a response to the lynching, the choking, the brutality, (and) the murder of Black lives.”

WHAT HAS HAPPENED IN MINNEAPOLIS?

Soon after Floyd’s