MN lege: Redistricting, so far

Back in 2017, Minnesota Republicans were seriously hot to trot for the 2020 elections to get here, because they figured they’d seal the legislature/governor trifecta then, and could install the sort of extreme right-wing gerrymander here that has plagued the nation since 2010. 2018 brought a reality check. (In fact, I’ve noticed that the “Minnesota turning red!” crowd in general has been rather mum, of late. I suppose that, considering among other things that as of the next state executive office elections in 2022 the GOP will not have won a single one of those seats in 16 years, one sees the reason for embarrassed silence.)

Now, Republicans are on board with efforts to block gerrymanders. Left.mn has a summary, here. From what I’ve seen, it’s the last discussed therein, HF1605/SF2575 that has the best chance of getting somewhere.

This is the bill we heard about at Drinking Liberally Minneapolis last Thursday and is my personal favorite of all the bills listed in this post. It sticks with the five retired judges model, four picked by the Majority and Minority leaders of the Senate and House, and those four judges then pick the fifth judge. But this bill doesn’t stop there. It also provides for the appointment of twelve citizen members, making the redistricting commission 17 members in size, with slightly less than 30% of those members being retired judges.

It’s mostly, but not entirely, Republicans who have been doing the gerrymandering, nationally. That’s wholly unsurprising, because the bottom line is that it is a desperately cowardly practice.

If Republicans ran Minnesota - education, elections, &c.

This series is based mostly on what Party of Trump state legislators have been trying to do. It is not remotely meant to be anywhere near exhaustive. Just items I’ve chosen to particularly highlight, being brought together for easy reference. I may be adding stuff, from time to time. Part 1, finances and budget, here. Part 2, environment, here.

School funding issues would only get worse. That’s what you call a “lock bet.”

State aid to Minnesota school districts—properly adjusted for inflation—has fluctuated significantly over the last fifteen years, but the overall trend has been downward, as documented in a recent North Star report. Of course, long-term trends are not exclusively the result of changes enacted by state policymakers.* Using information compiled during the 2017 special legislative session, it’s possible to isolate the impact of legislative actions during the current fiscal year (FY) 2018-2019 biennium. And those actions led to a decline in real (i.e., inflation-adjusted) per pupil general education revenue. - North Star Policy Institute

More here. And here, especially about how Republicans seek to backdoor public money for private schools.

- Election-rigging. Of course. Republicans have made numerous efforts to destroy Minnesota’s public campaign financing, and to potentially enable gerrymandering. In particular, they’ve sought to add riders to these ends to must-pass budget bills, apparently blissfully oblivious to just how obnoxiously childish - and cowardly - such tactics make them look.

- An effort to get the Appleton prison doing its thing died in the Senate, this time. Also from Bluestem Prairie, outstate locals do not in fact really seem to be on fire for the lock-em-up mentality. But a GOP legislature and governor would presumably quickly pass one of those override bills, mostly used in other states so far to reverse local minimum wage increases, to deal with such manifestations of intelligence and humanity.