With just under four weeks left in this year’s legislative session, the Senate and House are preparing to make some very important decisions before returning home for the year. Committee action is nearly finished, with the Senate Budget Divisions concluding their meeting schedule last week by moving their omnibus budget bills on to the Senate floor.

I am a member of the E-12 Education Budget Division, which designs the budget for early childhood and K-12 public education in Minnesota. Our bill not only upholds the promise to maintain the current levels of education funding and protect classrooms from budget cuts; it allocates $90 million more in K-12 and early childhood education funding than the House and governor’s proposals. Students here in Southeast Minnesota stand to benefit a great deal from some of the details of this bill. For example, we maintain funding designated for students with limited English-speaking skills – dollars that are much-needed in our rapidly growing communities. In addition, we retain the funds for the Electronic Library of Minnesota, which allows our students and community members to have access to the most up-to-date news and information. A bill I carried for the Southland School District is also part of this legislation. The district completed disabled access projects, and this bill would extend the timeline in which the district can levy for these projects, instead of forcing them to deplete other funds.

Also included in the E-12 omnibus bill is a measure to repeal the Profile of Learning. The Senate already has voted twice in committee to repeal the Profile, and the full Senate should receive a chance to take a final vote on a Profile repeal and the education budget bill within the next few weeks.

Another issue that is again receiving attention in both bodies is Local Government Aid (LGA). When Gov. Pawlenty included deep LGA cuts as part of his budget proposal in February, city officials in our rural communities were rightly worried about possible impacts. I have been working closely with local mayors and city managers since receiving this news, and I have never wavered on my campaign promise to protect our cities from losing these important funds. I was very pleased when the Senate DFL released its budget proposal, which significantly lessens the deep LGA cuts proposed by Gov. Pawlenty.

In another effort to preserve some of our LGA funds, I recently signed onto a bill that would cut market-value tax credits and local transit levy takeovers instead of relying heavily on LGA cuts. It is my hope that all of these measures will allow us to pass something through the Senate that alleviates some of the burden being placed on Greater Minnesota.

On another positive note, two bills that I authored recently were passed by the full Senate. The first, SF 941, was a combined effort with the Minnesota Department of Public Safety and state fire chiefs to respond to our nation’s increased need for homeland security. Minnesota already has statewide Hazardous Materials (HazMat) teams that are trained to respond to incidents involving chemical materials. This bill aims to improve response time by allowing the HazMat teams to also respond to certain acts of terrorism and incidents involving biological materials, and allowing the state’s chemical assessment teams to mitigate instead of just evaluate hazardous materials accidents. The second bill, SF 1015, would make it easier for veterans to be notified of potential health hazards that may affect them by allowing the commissioner of Veterans Affairs to access taxpayer identification information. Both bills were passed through committee and the full Senate and now are awaiting House floor action.

Some very important decisions will be made in the coming weeks, so please continue to contact me with your questions or concerns. I can be reached at: G-24 State Capitol, 75 Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., Blvd., St. Paul, MN 55155, (651) 296-9248.

Sen. Dan Sparks, DFL-Austin, represents District 27, which includes Freeborn and Mower counties and part of Fillmore County, in the Minnesota Senate.