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House Caucus Begins Redesign Effort

Efforts launched by the House would take an outside-the-committee-process look at approaches to redesign local and state governments, tax policy, and more.
(Published Apr 14, 2010)

A House Redesign Caucus had its first meeting on April 6, and invited several non-legislative people to comment on matters related to redesigning various aspects of state and local government.

Rep. Paul Marquart (DFL-Dilworth) called together the bi-partisan group with 12 to 15 legislators, signaling to outsiders that many legislators are interested in helping to shape this “new normal.” Staff from the League and the Association of Minnesota Counties represented local government perspectives. Rep. Marquart said he hoped the Senate would participate in future meetings.

Moving forward with “innovation” bills
The caucus discussed plans for the innovation-type bills brought forward this session. While Rep. Marsha Swails’s (DFL-Woodbury) bill, HF 2840, will continue to move on its own as a stand-alone bill, the others will be amended into one package, and Marquart will become the chief author.

The bills will officially be amended together on April 15 in the House State and Local Government Operations, Reform and Technology Committee under number HF 2227, originally authored by Rep. Bill Hilty (DFL-Finlayson). The bills are:

The consolidation plan does not exactly line up with the Senate work in this area. For example, Sen. Terri Bonoff (DFL-Minnetonka) has introduced SF 2620, which is the companion to HF 3011.

Five areas targeted for redesign
If this proposal moves forward, there will be plenty of interim work to be done when these bills become law. The Redesign Caucus hopes to send out a Request for Innovations proposal in five redesign areas: local government, state government and enterprise collaboration, education, health care, and tax policy.

Working groups will form for each of these redesign areas. Under the rough timeline presented, the ideas would come back to the Redesign Caucus in August, and each working group would produce two bills from the ideas generated by the public. The bills would then be introduced early in the 2011 session. Expect to hear more on this Request for Innovations proposal.

Background
This work began in 2009, when Marquart, as Property Tax chair, led the charge for redesign by convening three different working groups to start brainstorming and developing legislation. The three groups focused on mandate relief, overhauling the property tax system, and developing accountability measures. Of the three, only a small part of the mandate relief efforts actually made it into law.

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