Though the balloons and confetti are still almost a year and a half away, the green room backstage at Campaign 2014 is beginning to fill with loitering legislators who may or may not ultimately take the stage. Their ranks – discussed below – now include state Sen. Julianne Ortman (R-Chanhassen), who is floating a possible run against U.S. Sen. Al Franken. Ortman’s colleague Sen. Jeremy Miller (R-Winona) even stopped in for a visit — albeit a very brief one, as things turned out.
At the Capitol, meanwhile, everyone is bracing for the Great Migration. The east wing of the building, scaffolded and draped in plastic, already looks like a Christo art installation, and the refugee boats are being prepped for boarding. Denizens of the basement, including the pixel-stained wretches of the press corps, will be the first to go, beginning in August.
But we start with the post-session ruminations of House Speaker Paul Thissen. Following on Weekly Report’s interview with Senate Majority Leader Tom Bakk last week, Thissen reviewed the successes and disappointments of Session 2013 in a conversation at his office this past Tuesday. (An extended version of this interview will appear in Monday’s Capitol Report, available at our website. If you’re not a subscriber, details here.)
Post-session chat wrap: House Speaker Paul Thissen
PIM: What were the high points of this year’s session in terms of achievements?
Paul Thissen: I think the biggest one was the investments we made in education, and moving the dial on things that we’ve been talking about for a decade in that area – on the early education side, all-day kindergarten, and on the higher ed side, freezing tuition.
PIM: Low points and disappointments?
Thissen: I would like to have seen more progress on minimum wage. But aside from that, I really do feel like we fulfilled the main things we said we were going to do, which is to govern well and to get the state’s fiscal house in order. Those two things were achieved.
PIM: What do you count as unfinished business from the session?
Thissen: We still have work to do – I think the minimum wage is a good example of that. It’ll be nice to get a good, solid bonding bill put together next year. We’ve already made some good progress getting commitments from the Republicans in terms of putting up some votes for a much more robust bonding bill.
Over the interim, I would like to see some additional work done in the health care arena. I think the department has done some excellent reform work in trying to start to move the dial, that we haven’t seen all the benefits of. I think we need to spend some time looking at that and making sure we take advantage of some of that work next year.
PIM: Can you be more specific about what you’d like to see in the health care arena?
Thissen: I think some of the work that we’ve done in Reform 2020, which is on the disability side, in making it more consumer-directed, is going to have payoffs for the state in the next several years. I don’t think the Legislature has fully understood the implications of that. I guess the other piece of unfinished business we need to look at is what to do with MSOP – the sex offender program.
PIM: Might it be too late on that?
Thissen: I don’t think so. I think the court will see that we’ve started moving forward on some of the discussions, and they’re going to be reluctant to make major changes in that system without input from the Legislature. But it’s something we need to continue to look at very closely.
PIM: There seemed to be continuing tensions between the House and Senate in the late going of this year’s session. What was at issue during that interlude in the last 24 to 36 hours of session when the House was holding on to the tax bill it had passed on Sunday, and the Senate was still holding on to the state government bill?
Thissen: Obviously there was some continuing discussion about the bonding bill, and a couple of other less significant provisions, like this truck weights legislation, and we just wanted to make sure the Senate moved forward on these items. The other thing that was clearly a significant part of the discussion during the last month was legislative pay increases, and the House did not think that was a priority for our spending as we’re still coming out of a budget deficit, and we wanted to make sure that issue moved down the path we’d agreed upon, which was to move forward with this independent commission to assess legislative pay. [Editor’s note: Both chambers passed a bill this session for a constitutional amendment to put legislator pay in the hands of a citizens’ compensation council. It will not appear on the ballot until 2016.]
PIM: Is there clean-up work to do on the bills that were passed this session?
Thissen: I have no doubt that there will be. We’ll continue to learn about what some of those issues are, but that’s true in every event. I think, as we look at the tax bill, there’s clearly a couple of issues that will need to be addressed on some provisions the Senate really wanted on the sales tax side.
