As a grizzled State Capitol reporter of nearly 1.5 legislative sessions, a gambit last week by House GOPers looked awfully familiar.
Rep. Bryan Lawrence, R-Princeton, introduced a bill in the House Education Finance Committee that took a multipronged (though no prong included gun control) approach to school safety. All told, Lawrence’s package of increased aid and grants would cost a little over $102 million.
However.
The lawmaker said the program would cost the state more like $52 million, because the bill rerouted $50 million in planned spending for passenger rail service between Minneapolis and Duluth that is dubbed the Northern Lights Express, or NLX.
As it awaits federal cash, NLX is in a preliminary stage before the preliminary stage, and vulnerable to lawmakers goose chasing funding sources.
“There are always bills to take from the fund because it is a general cash fund just sitting there,” said Rep. Erin Koegel, DFL-Spring Lake, who, as the former chair of the House Transportation Finance and Policy Committee, wrote 2023 legislation to create the rail line.
As for the school safety bill, the committee’s DFL co-chair, Cheryl Youakim of Hopkins, pounced on Lawrence for using NLX money. (The bill itself failed to advance on a party-line vote, and lawmakers are still negotiating a school safety package.)
Related: Erin Koegel, Northern Lights Express bill author, will leave the Minnesota House next year
“I’ve really lost track of how many times the other side of the aisle has utilized NLX funding,” Youakim said at the committee hearing. “This NLX money has been used a hundred times over in many proposals so it is hard to take that part seriously.”
Indeed, Republicans have not just proposed transferring Northern Lights Express dollars but canceling the entire $123 million still set aside for the project.
State Rep. Patti Anderson, R-Forest Lake, proposed legislation to this effect. U.S. Rep. Tom Emmer, R-6th district, also pushed to cancel the planned rail line.
But stripping NLX money is a bipartisan pastime.
One of the most contentious measures during last year’s budget negotiation was whether to extend unemployment insurance for hourly school workers like teachers’ aides and bus drivers.
Republicans argued that summer unemployment checks were a luxury the state could not afford. But a bipartisan deal was hashed out to take away $77 million from the then-$200 million NLX budget to pay for the unemployment program.
This maneuver did not sit well with Koegel. She is retiring from the Legislature this year partly because legislative horse trading often sidelines public transportation projects.
Koegel said that NLX’s piñata status has to do with the waiting game for federal moneys.
According to Greg Mathis, rail supervisor at the Minnesota Department of Transportation, the state needs federal dollars to move forward with the project. Yet federal transportation officials have not even solicited a “service development plan” for the rail corridor that is needed for funding.
In other words, NLX is not even at the planning stages.
Even if the feds accept their plan, “The third step in the process is project development, which includes preliminary engineering and environmental review,” Mathis said.
Only after clearing these hurdles would design and construction start, Mathis added.
In the meantime, lawmakers have four-weeks to pass bills before the 2026 legislative session ends. It bears watching if NLX retains the $123 million it still has.
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