Minnesota Legislative Reference Library

Library News Items        RSS

1/27/2012
Minnesota is Highlighted in a New Report on Aging in Place
When new policy reports with 50 state coverage arrive in the Library, it's fun to see whether Minnesota is rated highly or Minnesota programs are highlighted. What about the new report by AARP and the National Conference of State Legislatures, Aging in Place: A State Survey of Livability Policies and Practices?

The first of two Minnesota mentions deals with transportation coordination and quotes Senator Dibble. The following section about the Minnesota Council on Transportation Access is from pages 34-35 of the report:

In 2010 the Minnesota Legislature enacted legislation to establish the Minnesota Council on Transportation Access. The council must "study, evaluate, oversee, and make recommendations to improve the coordination, availability, accessibility, efficiency, cost-effectiveness and safety of transportation services provided to the transit public" before the law sunsets on June 30, 2014. To accomplish this, the council must produce a biennial work plan that, among other requirements, must identify best practices within and outside the state, identify barriers to coordination and facilitate creation of transportation brokerages. Council on Transportation Access members include legislators and staff from the governor's office as well as the Council on Disability, the Minnesota Public Transit Association, the Council on Aging and other state agencies. A report to the governor is due each January 15 starting in 2012.

As one of the law's 175 authors, Minnesota Senator Scott Dibble wants to see correction of problems brought to his attention by riders. These include some operators that do not serve all areas of the state, riders who are left at county lines or those who must wait hours or days for a trip. "This (unreliable level of service) causes older adults to move out of their homes and communities and forces changes that might be more expensive overall," Dibble said. "In fact, they might be able to stay in their homes and be active members of their community if transportation services were improved."

At the same time, according to Senator Dibble,"The legislature is looking at land use patterns and the state's urban development policies and priorities to make sure people can be closer to the services they need in their lives, such as housing, services and employment."

The 2012 Minnesota Transportation Access Annual Report has been released.

In the Buildings Standards section, Minnesota's Visitability Requirement was noted.

All new construction of "single-family homes, duplexes, triplexes, and multilevel townhouses" that is financed through the state Housing Finance Agency must incorporate basic visitability access into design and construction. The statute defines visitability as "a dwelling so that people with mobility impairments may enter and comfortably stay for a duration," but limits the design features to "one no-step entrance, 32-inch clear doorways throughout the dwelling, and a one-half bathroom on the main level.”246 This excludes hallways, reinforced bathroom walls, and light switches and environmental control locations that are included in other state visitability statutes. (p. 46-47)

 E-mail or call a librarian at 6-8338 if you would like to borrow the print copy of the report. *

---

1/4/2012
Debating Public vs. Private Employment

Are public sector employees overpaid or underpaid? A newly published article, "Debating Public vs. Private," in Minnesota Economic Trends, takes a look at the issue. The analysis includes a list of public sector compensation studies; some of the studies found public sector workers to be underpaid and some found public sector workers to be overpaid. The article also compares the standard sources of state and local employment data in a chart and analyzes why the numbers vary.

Just how many public employees are there in Minnesota? The public sector is the second largest employer in Minnesota, but state and local government employment has decreased as a percentage of total employment in the last 35 years.

Minnesota Economic Trends is a quarterly publication from the Minnesota Department of Employment and Economic Development. 

---

12/29/2011
Model Legislation
As each new legislative session approaches, the Library often receives requests for the newest edition of the Council of State Governments’ Suggested State Legislation. Suggested State Legislation is a yearly compilation of “innovative legislation from one state that may be beneficial to other states." The 2012 edition was released this morning.

There are other sources for suggested state legislation. The Uniform Law Commission has been working toward the uniformity of state laws since 1892. “The Uniform Law Commission provides states with non-partisan, well conceived, and well drafted legislation that brings clarity and stability to critical areas of state statutory law." A recent example of their work, the Uniform Electronic Legal Material Act was approved this summer. (The working group for this new uniform law was chaired by Michele Timmons, Minnesota’s Revisor of Statutes.) The Uniform Law Commission also tracks which states adopt the uniform acts.

The American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) is another organization that drafts model legislation. ALEC traditionally has made their model legislation available to members only, but the Center for Media and Democracy recently posted many model laws from ALEC.

Although the National Conference of State Legislatures (NCSL) does not compile model legislation like similar organizations, NCSL compiles recently passed state legislation by topic areas.  

---

12/7/2011
Minnesota Legislators of Native American Descent
Attorney Susan Allen won the DFL primary in District 61B. She will face Nathan Blumenshire in a special election on January 10, 2012, to fill the seat of Jeff Hayden, newly elected to the Senate. If elected, Allen would be the first woman of Native American descent to serve in the Minnesota Legislature.

Some news outlets have noted that Senator Skip Finn was the first Native American to serve in the Senate, and even the first Native American Minnesota legislator. Wrong on both counts!

There was at least one member of the Minnesota Legislature who was Native American who served in the Senate long before Skip Finn. Senator Henry G. Bailly served in the first state legislature (1857-1858). For years people have been inaccurately reporting that Sen. Finn was the first to serve in the Minnesota Senate. Bailly also served in the Minnesota Territorial Council, the predecessor to the Minnesota State Senate.

In addition, there were a few House members who had Native American ancestry who also served before Finn. As we do more research, it's more than possible that we will find other former members who had Native American ancestry. Here are the members we've found, so far, who are members of minority groups (there are probably more that we haven't found yet). Self-Reported Minority Legislators Use the drop down box to limit the list to Native Americans. 

---

10/11/2011
Old Vote Total Information - In Time for the New Election
Scanned vote totals from special and general elections going back nearly a century are available on the new Minnesota Elections: Dates and Vote Totals page on the Legislative Reference Library’s website.

October 18 marks the next legislative special election. Who won in past special elections? That information has been available on the Library’s Special Elections Web page for some time. Who won in the general elections? You can search by legislative session in the Library’s Legislators Past & Present database.

But what were the vote totals? Who ran and lost? Previously, finding that information required looking up the results of individual races in the Legislative Manuals. Now it's online, the fruits of a long-term project. Legislative Library staff have scanned election results from the Legislative Manuals and made them available in a sortable, useful table.

The table entries link to scans of the Legislative Manual pages, saved as PDF files. The files were made with optical character recognition software, so each can be searched for names. The search results will be imperfect; sometimes the font or faintness of the print meant that words were not detected by the software.

Additions to the table are planned, as we find time. We will add general election primary results. We have identified some special election primary results, too, but they are often difficult to find. We will add a search function across all the years.

Let us know if you find the table useful, or if you find any errors.

 

---

9/30/2011
State Planning
Steve Dornfield recapped the history of the Minnesota State Planning Agency in a September 26 MINNPOST article, "Tough Economic Times -- And No State Planning Agency." The Legislative Reference Library has hundreds of reports from the agency as it evolved over the years, including the Minnesota Milestones reports mentioned in the article and the 1995 report, Within Our Means: Tough Choices for Government Spending.

The agency had a library of its own that closed in 2003. We scoured that collection for reports that were not already in the Legislative Reference Library. It's difficult to gather a definitive list of agency reports because of the changing names over time - it was variously known as Minnesota Planning, or the Minnesota State Planning Agency, and finally the Minnesota Office of Strategic and Long Term Planning. Here's an imperfect - but extensive - list of 709 documents. If anyone wants to study the agency and its work, the Legislative Library has a wealth of reports, news clippings, and legislative background on the agency and the people involved.

 

---

9/26/2011
Visitors from Georgia - The One on the Black Sea
We hosted four journalists, a University administrator, and an election official from Georgia this morning. They are focusing on government accountability during a week-long stay in Minnesota. After getting a broad legislative overview from me, they were headed for a tour of the Capitol, a talk with Senator Harrington, and a discussion with Secretary of State Ritchie. With a late afternoon trip to the Mall of America, I bet they will be exhausted! Later in the week they are talking with long-time Capitol reporter Bill Salisbury and visiting the ALMANAC TV show. Their League of Women Voters hosts have arranged a great itinerary.

The Georgians were engaged and interested and asked questions. They were interested in the budget process and how budget changes could be made after the biennial budget is set. Are there reserves? In talking about how legislators communicate with citizens I showed examples of a Legislative Web Site member page, a personal legislator web page, and a legislator Facebook page. Facebook pages are popular with Georgian legislators too, they told me.

I hope the background I provided helped set the stage for their upcoming discussions. "You'll be experts on Minnesota politics by the end of the week," I told them.

 Robbie LaFleur

---

9/14/2011
A Short Time With Our Intern Leads to Long-Term Rewards
This summer the Legislative Library was lucky enough to have a high school intern who helped enrich our Legislators Past & Present database. Linnaea Honl-Stuenkel's project was to scan the profiles of legislators published in the House SESSION WEEKLY so that they could be linked to each legislator's record. During her volunteer time she added all the articles from the 1990s - 184 in all! For example, look at the bottom of the biography for former Speaker Steve Sviggum; there are three interesting articles from SESSION WEEKLY now linked. We appreciate her work, and it will be interesting and useful to many researchers. Thanks, Linnaea!




 

---

9/6/2011
The State Fair Opinion Poll as a Family Experience
HOUSE State Fair Opinion Poll results, SENATE State Fair Opinion Poll results

Despite the utterly unusual shutdown summer, some legislative rituals played out as usual. The State Fair came. There were some stifling days in the Education Building, and some with a tolerable temperature. Those staff members and legislators who volunteered on cooler days lucked out.