My preference on that is that we address those, but address them in a way that we find the savings elsewhere in our budget, and not just raising another tax to replace that tax. The warehousing tax is clearly one that we’re going to need to take a closer look at. Quite honestly, I think all three of those new sales taxes are things that we ought to revisit. And if we can find revenues elsewhere from savings or from growth in the economy, we ought to use that instead of making those tax changes.
PIM: The Senate was fairly insistent on the sales tax as a reform measure. At the depths of the economic difficulties of the past few years, there was a lot of talk of needing to reform the tax system to make it more stable. Did anything you did this year contribute to that end, in your view? What is the proper avenue for pursuing tax reform?
Thissen: I think there’s really two big issues out there. One is tax reform in that sense, and the other is investment in our transportation infrastructure. What I’ve said about both of those, and I still believe this is the case, is that the way you make significant changes is to go to the people of Minnesota – particularly as part of an election campaign – and talk about the need to address those things. I think we did very successfully in the last campaign around property taxes and around education funding, and I think that’s one of the reasons we won the election. I think that’s why our whole caucus felt comfortable moving ahead on those two issues.
If we want to take on these other items, they need to be part of a larger, longer-term conversation with Minnesotans. That’s how you get to the best result and that’s how you get public support. I’m not sure we actually accomplished much in terms of actual sales tax reform. The two things we pay for with those sales taxes – which is the [elimination] of the sales tax for cities and counties, and the upfront exemption on capital equipment purchases – are good reforms. They’re not really reforms in the sense of changing our tax code, but they’re good policy initiatives that make sense for the state. We included the upfront exemption in our tax bill as well. We just paid for it in a little bit different way.
Going forward, if we want to move to a truly different alignment of taxes, I think that’s a much broader discussion. The reaction of the public to the governor’s initial budget proposal when he put it out there shows that you can’t just drop this in the middle of a legislative session. You need to build up the public support over time, educate the public and have a conversation with them.
PIM: That’s a point you’ve made before – that the groundwork has not been laid for the kinds of tax changes the governor and the Senate were pursuing. Yet you went ahead this time with the marriage bill. Was that something you’d had a conversation with the voters about, in your mind?
Thissen: I really do think that we did. Partly in regard to the whole discussion of the constitutional amendment – which, admittedly, was a different conversation. But certainly what we do with marriage equality was part of that conversation. I also think that in the months between November and when we passed the bill in May, the representatives here in the Legislature had extensive conversations with their constituents about that issue, particularly in areas where it was a much closer question. So I really do think that conversation did occur through the course of the constitutional amendment campaign and thereafter over the subsequent months.
PIM: Is there any meaningful reform in the way dollars are spent and services are delivered in the various budget sectors this year?
Thissen: I do think there were reforms in the tax area – like the [new] LGA formula. I think that was a significant and good reform. In the health care arena, we’re continuing to see the benefits of getting some more flexibility from the federal government in how we move forward. It wasn’t that big a part of the discussion, but in that human services bill, there continues to be significant reform moving ahead. Reform 2020 is an example.
In the education bill, I think there was reform in the way we address inequities in funding across the state. I think that will continue to serve those property-poor districts in greater Minnesota that have a hard time raising revenues. I hope we continue to do work in our committees over the interim in those areas. I also think in the water area, we made some reforms in how we’re going to prioritize spending. I know Rep. [Jean] Wagenius is going to continue to look at that over the interim as well.
PIM: You mentioned health care reforms. With respect to that issue, and the question of HMO accountability, there have been a lot of members in both bodies raising questions about the so-called “black box” – the payment and encounter data that the state apparently lacks that would provide a better accounting of how the state’s dollars are spent. The Dayton administration has taken some executive actions in that regard, but is that issue settled in your mind, or does more need to be done in that area?
Thissen: There’s probably always more to be done in that area. But I think there will be continued interest in understanding exactly how this contracting process works, and what benefit we’re getting for the dollar. And I want to say that on both sides of the issue. I think there are people who assume that the state of Minnesota is very much on the losing end of that bargain. I think there are other people who argue that that’s not entirely the case. The problem is, we just don’t know the answer. Again, like so many issues, it would be great if we could set aside the ideology and actually get to the facts in addressing that, because I think [the truth] probably falls somewhere in the middle.
