The funding request is $17.1 million above the current amount budgeted in 2024-25, or a 10.1% increase.
It is also above the budget amount proposed by Gov. Tim Walz on Jan. 16, which was $151 million for the 2026-27 biennium.
[MORE: Greater detail on governor’s Agriculture Department recommendations]
The committee took no official action on the bill or the amendment and laid them over Monday. Anderson said his plan is to consider amendments to the delete-all amendment Wednesday and then take a vote on it.
The bottom line
The Department of Agriculture would get the largest share of the total General Fund appropriation request at $145.7 million.
Three other portions of the budget request would go to the following three programs and agencies also under the purview of the committee:
- $13.5 million to the Board of Animal Health;
- $8.8 million to the Agricultural Utilization Research Institute; and
- $2 million for broadband development.
There were some losers in the bill, including the cancellation of a $3 million fiscal year 2024 appropriation for green fertilizer grants, and reductions to the funds going to Second Harvest Heartland, the Emerging Farmer Office, and the Climate Implementation Coordinator.
Expanding broadband service across the state would get $2 million in the biennium from the General Fund to the Department of Employment and Economic Development and its Office of Broadband Development.
That office is charged with supplying border-to-border high-speed Internet access across the state.
One provision in the bill would remove the requirement that two safety-qualified installers be present at all times while workers are laying underground lines, reduce the amount of class time for training installers, and extend the 2025 deadline for compliance out to 2026.
Supporters said the training requirements were too onerous and would keep desperately needed workers off the job when they need to be out in the field as soon as the ground thaws.
But Kevin Pranis, marketing manager of Laborers International Union of North America, said there’s a good reason why the proposed changes in the broadband regulations are “opposed by cities, gas utilities and organized labor as unwise and unsafe.”
The bill “would send a green light to the same kind of contractors that thought it was appropriate to patch a gas pipeline leak with duct tape,” he said.
A lukewarm reception by DFLers, ag commissioner
Thom Petersen, Department of Agriculture commissioner, said he saw some promising elements in the bill, such as $660,000 to replenish the funds the department uses to reimburse farmers for damage caused by elk and wolf populations.
But because the total appropriations requested would exceed the governor’s budget proposal, he said he could only support the governor’s budget recommendations.
He also said the bill was premature, and it would be best not to set out specific funding commitments at the state level until more is known about which agricultural programs will be negatively affected by cuts at the federal level.
“There’s a lot of uncertainly in different programs that seems to change by the hour,” he said.
Rep. Rick Hansen (DFL-South St. Paul) was more direct and personal in his criticism and called it “reckless” for Anderson to push a bill through so quickly that was so strongly partisan.
“Representative Anderson, this is not normal,” he said. “I’ve heard you state many times that ag should be nonpartisan. Well congratulations, you’ve made it partisan by trying to ram this through while you have a one-vote majority.”
Hansen said the effort was “extremely disappointing” and a waste of precious time because the committee’s budget process will have to be redone because the current bill will not garner the needed 68 votes to pass the House.
Anderson replied that he felt the time was right to send the bill through committee because the process is so far behind schedule due to the DFL boycott in the first four weeks of the session.
Source : mn.gov