Fairgoers flocked to the House and Senate booths to fill out the State Fair opinion polls on legislative topics. Scott Magnuson from Senate Information told Mary Lahammer on an Almanac segment that the high turnout for the opinion poll in a non-election year was unusual (see the first segment on the September 2 show). House Public Information noted in a video press release that fairgoers filled out a record 11,000 House State Fair polls. The House and Senate 2011 results are posted.

Some visitors complained. A few complained angrily. During my day at the Senate booth only a handful expressed feelings on the Vikings stadium issue, but one woman spit out, "Let the rich people pay for it!" A man in a Vikings jersey was filling out the poll on the opposite end. He looked up, startled, but didn't offer a rebuttal.

As the voting machine filled, super-careful Scott Magnuson took out armfuls of polls and stacked them in boxes. "You never know," he said, "something could go wrong with the machine and we'd have to count them again."

It's heartening to find that many people use the opinion poll as an opportunity to discuss issues with senators, staff members, or the people next to them. I asked if I could take a photo of this family because they were having such a good time talking with each other about the poll questions.

For those who would like to visit earlier years of the opinion polls, the House has them online back to 1997. The Senate page includes polls back to 2004. Here are some additional Senate State Fair polls from the Library's collection:1988, 1989, 1990, 1991, 1993 (joint), 1994 (joint), 1996 (joint), 1997 (on the House page; it was a joint poll), 1999, 2001, 2003.

 

---

8/30/2011
An Upcoming Anniversary - Ratification Day on September 8
The recently completed Minnesota Women's Legislative Timeline uses the passage of women's suffrage as a beginning point to look at legislation passed by the Minnesota Legislature affecting women. It includes a short essay describing the passage of suffrage in Minnesota.

The 92nd anniversary of the ratification of the 19th amendment by the Minnesota Legislature is next week. On September 8, 1919, on the first afternoon of a special session, the House and then the Senate passed Minnesota Joint Resolution No. 1. Pages from the House and Senate Journals detail the process, but a page one article from the next day's Minneapolis Morning Tribune gave a sense of the celebration that accompanied the votes. Activities of "Ratification Day" were described in "State Women Celebrate as Suffrage Wins."

"A Victory parade carried several hundred Minneapolis women to the Capitol at ten o'clock yesterday morning in a processional that was a triumph. People standing at street corners cheered the cars, most of which were draped with sunflowers and daisies, yellow bunting and yellow "suffrage" tags. Men and women in street cars leaned out to wave greeting. "Godspeed!" breathed an elderly man.

"They celebrated first of all by singing "The Battle Hymn of the Republic" in the Senate Chamber and the corridor of the State Capitol as their paean of joy for the tidings that marked the end of forty years of drudgery for the cause of suffrage. Womanly, they next gave vent to their emotions by serving an old-fashioned chicken dinner to the men of Minnesota who directly gave them the vote."

That evening a Jubilee Banquet was attended by nearly 500 women from branches of the Minnesota Woman Suffrage Association. Guests included Minnesota Speaker of the House William Nolan. It was the end of WWI, only two years after the Russian Revolution of 1917, and Rep. Nolan touched on national concerns. "You will get the vote just in time, as matters of great moment face the people of this country and we heed your aid. Perhaps the greatest issue is whether or not this shall remain a government of the people, by the people and for the people. We don't want a soviet government; that would mean moral and political degradation and starvation. There is not room now for divisions, men against women. We can all work together. Here in America we can only make a success in government by participation of all people. The man or woman in America who has the right to vote and fails to exercise suffrage is not a good citizen."

Senator Ole Sageng was introduced as the "Father of suffrage in Minnesota" and said, "I am glad that as far as Minnesota is concerned the contest is won." Minnesota was the 15th state to ratify the amendment.

It would be almost a year - August 18, 1920 - before the required three-fifths of the states voted yes. It came down to Tennessee. A recent Thicket blog entry from the National Conference of State Legislatures includes a great story about a young Tennessee state legislator who cast the deciding vote and a telegram that made a difference. Read about Harry Burn (and his mother!) in "Putting the "Rat" in Ratification of the 19th Amendment" by Karl Kurtz.  

---

8/19/2011
A Great Outcome - Despite Mind-Numbing Acronyms
Good news for the future of official legislative documents online -- this month the NCCUSL passed UELMA.

Need more explanation? Although state legislative legal documents, like Statues and Session Laws, have been available online for some time, the printed volumes remain the official versions. The legal community is eager to use digital versions that are authentic, the term indicating that the version is reliable and can be used for legal citation.

