Coffee with Sexton teaches website navigation

There was another installment of Coffee with Tom Sexton at the Waseca Chamber of Commerce offices on Friday, July 17.

 

During a session of Coffee with Tom Sexton on Friday, July 17, Representative Sexton took it upon himself to guide those in attendance how to properly navigate the Minnesota government website https://www.leg.mn.gov/. Sexton spoke on how there are different statistics available, training material, uniform standards and procedures: “All of this information is available and checked for accuracy on the House or Senate website, but many people prefer to read unchecked and inaccurate information on social media.” The status of current bills coming before the Senate or House is also available.

 

Sexton also shared information about the “coordinating commission.” This group gets bills from both the Minnesota House and the Senate. They need the wording of these bills to match, “Sometimes it’s minor tweaks and sometimes it’s major issues. Our state constitution requires the House and Senate to vote on single subject bills. However, many times single subject bills are bundled into an omnibus bill under a larger topic like healthcare or energy. Thus, a legislator opposing a portion of an omnibus bill will speak on the House or Senate floor about the portion of the omnibus bill that they cannot support. Then, at the end of their speech, the same legislator will testify why they will still vote for the bill as it supports the greater good presented in the majority of the bill.” He boasted a great bipartisan staff for those who want to learn about bonding or the effects of some of the programs. There are also summaries for bills and information about fraud on the government website.

 

Sexton provided the example of the Inspector General’s (IG) office bill, “That bill is 66 pages long with all the notes and changes that have been made so far.” Sexton has been selected to be part of the commission choosing the candidate for Inspector General, which will be forwarded to Governor Walz for approval. The Commission members will be handed a list of names to choose from before they meet to make their selections. Once the selection has been made and approved, the Commission will bring the IG to their committee once per quarter for a question/answer period. Mikhail Rostislavovich asked, “Is the legislature going to send the IG which direction they need them to go?” Sexton replied, “They don’t have that authority, but we can make a list of priorities for them.”

 

There has been an effort for legislators in Minnesota to find up to a billion dollars without raising the budget from 2025 to 2026, but still have enough to fund the state government. Sexton said they did find it in some of the agencies who weren’t spending as fast as they were forecasted to. Representative Sexton gave an example, “When Nick Shirley presented his video on non-emergency transportation, all of a sudden a bunch of those companies that were billing Minnesota stopped. Which put us, in the first quarter, ahead in the budget by $345 million, just on non-emergency transportation. Suddenly that money that was requested before wasn’t needed or a fraudulent provider no longer submitting requests for reimbursement. It’s still in human services; we can move it around a bit now.”

 

Sexton said that for 2027 we should see cheaper license plate tabs, “But we were only able to get that pushed through for the one year.”

 

There was talk of an Owatonna curler who requested Sexton represent a bill where Minnesotans could purchase a curling license plate for their cars. This was supposed to be written into law but was shut down because it was attached to an omnibus bill that didn’t pass. The negative aspect of omnibus bills are, “You can vote for nine out of the ten things you want in an omnibus package, but you’re also voting for that tenth thing you didn’t want for your district but needed to vote for to get what you did want.”