The Minnesota legislative session has come to a close once again, with several key bills still on the table, leaving the possibility of yet another special session.
State Senator Melissa Franzen and State Representative Kurt Daudt discussed the session with News Talk 830 WCCO's Vineeta Sawkar.
Minnesotans have once again found themselves frustrated with the state legislature's inability to get things done under a deadline and when it comes to why Senator Franzen says that some of her fellow lawmakers across the aisle aren't willing to come to agreements.
"The unfortunate circumstances that we've found ourselves in is that people are unwilling to compromise," Franzen said. "There's a lot of finger-pointing, but there is, in fact, leadership that has not followed through on their commitments."
Representative Daudt echoed this point, saying he doesn't deny there was a lack of leadership, but "there is blame on both sides of this."
"Our perspective of this is Democrats just couldn't compromise on things like the public safety bill," Daudt said. "They are in a situation in time where they just cannot fund law enforcement, and we know very clearly what Minnesotans want right now is tax relief, and they want us to fund law enforcement."
Daudt continued by saying that with inflation and prices at all-time highs, Minnesotans need some help, but he thinks that the Democrats have fallen short of getting this done.
Franzen says that Daudt isn't exactly right as Democrats want to support public safety. Still, she says her Republican colleagues were "fixated on a tax bill," and nothing else was a priority.
"We wanted to make sure that we did everything we could to help all Minnesotans," Franzen said. "In law enforcement. All Minnesotans in the education system. In health and human services, I think that's what we are going to talk about today with our leadership.
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This morning Governor Tim Walz is meeting with legislative leaders to discuss and outline a short legislative session. Franzen shared that getting to this point wasn't something anyone wanted, but now they need to get things done.
"We had this opportunity, a historic opportunity, and we failed, and we need to come together to get this done," Franzen said.
Daudt agreed with this, saying that he thinks leaders weren't managing the clock well with discussions going right up until the end but inevitably not getting anything done.
Franzen shared that state Republicans were holding up bills that had been passed, taking them "hostage" to get the bills they wanted done, but Daudt says this was happening both ways with everyone not closing out bills.
When it comes to the possibility of a special session taking place, Daudt isn't optimistic, saying if they couldn't get things done in the regular session, they most likely won't get them done now.
Franzen, on the other hand, says she would like a special session to get at the very least a bond bill passed.
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