As of about 5pm on Friday:

The Minnesota House of Representatives is currently debating the conference report on HF885, a tax/health care and education funding bill that DFL leadership has put together.  This package was unveiled late last night, and is a fairly blunt attack in response to the Governor’s recent public posturing over the ongoing budget negotiations.  If passed, the bill would raise a little more than $1 billion (roughly equal to the amount of new revenue from accounting shifts and borrowing in Governor Pawlenty’s budget proposal) from new taxes on liquor and various other areas, and allocate that revenue to E-12 Education and Health and Human Services.  Later today, this package will be debated and voted on by the Senate as well, before heading to the Governor for a certain veto.  An override may be attempted sometime next week.

All of this is relevant for two reasons: 1) conference committees are basically on hold today until this debate has been finished, and 2) resolution, or not, of the overall budget problem will determine whether or not we are heading to a special session.

In the meantime, here are a few quick updates on other items of interest:

-Governor Pawlenty signed the Environment and Energy budget bill yesterday.  On the whole this is good news, as it means that agencies charged with protecting our natural resources have their budgets locked in place and are not likely to be affected should the debate on the global budget drag into the summer months.  This new law also implements a variety of new mining fees, as we’ve been following over the last several weeks.  However, the Governor did line-item veto a $15 million appropriation for TMDL’s, thereby reducing funding for cleaning up our state’s waters.

-The conference committee on SF657/HF680, the federal stimulus energy appropriations bill, began meeting on Wednesday and continued meeting throughout the day and night on Thursday.  While the committee had intended to complete its work by the end of Thursday, there are still differences between the House and Senate appropriations and policy language that have yet to be resolved.  The committee intends to continue meeting yet today, however this is dependent upon the House and Senate floor sessions first completing their controversial work.  If they are unable to finish tonight, we can assume that meetings will continue to be held throughout the weekend.

-The conference committee on SF550/HF863, the energy policy omnibus bill, will meet for the first time at 3pm on Monday.  The Senate version of this bill includes language repealing the moratorium on nuclear power, however there are not enough votes on the conference committee to pass the repeal language.  We will continue to monitor the debate nonetheless.

At this point in the session things can change extremely quickly and I will do my best to keep you all informed as the legislature works towards – hopefully – completing its work over the next 10 days.  As always, please feel free to contact me directly if you have any questions.

Ethan Fawley added this to Justin’s update: