Every legislative session has its own personality, but some years demand more than the normal stamina, patience and cases of ramen noodles and Diet Mountain Dew. They demand imagination. They demand the courage to do things differently, even when “the way we’ve always done it” is more powerful than any of the actual rules that govern how the Minnesota Legislature functions.
This biennium, the 67-67 House was always going to test that courage. A tied chamber forces a choice: Either legislators behave as if they’re in the minority — gumming up the works, forcing silly votes and treating every procedure as an opportunity to slow things down — or they behave as if they’re in the majority, taking responsibility for actually getting things done.
That choice is not theoretical. It shows up in every committee agenda, every floor session, every hallway negotiation. And it shows up in whether leaders are willing to embrace the hard, unusual work of doing things differently.
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Some of us dream of a Legislature where all the bills are single‑subject, where the public doesn’t need a law degree to understand the process, where vote intentions aren’t confused by omnibus bills full of (related but separate) issues, and where the final passage of a bill reflects genuine bipartisan support — and, occasionally, bipartisan opposition. That dream isn’t naïve. It’s simply inconvenient. Transparency usually is.
And inconvenient is not the same as impossible.
It can be done. I know, because this Legislature used to pass a higher number and percentage of bills per session. In the 2023-2024 biennium, 11,023 bills were introduced, 126 (1.14%) passed. In 2023-2022, 9,655 bills were introduced, and 113 (1.17%) passed. In 2021-2020, 10,158 bills were introduced, and 151 (1.49%) passed.
Since 1973, after a constitutional amendment allowed the Legislature to meet annually, the average number of bills introduced over the bienniums has been climbing, and the number of laws enacted has been trending down. (Of course, when many bills are lumped together into omnibus legislation, the passed bills number goes down. It would be interesting to see if the number of pages of law has gone down as well, but that’s not as easy to count on the Legislative Reference Library website.)
A common objection to stand-alone bills is that there isn’t time to process them on the floor. It does take a while to process bills, yes, but I’d argue that marathon floor sessions, debating a long list of standalone bills that the public could actually understand, where work, not political theater, take center stage, would be a very good use of time.
Compare that to the marathon floor sessions we sometimes see devoted to grandstanding on “urgent” bills that everyone knows have no path to passage. Those hours don’t move policy. They don’t improve lives. They don’t even clarify differences. They simply feed the fight.
And that’s the real question this session keeps forcing: What matters more — the work or the fight?
The fight is intoxicating. It’s easy to rally around. It’s easy to tweet. It’s easy to fundraise off of. But the fight means nothing if nothing comes of it. A tied House is the ultimate test of whether legislators can resist the seductive pull of performative conflict long enough to do the unglamorous, procedural, occasionally tedious work of governing.
Doing things differently this biennium was always going to require flexibility, leadership and a willingness to embrace unusual solutions. That’s not a flaw of the situation — it was the homework assigned by the voters. And, it was an opportunity for Minnesota exceptionalism. What if our Legislature could show the rest of the country how to do division right?
Which is why last week’s parade of not-passed-and-laid-over committee omnibus bills was both revealing and frustrating. Some of those bills are so close. (Some are not.) Some of the bills that did pass aren’t perfect, and are still being negotiated and changed all the way up to final passage. So if the entire Legislature can reset the clock and call a special session because leadership negotiations took longer than expected — or because staff needed more time to process bills correctly — then surely some committees can find time in the coming weeks to convene a “special meeting” and move their bills. Waivers by the Rules Committee exist for a reason. Deadlines matter, yes. But let’s use the tools we have in service of the greater good.
If the goal is to do the work, find the compromises and pass the bills, then the path is clear. If the goal is to preserve the fight, then the path is also clear. (Or, the path is deliberately blocked… unfortunately, in some committees that seems to be the outcome.)
Leadership is not, “If I can’t have everything I want, then nobody can have anything.” Leadership is the opposite. It’s the willingness to accept that in a tied chamber, nobody gets everything, but everybody can get something — if they choose to.
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Leadership is also the willingness to remember that Minnesotans do not experience their lives in partisan silos. Families navigating child care, tax filings or state park camping reservations do not care which party authored the bill that helps them. They care that the work gets done.
Since the November 2024 election results, we knew that this biennium would be a stress test of whether the Legislature could rise to that reality. Whether we would choose the work over the fight. Whether we could embrace the hard, unusual, unglamorous path of doing things differently. Whether we would prove that transparency, collaboration and single‑subject clarity aren’t just aspirational talking points but actual governing principles.
The dream of a more functional, more comprehensible, more bipartisan Legislature isn’t impossible. It’s just hard. And hard is not a reason to quit. Hard is a reason to get to work.
Shannon Watson is the executive director of Majority in the Middle, a St. Paul-based nonprofit. She’s also a longtime State Capitol observer and will provide occasional Voices commentaries during the 2026 legislative session. You’ll find Watson’s previous Middle Aisle columns here.
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