2009 Legislative Summary
Tuesday, June 30, 2009

Safeguarding Investments for Minnesota’s Future
Upholding the Clean Water, Land and Legacy Constitutional Amendment

The Legislature fulfilled the promise of the Legacy amendment by authorizing one of the most
comprehensive efforts to protect and restore Minnesota’s Great Outdoors, with more than $300 million in new projects. The amendment allocations for the Great Outdoors contain:
• $151 million for clean water projects including testing of all Minnesota waters in the next 10 years and implementation of clean-up programs.
• $87.5 million to protect land and wildlife habitat, including the state’s largest conservation easement of 187,000 acres for the Upper Mississippi Forest. In addition, there is $63.5 million set aside for further land and wildlife habitat projects to be identified and authorized in 2011.
• $65 million to support Minnesota’s state, regional and metro parks.

Moving Minnesota: Protecting Transit Investments
Last year’s historic transportation investment, meant to expand transit choices, relieve traffic congestion,and reduce global warming pollution, was safeguarded. In addition, the omnibus transportation finance bill filled the transit operating deficit, although a long-term funding plan for buses is still needed.

Driving Innovation: Clean Cars for Minnesota
Even though the Governor and the Legislature failed to adopt clean car standards in Minnesota for the second year in a row, the Obama administration announced plans on May 19 to enact a federal Clean Cars Standard. This new federal initiative will save Americans money, clean up our air and reduce global warming pollution from tailpipe emissions in all states across the country. The new federal standards will reduce tailpipe emissions by 30 percent by 2016, the same goal as in the proposed Minnesota Clean Car
Standard legislation.

With the new national clean car standard soon to be in place, we can now focus on other needed reforms to reduce global warming pollution here in Minnesota. We look forward to 2010 and a renewed commitment from the Governor and the Legislature to enact policies that will achieve Minnesota’s requirement for an 80 percent reduction in global warming pollution by 2050.

Building Sensible Communities
The Legislature and Governor took several steps to give Minnesotans more options about how they get around, helping to reduce global warming and air pollution, traffic congestion, and driving. These are a good start in changing how we build our communities, but more can and should be done.
• At the top of the list of positive steps is a change in school siting rules that gives communities more local control about where new schools are located. No longer will school districts be forced to build schools at the edge of town – sometimes in the middle of cornfields.
• Another legislative action will result in the Metropolitan Council helping communities determine how land use and transportation plans affect residents’ options about where they live and how they get around.

Safe Mines to Protect Our Water
The Legislature failed to act this session on a proposal to assure that new sulfide mines are operated in a way that protects our lakes, rivers and streams from acid mine drainage. With inadequate laws on the books and sulfide mining proposals looming on the horizon, we cannot afford to delay efforts to protect Minnesotans from the problems that have accompanied sulfide mines in other states, including taxpayers
left to pay exorbitant clean-up costs.