Gov. Mark Dayton called a special session following the adjournment of this legislative session and will return to work at 3 pm today.
Legislators and the Governor negotiated all day Monday, but failed to reach an agreement in time for the midnight adjournment as prescribed by the state’s constitution. At 11:30pm, they announced a global agreement on the remaining bills and the Governor called them back into a special session at 12:01am Tuesday morning.
The House and Senate now have adjourned until 3pm today so the various chairs and staff can work out the details of the bills and get them to the Revisor’s office to be posted sometime today. The plan is to work through Tuesday and, if needed until 7am Wednesday morning, to get everything passed and sent to the Governor.
MREA is told the E-12 bill is agreed to and has a target of $477 million in new spending. That’s enough for 2&2 or more. There will be $50 million for a school readiness enhancement, but we don’t have the details on how that will work and what happens to the current Voluntary Pre-K recipients, if anything at all. Funding for TRA is in doubt.
MREA will provide details on the E-12 bill and the tax bill for Ag2School and Debt Service Equalization when they are available.