In July the National Conference of Commissioners on Uniform State Laws (NCCUSL) approved language for a uniform law addressing the authenticity and preservation of online state digital legal materials. Following some administrative details and a comment period, the Uniform Electronic Legal Material Act (UELMA) will be available for states to adapt or adopt. The law does not dictate specific methods or technology, but sets up a framework of essential components required for a trusted system for official documents. The documents must be:

• Authenticated, by providing a method to determine that it is unaltered;
• Preserved, either in electronic or print form; and
• Accessible to the public on a permanent basis.

For more information on NCCUSL and the Uniform Electronic Legal Material Act, see the July issue of The Legislative Lawyer. Read more history about the push for authentic documents in a digital preservation blog from the Library of Congress, The Signal: "Meet My Trustworthy Friend UELMA."

Our Minnesota connection: Michele Timmons, the Revisor of Statutes. She headed the NCCUSL committee that drafted the UELMA language and sought its approval by the full commission. She was an appropriate choice. Under her leadership the Minnesota Revisor's Office has been working on the building blocks for setting up a system of official digital legal documents. Preparations include building a secure IT structure to ensure unaltered documents and setting up multiple backup sites. According to Michele, there will likely be legislation implementing UELMA introduced in Minnesota in 2012, although authors have not yet been identified.  

---

8/11/2011
The Legislator With the Longest Gap in Service
Charley Shaw posted an article in Politics in Minnesota on August 5th about former DFL legislator Ted Suss. Depending on the results of redistricting, he plans to run for the Legislature again, either against Republican Rep. Chris Swedzinski of Ghent or Republican Sen. Gary Dahms of Redwood Falls. If elected in 2012, he would return to the Capitol 34 years after he left.

Only two legislators have had longer gaps in legislative service. Senator/Representative Charles Andrew Gilman resigned from the House in 1880 and returned in 1915. The longest-gap winner is Representative/Senator Thomas Smullen of Le Seuer, who left office in 1875 and returned in 1931, at age 78. His dedication to public service was evident in the jobs he held between his stints at the Capitol; he was a city assessor, a judge, a register of deeds, a deputy bank examiner, and a mayor.

 E-mail or call a librarian at 6-8338 if you would like a copy of Charley Shaw's article on, "Former legislator Ted Suss Planning 2012 Run." *

---

8/3/2011
A Report on Cost-Effective Transportation Funding and Policy Choices
Minnesota scores well in a new report, Measuring Transportation Investments: The Road to Results, from the Pew Center on the States and the Rockefeller Foundation. A comparative state table lists six goal areas: safety, jobs and commerce, mobility, access, environmental stewardship, and infrastructure preservation. States are listed as trailing behind, mixed results, or leading the way. Minnesota is one of five states that is "leading the way" in all six goal areas.

 E-mail or call a librarian at 6-8338 if you would like to borrow the report. *

---

8/1/2011
There Was a Committee on Binding Twine?
We recently improved the committee search page for the Legislators Past & Present database.

Most of the questions we get about committees involve changes in the number and structure over the past couple of decades. For example, we compiled a list of Senate committees and House committees from 1989-2010 using our database. Committee names are also an interesting reflection of issues over time. Because of the insect plagues in the 1900s it's no surprise that there were committees dealing with grasshoppers, but would you have guessed there were committees for many years with binding twine in the title? Other interesting names include committees on tree culture, ferries, and express and electric railways.
 

---

7/5/2011
Tax Expenditure Reporting
The Library's June issue of Just In: New and Notable Books & Reports started with this short essay.

In a recent report from the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, Promoting State Budget Accountability Through Tax Expenditure Reporting, Minnesota was noted as one of the best states for comprehensive and informative reporting on tax expenditures. Tax expenditures are tax credits, exemptions, and deductions that reduce state revenue. Though most were originally passed with specific policy goals, the fact they are not reported with other direct budget expenditures leads critics to call many of them tax loopholes or hidden corporate subsidies.

Ward Einess, a former commissioner of the Minnesota Department of Revenue, wrote a helpful overview article in the February 2011 issue of the MN Journal: "An Important Piece in the Budgetary Puzzle: Tax expenditures Impact the State Budget in the Same Way as Spending Programs, With Less Scrutiny" (see p. 8). For background and information on legislation affecting tax expenditure reporting, see the October 2010, Issue Brief: Tax Expenditures, from the Minnesota House of Representatives Fiscal Analysis Office.

The Minnesota Department of Revenue has reported on tax expenditures biennially since 1985. All editions of that report, State of Minnesota Tax Expenditure Budget, have been scanned by the Legislative Reference Library and are available online. In 2010, the Minnesota Legislature asked the Department of Revenue to provide recommendations on better oversight of tax expenditures. The Department formed a study team of staff members and outside economists and, in February 2011, released, Tax Expenditure Review Report: Bringing Tax Expenditures into the Budget Process.

  E-mail or call a librarian at 6-8338 if you would like to borrow any of the reports. *

---

Travel directions