Skip to main content

Time to act - no omnibus bill



Please take action on this from MMN350.org - Tim

The 2018 session is coming to a close, and many of the bills we have notified you about will soon be voted on. And what a tangled web they’re weaving! Some of these bills will be voted on individually, some in the form of an Omnibus, and some, crazily enough, will be voted on both individually and in an Omnibus.
This week, we are giving you an update on the bills we have notified you about and asking you to urge your representative to vote no on the Omnibus bills and bad bills we have been tracking.
What is an Omnibus bill?
This is a bill which bundles together a variety of bills to be voted on as one large bill. This means that some legislators believe they need to vote yes to bills that include bad things so that some good things will get passed too.  We are hearing the party in power may even combine all Omnibus bills into one gigantic Omnibus bill and present that to the Governor. Either way, we want our representatives to vote against these omnibus bills.
Bad Bills MN350 has Tracked and Omnibus Status
Over this legislative session, we have sent out actions related to several bills. Some of these bills have been attached to an omnibus and some have not. We continue to oppose the following bills and have attached Fact Sheets for each of them.
  • The Xcel Nuclear Cost Recovery bill – SF 3504 / HF 3708  
    • This is moving through as both an individual bill and also included in the House Energy Omnibus bill HF 4289.
  • The Guilty by Association bill – SF 3463 / HF 3693  
    • This is not yet included in an Omnibus. It may be included in House Public Safety Omnibus bill, HF 2856.
  • The Greenlight the Line 3 Pipeline bill – SF3510 / HF 3759  
    • As of yet, not part of an Omnibus. This bill would shortchange an existing permit process at the Public Utilities Commission and immediately give approval to Enbridge, the pipeline company, to build the new line along their preferred route. The Commission uses a judge to sort out all the facts and issue a final report to them to help them decide these complicated cases. The judge’s report was just issued and she recommended a different route, so the older, leaking line could be removed at the same time. We think the process should  remain intact at the Commission.
As a side note, the solar bill we supported, Rep Jean Wagenius’s School Solar Bill HF 3675/SF 3129, was not passed, but the Senate version was amended into the Senate Energy Omnibus Monday and language to put solar on top of hospitals is in the House Energy Omnibus bill! Maybe one or the other will make it in the final combined Energy Omnibus bill.
What’s your action?
  1. Pick one or more of these bills to focus on, but please mention your opposition to an Omnibus bill whichever one you chose.
  2. Please call your representatives and tell them to vote no on your chosen bill and Omnibus bills, specifically citing one or more of these bad bills. Bills should pass on their own merit and be voted on individually.
  3. And/or you can tag your representatives on social media, telling them to vote no. Social media allows you to communicate with your representative and to educate people in your social circle about state politics!
  4. It is important to note that the Energy Omnibus will be heard in the Senate tomorrow and in the house on Friday. This Omnibus contains the Xcel bill.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Let us all walk in the foot steps of John Lewis

By John King In Selma, Alabama, on Sunday, March 7, 1965, John Lewis, standing in the lead of a long line of marchers, looked down from the crest of The Edmund Pettus Bridge at the line of police armed with clubs, whips and truncheons and said, “I am going to die here.” Lewis intended to lead the marchers from Selma to the capital Montgomery, to demand access to voting for Black people in Alabama. Sheriff Jim Clark lowered his gas mask and led the deputies, some on horseback and some on foot, into the line of marchers. Under swinging clubs and hooves trampling, Lewis was the first to go down. Women and children were not spared. Choking and blinded by tear gas, they were struck by clubs and truncheons wrapped with barbed wire. Lewis, with a fractured skull and a severe concussion, almost did die. The nearby Good Samaritan Hospital did not have enough beds to care for the injured marchers. A nation watched in horror as news footage of that bloody day appeared on T...
2 comments
Read more

More Republican dirty tricks

  As a Blue Dog Corporate Democrat, 7th District Rep. Collin Peterson’s votes in Congress go against the beliefs and convictions of progressive voters in our district. I’m one of those progressive 7th District voters. Like most average voters I rarely actually encounter my Member of Congress. However, I recall three encounters with Rep. Peterson over the many years I’ve been stuck with him. I met him at Mikey’s Restaurant, on Main Street in Long Prairie, when he was first campaigning for a seat in Congress. We were both young then and he was full of energy and inspired in me a sense of hope for positive change. Besides, I’d met the Republican incumbent. He was an older man who, it seemed, was operating on dead batteries. I was happy to vote for the energetic Peterson. Some years later I was a delegate to the DFL District convention in Bemidji. Peterson opposed a woman’s right to choose abortion. He was being challenged by a woman who supported the right to that choice. I gave...
Post a Comment
Read more

The bible should rule in the MN Senate, says Majority leader Gazelka

“A lot of my job frankly is stopping the onslaught of the left from continually moving us in a way that we know is contrary to the Bible,” Gazelka told the extremist Christian evangelical leader Andrew Wommack during an interview in November on Truth & Liberty, a weekly extreme right Christian on-line broadcast. Gazelka told Wommack that he is engaged in a spiritual battle as leader of the Minnesota Senate. Wommack in turn told Gazelka that opponents of conservative Christians are with “the spirit of Antichrist. What they call political correctness is nothing but demonic inspired and so … I can get by with stuff maybe you can’t.”  Gazelka didn’t disagree with the extremist opinion that opponents of conservative Christians are with the spirit of the Antichrist. He merely dissembled and claimed he was like Jesus who went among the sinners to convert them. Gazelka has always seen himself as a minister who intends to convert Jews, Muslims, Catholics, Sikhs, Bahai, ...
1 comment
Read more