We clearly need to continue to do some work in that area. But there’s another issue related to this encounter data that I think we haven’t spent enough time looking at. And that is, at least for our public programs, what right does the state of Minnesota have to that data? These really are our patients in a sense, and I think, clearly, the future of health care and cost savings and reform is going to be coming out of this big data set that’s sitting out there. Not just in terms of individuals and what’s happening with their individual costs. If we get all this aggregate data and we can understand what treatments work and what don’t, we’re going to be much better off in the future. And the state of Minnesota should have access in order to understand that, just as much as private corporations do.
PIM: Gov. [Mark] Dayton rebuked Phyllis Kahn fairly strenuously over the House’s approach to the Legacy bill. What was your view of that standoff, and the line-item vetoes that arose from it?
Thissen: I guess I would say that my hope going forward, between now and next February when we come back, is that we can sit down with the Lessard-Sams Commission – legislators and commissioners – and actually have a conversation about what our various priorities are. There’s this ideological issue over whether you can change the Lessard recommendations or not. Up to this year, every governor who has signed a bill has signed for additions too. No one’s been pure on that up to this year. And I’m not sure why this year necessarily had to be different.
But setting aside that ideological fight, I think there are a couple of issues. What role do investments in the metro area play as part of that discussion? I’m hoping that instead of having this standoff between the Legislature and the Lessard commission when we come back next year, we can actually have a meaningful discussion of that on the commission and between legislators and the commission.
The argument I have made to [Star Tribune outdoors columnist] Dennis Anderson on this is that most of the young people in this state live in the metro area. And if they don’t have access to these kinds of habitats, then the decline that we’ve seen in hunting and fishing and other sporting activities is going to continue. We need to give people access to that stuff, and we need to do it near the places where they live. That’s not to say we shouldn’t make more investments outside the metro area, but the metro area certainly has a place in that.
PIM: Can you give us a brief version of the campaign message that you see deriving from this year’s budget session?
Thissen: I think we governed well. We told the people of Minnesota what we were going to do, and I think we largely delivered on those promises. It’s not a high bar, but we got done on time. And we balanced the budget in a way that sets us up for the future without relying on tricks and gimmicks. And we made new investments where people wanted investments made, particularly in education. People get that if we educate Minnesotans, that’s the way our economy’s going to grow. And our priorities were what we said they were going to be, which is on the side of middle-class Minnesotans.
We did what we said we were going to do, which seems to be somewhat unusual in politics.
Campaign notes: Ortman, Miller, Sivarajah, more
1st District: Just like that, four-term DFL Congressman Tim Walz gained and lost a potential Republican challenger. GOP state Sen. Jeremy Miller said earlier this week that he was considering a run against Walz in Minnesota’s 1st Congressional District after being approached by several “major players” in the district. Miller is a 30-year-old lawmaker from Winona who runs his family’s scrap metal business, and he’s worked to strike a more moderate tone than many of his GOP colleagues at the Legislature in his two terms.
But by Friday, Miller had pulled his name from consideration. “I’m honored to be thought of as a potential candidate for this position, and when someone asks you to run for United States Congress, I believe it deserves a strong look,” he said. “After thoughtful consideration, Janel and I have decided that with our young and growing family (16 month old son and expecting twin boys in August), my responsibilities in our family’s fourth-generation recycling business, and my role as District 28 State senator, the timing just isn’t right to run for Congress.”
It’s not surprising that Republican operatives are out early and aggressively recruiting a candidate to run in the district. The 1st District should be one of Democrats’ more vulnerable congressional seats, but Walz manages to hold on to it year after year, even defeating former DFL Rep. Randy Demmer with 50 percent of the vote in 2010, when Republicans swept the Legislature and won a seat in the 8th Congressional District. Last year was even more embarrassing for CD 1 Republicans: An ugly GOP endorsement contest deadlocked, and a primary election sent former GOP state Rep. Allen Quist to the November ballot. Quist lost to Walz by more than 15 points on Election Day.
