A historic biennial session of Minnesota’s Legislature came to a chaotic, heated and intensely partisan close on Sunday night, with DFL legislators using their narrow majorities to muscle through a mammoth “mega-omnibus” bill over the objections of outraged Republicans.
At a record-shattering length of 1,430 pages, the mega-omnibus includes the nine major pieces of legislation passed by both chambers and negotiated in conference committees, including the Energy and Agriculture omnibus bill sponsored by Sen. Nick Frentz, DFL-North Mankato.
Republicans were quick to accuse House Speaker Melissa Hortman and Gov. Tim Walz of hypocrisy, noting that both had harshly criticized the 990-page “omnibus prime” bill passed by the GOP-run Legislature in 2018, and vowed at the time to never back similar legislation.
Under the Minnesota Constitution, each bill is supposed to adhere to just a single subject. However, enforcement of that provision has become increasingly lax in recent decades, with both parties advancing steadily larger omnibus packages.
Hortman and other DFLers argued that in the wake of “unprecedented delays,” the mega-omnibus bill had become necessary in order to deliver final passage of bills previously backed by both chambers and refined by the conference committees.
Rep. Jeff Brand, DFL-St. Peter, said that House Republicans broke with tradition and acted in bad faith when they slowed down debate on a bill to put a proposed Equal Rights Amendment on the 2026 ballot, an effort which ultimately failed after failing to secure Senate passage.
“Over the past two weeks, an enormous amount of filibustering has happened in the House,” Brand said. “You’ve had people talking about cheeseburgers for two hours straight.”
While legislatures in other states have put fairly strict time limits on how long a member can speak, the Minnesota House has traditionally allowed free flowing debate, with members able to speak on a topic as often and as long as they want.
In response to last week’s lengthy debates, Hortman repeatedly cut off lengthy debates by “calling the question,” and indicated that should the DFL maintain its House majority in this fall’s elections, strict time limits on debate could be coming, a move Brand said he could support.
Republicans had a very different take on the end of session. Retiring Reps. Brian Pfarr, R-Le Sueur, and John Petersburg, R-Waseca, said that the DFL majority had crossed a line in passing the mega-omnibus bill with just minutes to go until midnight.
“The majority didn’t abide by any of the rules that were set up,” Petersburg said. “The party that proclaimed itself the champion of oppressed people became the oppressor.”
Pfarr said that given that the DFL majorities have had full control of the legislative process for two years now, things should have gone much more orderly. He compared the effort to override all debate and minority objections to the bill to what one might see in a third world country.
Notably, the complex negotiations to reach agreement on a rideshare pay bill consumed much of the session’s final hours, helping to doom not only the ERA but also efforts to pass a bonding package and reach a long-awaited agreement on sports betting legalization.
Bonding is traditionally the signature accomplishment of an even numbered legislative session. With a three-fifths vote in both chambers required to pass a bill, it’s also one of the only pieces of legislation that this legislature’s narrow majorities couldn’t pass on their own.
Legislators did manage to pass a historic $2.5 billion bonding package last year, which will help to ease the sting of failing to pass one this year. Still, with more than $7 billion in requests having poured in from across the state, legislators hoped to pass a roughly $950 million bill.
A last minute attempt by Democrats to pass a cash-only $71 million bonding bill passed in the House but the Senate was unable to pass it before the midnight deadline. Frentz said that the failure to agree on a bill was for him the biggest disappointment of the session.
Though many Republicans had hoped to secure major funding for key infrastructure projects in their districts, Sen. Bill Lieske, R-Lonsdale, said that after the extremely partisan and controversial finish to the session, no Republican would sign on to support a bonding bill.
With the bonding bill dead, the rideshare bill will go down as one of this session’s most notable accomplishments. Struck in the final hours of the session, the deal included a 20% bump to driver pay but was toned down enough to convince Uber and Lyft to drop their threats to leave the state.
Last year, a rideshare bill which included even more robust increases to driver pay passed the House and Senate, after Fateh used his leverage as a member of the DFL’s precarious one-seat Senate majority to revive a bill that appeared to initially stall.
Gov. Tim Walz issued the only veto of his tenure thus far to stop it after Uber and Lyft warned that it could increase ride costs by 50% or more. Fateh accused the Walz of betraying a pledge to sign the bill if it came to his desk, which Walz denied.
Walz and DFL legislators promised to revisit the topic in 2024, with the Governor using his executive authority to convene a working group of stakeholders, in order to develop a framework for legislation that could satisfy all parties involved.
In the meantime, the Minneapolis City Council passed a more generous rideshare ordinance over the veto of Mayor Jacob Frey, leading Uber and Lyft to threaten to pull out of Minneapolis and potentially surrounding suburbs altogether.
Earlier this month, a group of DFL legislators including House Majority Leader Jamie Long announced that they had reached a “compromise” with the Minneapolis City Council. However, a lack of support from Uber and Lyft ultimately led that particular effort to fizzle.
Notably, the final agreement will override Minneapolis’s ordinance at the insistence of Uber and Lyft. The minimum pay rates of $1.28 per mile and 31¢ per minute hew closely to the proposed rates of $1.20 per mile and 35¢ per minute proposed by Frey.
