This year, Minnesota’s leaders made a set of decisions about human services that should fundamentally change how we understand our state.

Not because cuts happened. Budgets are always about tradeoffs. But because of how those cuts were made, who was excluded, and what those choices revealed.

If you want to understand what government values, do not listen to speeches. Look at what gets protected when pressure hits. By that measure, human services did not make the list.

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The final human services bill was not finalized through public hearings, debate or meaningful engagement. It was negotiated behind closed doors, compressed into the final days of the session, and passed without the input of the people who will live with the consequences.

No public conference committee with public testimony. No sustained stakeholder engagement. No real opportunity to challenge or improve the decisions being made.

This was not an oversight. It was a choice.

And when you remove transparency from decisions that affect care, housing and daily supports, you remove accountability as well.

Human services is not an abstract policy area. These decisions determine whether someone has staff to get out of bed in the morning, whether a provider can keep its doors open, whether a family has stability or uncertainty.

Yet those realities were not in the room. That should stop us.

The message behind the money

The headline number matters. More than $300 million in reductions to human services. But the context matters more.

Because those reductions did not happen in isolation. They happened alongside other decisions where funding was preserved, redirected or protected for priorities that are far easier to sell politically.

Minor tax relief. Headline ready policy items. Short-term wins.

No one should pretend these are equivalent choices. They are not.

One set of decisions affects whether people receive essential care and support. The other affects marginal financial changes that most Minnesotans will barely notice. This is where the rhetoric about values meets reality.

When forced to choose, leadership chose to make human services negotiable.

That is the real story of this session.

The cost of being last in line

Minnesotans who rely on disability services and long-term supports are used to this position. When systems are strained, they absorb the impact. When timelines collapse, they live with the consequences. When decisions are rushed, they carry the risk.

That pattern repeated itself here.

There is no redundancy in this system. Providers operate with thin margins and limited workforce. Counties already manage complex implementation demands. Individuals do not have backup plans if services are disrupted.

So, when the state moves quickly and without input, instability is not a possibility. It is the expected result.

This is how access erodes. Not always through sweeping changes, but through a series of decisions that signal where attention and care are not directed.

A failure of leadership, not process alone

It would be easy to describe this as a process problem. That would miss the point.

The closed doors, the late budget targets, the rushed negotiations are not random failures. They are outcomes of leadership decisions.

Leaders decide when to set targets. Leaders decide what gets prioritized. Leaders decide who gets included.

In this case, those decisions created a process where exclusion was built in and speed replaced scrutiny. That matters because it will happen again unless it is acknowledged for what it is.

This was not a breakdown. It was a direction.

Minnesota has long claimed a different identity in human services. A state that invests, that leads, that centers people who need support. That identity is harder to defend today.

When decisions of this scale are made privately, when the largest reductions fall on the most vulnerable, and when those choices are paired with funding for less essential priorities, the signal is clear.

We are not living up to what we say about ourselves.

Hubert H. Humphrey described the moral test of government as how it treats those on the margins. That is not a ceremonial quote. It is a standard.

By that standard, this session did not measure up. It failed miserably.

What comes next

The real risk is not just the content of this bill. It is what it normalizes. If human services can be negotiated this way once, it can be negotiated this way again.

If public accountability can be set aside under time pressure, it will be set aside again. And if the people most affected are not required at the table, they will continue to be left out.

That is the trajectory this session put in place.

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Changing it will require more than better messaging. It will require different choices. It will require different leadership. 

Open decision making. Earlier budget targets. Real inclusion of providers, counties, and people receiving services.

Not as optics, but as requirements.

Because in human services, the stakes are not political: They are human.

And every time this system is treated as negotiable, Minnesotans pay the price.

Josh Berg is director of Minnesota services and strategic growth at Accessible Space Inc. and an advocate for individuals with disabilities.

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