U.S. Senate: The amazingly uninteresting field for the U.S. Senate got only slightly more interesting this week when four-term Republican state Sen. Julianne Ortman went on the record as “seriously considering” a bid against U.S. Sen. Al Franken. Franken’s seat was tantalizing to Republicans early in his first term, after he beat former Republican Sen. Norm Coleman by only a few hundred votes.
But the comedian-turned senator’s popularity with voters has been climbing slowly, and the potential GOP field to challenge him has been shrinking quickly. The only announced candidate so far is business executive Mike McFadden, an unknown quantity to just about everyone. McFadden hasn’t been active in GOP politics and he’s never made a run for office before now. McFadden’s campaign announcement came on the same day Michele Bachmann announced her retirement and received minimal coverage as a result. His campaign rollout was — as one GOP operative put it — “ham-handed at best.”
Ortman, an attorney from Chanhassen, brings with her at least some name recognition, especially after serving as the chairwoman of the powerful Taxes Committee in 2011 and 2012. “It’s a very big race and it’s a very big decision, so it warrants some time and thought,” Ortman said this week, adding that she doesn’t have a firm deadline to decide, but is aiming to make a decision in the “next several weeks.” Rumors suggest there are several other candidates considering the race who haven’t been widely mentioned as possible contenders yet, and talk radio host Jason Lewis didn’t rule out a run for Senate yet. He’s eyeing both Franken and the now-open seat in the 6th Congressional District.
6th District: Former state Rep. Tom Emmer officially got his first challenger for the GOP nomination this week. Anoka County Commissioner Rhonda Sivarajah (right) announced her intention to run in the 6th Congressional District contest at an event in Ham Lake on Wednesday morning. In some ways it will be a rematch of the 2010 GOP gubernatorial contest. Sivarajah was former House Minority Leader Marty Seifert’s running mate when he lost the party endorsement to Emmer. Notably, Sivarajah has not promised to abide by the endorsement this time around.
It’s not likely to remain a two-candidate contest for long. State Sen. John Pederson, R-St. Cloud, has formed an “exploratory committee” to determine whether he would be a viable candidate. Other Republicans still eyeing the race include former state party chair Pat Shortridge, talk show host Jason Lewis and former state Rep. Jim Knoblach.
This week also saw the first hints of a DFL field. The St. Cloud Times reported that Circle Pines resident and environmental activist Judy Adams intends to seek the party’s nomination, In addition, the Associated Press disclosed that Sartell Mayor Joe Perske is considering a run. Any DFLer will face a stiff task in the state’s most conservative congressional district.
Cigarette tax revenue’s relationship status: It’s complicated
Raising the sales tax on a pack of cigarettes is a bit like opening a bar tab and then sitting down at the blackjack table: For one reason or another, you’re liable to wind up with less money than you’d hoped.
Revenue Commissioner Myron Frans (left) said his team of analysts looked at four different complicating factors in assessing the state’s new $1.60 per-pack hike, which, they estimate, will generate more than $430 million in the 
coming biennium. Here’s their list of worries:
Black market: This is the chief bogeyman pointed to by cigarette giant Altria (née Philip Morris), which argues that a sudden rise in cigarette prices in one state will spawn a black market for a cheaper option. On its website, Altria posted a study from the Mackinac Center, a free market think tank out of Michigan, which asserts that international or interstate cigarette smuggling accounts for much of the consumption in states that had recently raised: more than half of all cigs sold in Arizona, and 47.5 percent in New York. Even if those figures are slightly inflated, Sen. Ann Rest, DFL-New Hope, admitted that an increase in black market cigarette sales is “a concern.”
Neighboring states: In raising the state tax level to its new total of $2.83 a pack, the Legislature intended to keep the state more or less in line with prices in Wisconsin, where the tax is currently $2.52. Looking for the cheap ones? Go West, young man: North Dakota’s cigarette tax is only $0.44 a pack, a number that hasn’t change since 1993, and — with black-frac gold pouring out of the ground — isn’t likely to go up any time soon. Falling somewhere in the middle is Iowa, which raised its per-pack level from just $0.36 to $1.36 in 2007.
