Minnesota lawmakers opened the 2020 session on Tuesday mindful of election year politics but vowing to make progress on needed public works projects, improving the state's education system and helping people with diabetes access affordable insulin.
"We're in an election year, which means that everything feels a little bit different. Every issue seems a little more heightened," Senate Majority Leader Paul Gazelka, R-Nisswa, told his colleagues on the Senate floor. "But I don't want us to forget the things we need to do to help prosper Minnesota."
The leader of the DFL-controlled House also acknowledged election year pressures, and said Democrats understand that some of the ideas they propose this session will not become law.
"This session we will spend some time articulating our vision for Minnesota, and some of that won't become law. We know that," said House Speaker Melissa Hortman, DFL-Brooklyn Park. "But rather than dismiss it as just politics it's important to elevate what we do in a democracy. It's about telling Minnesotans what we would do if we have a Democratic Senate and making clear where the future is going."
After wrapping up a two-year budget in 2019, state lawmakers are not technically obligated to get much done this session. But they arrived in St. Paul this week with long lists of constituent priorities, some the subject of clamorous hallway rallies around the Capitol rotunda.
Advocates for tougher gun laws crowded the House and Senate chamber entrances, greeting lawmakers with signs, cookies and hugs. The Senate gathering was punctuated with cheers from outside the wooden doors, where a group was calling for driver's licenses for undocumented immigrants.
But even before the demonstrations, swearing-in ceremonies and prayers that accompany the opening gavels in the House and Senate, negotiations already were underway on a bonding bill to fund long-term public works projects around the state, one of the coming session's top legislative priorities.
The four-month session will include a mix of policy and financial decisionmaking centered on the public works debt package and the competing uses for the state's predicted $1.3 billion budget surplus. How much the divided Legislature can accomplish remains to be seen with all 201 House and Senate seats up for election this November.