While apparently acceptable to both Uber and Lyft and MULDA (the Minnesota Uber/Lyft Drivers Association), neither side was exactly overjoyed by the agreement. In a statement, Uber’s Josh Gold warned that prices would increase, while MULDA’s Eid Ali promised to push for more.
Even with the acquiescence of Uber and Lyft, the legislation passed with minimal bipartisan support. Pfarr argued that slapping additional regulations and pay requirements on independent contractors was a heavy handed approach, and warned that it could set a poor precedent.
That said, Pfarr said he understood the pressure on lawmakers to find some sort of agreement that would keep Uber and Lyft from leaving, with a majority of the Minneapolis City Council appealing prepared to let its ordinance go into effect.
With the overwhelming majority of Uber and Lyft rides taking place in the Twin Cities, Sen. Nick Frentz, DFL-North Mankato, and other Greater Minnesota legislators were not intimately involved with negotiations and said it was not a top concern for their constituents.
Rep. Kristi Pursell, DFL-Northfield, did describe the agreement as a “great relief” and offered praise for her colleagues who helped to negotiate it. Pursell said that the bill would fulfill a “moral obligation” to protect and uplift struggling workers.
Frentz
As disappointed as he was by the failure to pass a bonding bill, Sen. Nick Frentz said that the legislature “managed to do a lot of good things this session,” many of them tucked into the mega-omnibus package including his Energy and Agriculture omnibus package.
For Sen. Frentz, the centerpiece of the bill was the permitting reform portion, designed to help clean energy projects come to fruition more quickly to help the state move towards its ambitious goal of 100% clean power by 2040.
A pension reform package co-authored by Sen. Frentz passed with unanimous support. It includes a grab bag of reforms and a signature provision to provide $28.5 million in one time funding to lower the retirement age for teachers hired after 1989 from 66 to 65 in 2025 instead of 2026.
Frentz also touted the unanimous approval of a bill to provide $30 million for Emergency Medical Services in rural areas. The issue has become a severe issue for many rural communities, and Republicans have indicated they’d like to see even more funding.
Brand
As a strong supporter of the proposed Equal Rights Amendment, Rep. Jeff Brand, DFL-St. Peter, said that he was deeply disappointed to see the clock run out before the Senate could pass legislation putting it on the ballot in 2026.
While some advocates of the ERA suggested a special session to pass the bill, calling a special session would require the support of Gov. Walz, who quickly slammed the door on such talk. Furthermore, it’s not clear if the bill has the unanimous DFL support in the Senate it would need to move forward.
Between now and 2025, Brand said that advocates of the ERA could take their time to lobby legislators. Still, Republicans appear to have no interest in the House passed-proposal, which includes language that would put a right to an abortion into the constitution.
Many Republicans expressed such strong opposition to the proposed text that they threatened to hold up the bonding bill to stop it. Brand said that while he strongly supports a bonding bill he would choose the ERA and other DFL-led initiatives if forced to choose.
“The Governor wants to make our state the best place in the country to raise a family and grow a business - I’m all for it,” Brand said.
Pfarr
Rep. Brian Pfarr, R-Le Sueur, said that serving in an increasingly polarized legislature as part of the minority party over the last two terms has been a deeply frustrating experience, though he is going to miss some of the people he’s become friends with up at the capitol.
Pfarr put the failure to have a clean and orderly end of session firmly at the feet of the DFL, which he said has “done a huge disservice to Minnesota.” He said that the Senate DFL in particular should not have relied on Sen. Mitchell’s vote.
“In most of our professions if a police officer or a teacher has an issue, they’re put on paid administrative leave,” Pfarr said. “You’re not allowed to cast the deciding vote on whether you should have to recuse yourself.”
A strong supporter of gun rights, Pfarr said that it was a relief to see the Senate once again block some of the more sweeping gun control bills up for consideration, such as the safe storage bill and a bill to require swift reporting of lost or stolen guns to law enforcement.
However, Pfarr was disappointed to see the straw purchase bill, a strongly bipartisan effort to increase penalties for those who buy a gun on behalf of someone ineligible to purchase or possess it, coupled with the more divisive ban on binary triggers.
Draheim
Sen. Rich Draheim, R-Madison Lake, lambasted DFL leadership for their management of the session, saying that party has had full control of the process for two years and had no need to ram through a more than 1,400 page bill covering 73 topics in the last minutes of the session.
“They don't know how to manage time, they don't know how to manage the process,” Draheim said. “They knew two years ago when they would have to have everything done, and they had the House, the Senate, all of the government agencies and the Governor - no roadblocks.”
Draheim said that the DFL completely shut Republicans out of key negotiations, even on bonding where Republican votes would have been needed to pass a traditional bill, instead attempting to rely on a tenuous majority further imperiled by Sen. Mitchell’s troubles.
With the session ticking down to its final hours, Draheim said that separate bills were crammed together and entire sections added, with little respect for maintaining germaneness or with providing transparency to members as to what they were voting on.
“I’ve never seen anything like it - I don’t think anyone has. We have set procedures and they weren’t followed,” Draheim said. “Minnesotans expect us to work together, they expect us to be transparent.”
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