Smokers cutting back: This is one of the trickier aspects to pin down, as it involves behavioral economics. Kenneth Warner, a professor at the University of Michigan School of Public Health, has studied smoking trends extensively. Warner said the impact of a tax hike will have a greater effect on poor smokers than the wealthy, who might choose to swallow the new costs and keep on puffing at the same rate. Even a 30 percent spike in the cost of a pack, as will happen in Minnesota, won’t curb smoking too much. “At some point,” Warner said, “you can raise price enough that you probably will get a huge demand response, and you might end up with a situation where you might, conceivably, not raise revenue. But nobody’s ever done that, to my knowledge.”
Fewer smokers: For the Legislature, the Department of Health, Gov. Mark Dayton — even for Frans and his team of collectors — this is the desired endgame. While adult smokers are expected to cut back, and some will quit, the most price-sensitive population are teenagers and young adults. Frans said his team had calculated that overall consumption would drop by about 28.5 percent — more than double Warner’s estimate, which ranged between 9 and 12 percent. Whichever source turns out to be more accurate, both attribute much of that drop to high schoolers who can’t afford $6, $7 and $8 packs of smokes. If fewer teens smoke, the state will, decades from now, save hundreds of millions of dollars in healthcare costs; in the intervening years, legislators will need to think up another way to generate the missing revenue those non-smokers are keeping in their pockets.
Pay day for House staff
There was good news for House employees this week: They were given their first pay raise in five years. In a resolution passed on Tuesday by the House Rules and Legislative Administration Committee, permanent employees will get a lump sum payment of 3.5 percent of their gross pay from 2012. All employees will get 2 percent pay hikes this year and folks whose tenures go back further than Jan. 16, 2012, will get an additional 3.5 percent for this year.
There are pay increases for 2014 and 2015 along with additional pay increases for employees whose performance meets or exceeds expectations. The pay package passed 14-6, with three Republicans voting with all DFLers in support.
The Senate Rules Committee is scheduled to meet to discuss salary on June 26, shortly before the next fiscal biennium starts. Senate Majority Leader Tom Bakk hasn’t publicly discussed specifics of Senate employee compensation. But the agenda notes that “salary supplement” is among the topics of discussion, suggesting pay increases are part of the Senate’s plan too. The compensation for people who work for joint legislative entities that are under the Legislative Coordinating Commission is reflective of both the House and Senate’s plans. It will be finalized after the Senate passes its budget resolution.
The House Rules committee on Tuesday also passed on a party-line vote a $287,000 budget for committees and the GOP minority caucus. Republicans objected to the increase from the $158,000 budget that was authorized in previous two years when they controlled the Legislature.
House Rules Committee Chair Erin Murphy sought to counter the GOP criticism by noting the committee budgets have essentially tracked the peaks and valleys of the state budget. Before the dot.com bubble burst, Republicans passed a committee budget of $735,000, which declined precipitously in the next two bienniums. The committee budgets rose in the middle part of the last decade only to dive once again when the housing market collapsed and the Great Recession took hold.
“I would say,” Murphy said, “while this budget that’s being proposed is certainly higher than the one that was the last, we are below certainly the budgets that we’ve seen by both the Democratic majorities and the GOP majorities over the last decade.”
Multiple probes still looking at Medicaid program
Little is known about exactly what investigators from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Office of Inspector General have been up to. They’ve been in town since January with the stated intention of looking at whether Minnesota’s rate-setting for its $8 billion-per-year Medicaid program is appropriate. (The feds and the state split the cost of the program.) Beyond that, it’s anybody’s guess where their probe is leading.
But the inquiry is continuing, according to a recent email from a staffer in U.S. Rep. Tim Walz‘s office obtained by PIM. “As of May 28, 2013, there has yet to be a release and I have not found an estimated timeline for when they expect to be finished,” the email notes. “I believe that when the Health and Human Services OIG report is released, we will see a lot Congressional attention on the subject: both Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) and Darrell Issa (R – California) have promised to dive deeper into the matter when the findings are public.”
