(Saint Paul, Minnesota)
Governor Mark Dayton has followed through on his threat, and vetoed the education bill that does not meet his demands for funding a universal pre-k program for all Minnesota four year olds. The veto has legislators waiting to hear when and where a special will take place in order to pass critical legislation. While a complete budget was delivered to the Governor’s desk, many legislators are considering the special session a chance to bring up many other proposals that they are either unhappy with or did not have enough time to pass. House Minority Leader Representative Paul Thissen has gone as far saying that the special session is a chance to “hit the reset button.”
Alpha News spoke with Senator Dave Thompson, who believes that a much different approach should be taken during a special session, claiming that it shouldn’t last longer than an hour. Senator Thompson states, “What I think should happen is our leadership, on both sides, which would be of course predominately the Speaker of the House on the House side and the Majority Leader on the Senate Tom Bakk, they should just say ‘Governor, we gave you a fair and reasonable negotiated bill that funds our schools, and you can call us back to special session, and we’re going to work for an hour, and we’re going to pass the same bill again, and send it back to you.”
Due to capitol renovations there is a need for a venue to host the special session. While Governor Dayton has remarked that he would like to have the special session held with legislators outside under a tent, a number of additional venues, including the St. Paul Hotel, offered to host the special session for free. Senator Thompson believes that this an opportunity to save taxpayer money, stating, “I believe that if we can find a place that won’t charge us and will save the taxpayers money, I would be all for that.”
A special session has not officially been called, but more than 800 state education workers will be receiving layoff notices June 1st.
Subscribe to Alpha News to stay up to date on legislative happenings as the questions for when and where a special session will be held continue to hang in the air.