That’s not the only ongoing probe of the state’s Medicaid program. The Office of the Legislative Auditor has been tasked with conducting an audit of the program in fiscal year 2014, which begins on July 1. The initial inquiry will focus on the administrative expenses of the health plans that contract with the state to run the program, which totalled $320 million in 2011.
“What we’re trying to do is figure out what can we bring to the process that’s going to be a little bit different and help answer legislators’ questions,” said Valerie Bombach, who will be leading the inquiry for the Office of the Legislative Auditor. ”My preference is that we tackle the work in phases and that we get information out.”
In addition, the Minnesota Department of Human Services is required by state law to release its own assessment of the Medicaid program on July 1. (See article 1, section 31, of chapter 247.) Although the managed care program was initially created as a demonstration project three decades ago, there’s never been an official assessment of whether it’s proven to be a better means of administering the Medicaid program than a fee-for-service model.
Labor already spending on swing district DFLers
The Minnesota AFL/CIO is spending money on mailings and radio ads to support DFL legislators in swing districts across the state. “Promises made, promises kept,” reads a mailing distributed in freshman Rep. Jay McNamar’s district. “After years of partisan gridlock in the Minnesota Legislature, this year was different. Jay McNamar and the House DFL spent their time focusing on middle class priorities — like education, job creation and property tax relief.” The ads are paid for by the We Are Minnesota PAC. The AFL/CIO-aligned group has been registered with the Minnesota Campaign Finance and Public Disclosure Board since March of last year, but hasn’t been very active. Its most recent campaign finance filing reported that it had no money in the bank.
Notes from the Week That Was
MN UNITED TO CAMPAIGN FOR 15: MN United PAC, the new fundraising and spending offshoot of Minnesotans United for All Families, announced yesterday that it would be campaigning on behalf of 15 legislators who took politically risky votes in favor of gay marriage this pastsession. In the first part of its rollout of the “Minnesota 15,” the group named five rural Democratic House members: Reps. Joe Radinovich of Crosby , John Persell (Bemidji), Shannon Savick (Wells), Roger Erickson (Baudette) and Tim Faust (Hinckley). In the accompanying press release, MN United PAC leader Richard Carlbom explains that the fund is dedicated to “supporting and re-electing the bipartisan group of legislators who helped make marriage for same-sex couples a reality”; four House Republicans and Sen. Branden Petersen, R-Andover, chose to join the DFL majorities in voting to legalize gay marriage.
TAX DETAILS: The Department of Revenue continued yesterday to roll out specifics behind changes made to the state tax code, with Commissioner Myron Frans joining reporters and, later, a group of tax professionals to explain changes that will be made to the state sales tax. Among the takeaways from yesterday’s briefings:
• The sales tax exemption for cities and counties won’t go into effect until January 1, 2014, meaning those local units of government will be subject to the broader sales tax which kicks in July 1 for six months. Frans said the date for enacting the local government exemption allows those governments to set their annual budgets with the exemption in mind.
• The tax on car rentals will jump from the current 6.2 percent level to 9.5 percent, as of the end of this month. Also auto-related: A new tax on automobiles given as gifts will be imposed, though it will exempt gifts to spouses or children.
• Don’t stand around waiting for the Destination Medical Center: The sales tax exemption granted to the Mayo Clinic will remain in place from June 30, 2015 until July 1, 2049.
NEW BRODKORB FEES: The Senate’s legal fees stemming from the lawsuit filed by former staffer Michael Brodkorb have now climbed to $226,000 since the case was filed in July of last year. Brodkorb is seeking $600,000 in a wrongful termination suit that accuses the Senate of having terminated his employment due to an affair with Senate Majority Leader Amy Koch. Depositions are currently being taken in the case, and already this month, former Senate Majority Leader Dave Senjem and former Sens. Claire Robling, Geoff Michel and Chris Gerlach have each been subjected to questioning. On the current timeline, the civil trial is set to begin in July 2014.
CHAMBER GRADES: The Minnesota Chamber of Commerce released its legislative scorecard and, unsurprisingly, found plenty not to like about the 2013 session. Assessments on key votes tracked by the chamber by and large broke down along party lines: House Speaker Paul Thissen voted “correctly” on one out of nine House floor votes under review, while Senate Majority Leader Tom Bakk got it right on just one of a dozen Senate votes. There was one notable outlier on the DFL side: Sen. Terri Bonoff, DFL-Minnetonka, was found to have voted the chamber’s chosen position on seven out of 12 votes, the highest rating for any legislative Democrat. Bonoff was endorsed by the chamber in her reelection effort last year.
GOP ON MSOP: Reps. Nick Zerwas, R-Elk River, and Tara Mack, R-Apple Valley, published a jointly authored column in the Star Tribune to explain their side of why the Legislature didn’t pursue reform of the Minnesota Sex Offender Program (MSOP) this year. The fault, they argue, should be laid at the feet of bill author Rep. Tina Liebling, DFL-Rochester. Zerwas and Mack write that Liebling brought unexpected delete-everything amendments to the bill in successive committee stops, surprising Republican legislators who weren’t in the loop on her process. The roll-call vote requests which effectively killed the bill were brought “not as an act of ‘gamesmanship,’ but owing to a lack of definition and clarity on numerous key provisions,” according to Zerwas and Mack.
NEW IRS SCANDAL SITE: Minnesota Majority has started a new website, IRSExposed.org, which will serve as an informational resource for political groups forced to go through rigorous background and paperwork measures by the IRS. Leaders at Minnesota Majority, the conservative advocacy group that supported the voter ID amendment and has emerged as a chief opponent of the unionization of home care workers, believe their group was subjected to a politically motivated IRS inquiry earlier this year.
MN-NOT-SO-SURE: Costs of health plans sold on the state health insurance exchange won’t be released until October 1, when the newly crafted program begins enrolling members who may ultimately number 1.3 million, according to Minnesota Public Radio. Rep. Joe Atkins, DFL-Inver Grove Heights, chief author of the enacting legislation in the House, said he favors some level of secrecy, but said he would support a move to publish plans that would be sold through the exchange so long as company identities were kept secret. Atkins said such a move would be allowed, as he reads the legislation.
Bits & Pieces
The Department of Natural Resources announced the promotion of Ken Soring as the new director of its enforcement division. Soring, who has been with the department for 34 years, replaces Col. Jim Konrad, who retired earlier this month.
Trista Harris has been appointed the next president of the Minnesota Council on Foundations, an organization that specializes in philanthropy and grant-making decisions. She replaces retiring president Bill King, who spent 25 years with MCF, including the last 12 as its president.
Former West Publishing CEO Dwight Opperman died this week at age 89. Opperman helmed West during its most successful period, before its eventual sale to Thomson Corp. (later Thomson-Reuters) in 1996. Opperman had most recently been working at Key Investment Inc., which is run by his son, Vance Opperman, a publishing and investment maven who has long been one of the most generous political donors for the DFL Party and its causes.
The Minnesota Corn Research & Promotion Council elected its leadership at a member meeting, choosing Rochester-area farmer Jerry Demmer as its new chairman.
Rep. Joe Atkins, DFL-Inver Grove Heights, was named 2013 Legislator of the Year by the Minnesota Police & Peace Officers Association at that organization’s annual convention, Mendota Heights Patch reports.
The Minnesota Agri-Growth Council is losing a pair of members from its board of directors, and is seeking their eventual replacements. Steve Krikava, longtime director of governmental relations at Land O’Lakes, is planning to retire this summer, as is Duluth Seaway Port Authority executive director Adolf Ojard.
CORRECTION: If you get in your car on Aug. 8 to go to Tower for Senate Majority Leader Tom Bakk’s golf fundraiser, you’ll be a week too late. We errantly reported the date last week. The fundraiser at Fortune Bay is Aug. 1.
