Last week, legislators took a brief spring recess to observe Passover and Easter, but the work hasn’t stopped. Next Friday, April 17, is third deadline which requires all budget bills to pass out of their individual committees and into the Ways and Means Committee. We set the two-year state budget last session and there has been no supplemental budget targets set this year. If a committee wants to consider putting together a supplemental budget this session, they have to find the cuts within their jurisdiction to cover it. My co-chair has had no appetite to have that discussion together.
And unfortunately, I’m not sure how serious my colleagues across the aisle are in getting anything done. While we passed a handful of technical bills off of the House floor on Thursday, the remainder of our House floor time this week has been the GOP pulling bills out of the committee process and onto the House floor for surprise votes. Whether it was their attempt on Tuesday to distract from the Iran War by discussing which students can play high school sports or discussing bills that have no path forward, my colleagues across the aisle swing from cruel to unserious.
It is especially disappointing when those same colleagues shut down bills that could truly help those struggling right now like a $50 million bill to help small business owners struggling from the impacts of Operation Metro Surge. Or a $40 million bill to keep folks in their homes. It is time to get serious and stop playing games.
Democrats are committed to helping Minnesotans afford their lives and thrive. We want to see kids have the opportunity to grow up here. We’re fighting for legislation that lowers some of the highest costs for families: health care, child care, groceries, housing, and energy. Gun violence prevention continues to be at the top of mind, as well as making sure our cities and counties have the tools they need to provide services to their residents.
Highlights from Committee this Week
The House Education Finance Committee only met once this week due to our GOP colleagues turning a brief floor session into 2+ hours discussing which student athletes can participate in high school sports. We missed getting to discuss a bill that would prevent special education cuts. On Thursday, when I had the gavel, we had a thoughtful discussion on teacher pay and access to affordable health insurance for our school districts who have been facing rising costs.
Under Co-Chair Gomez’s leadership in the House Taxes Committee this week, members heard proposals to expand the child tax credit alongside potential funding mechanisms — including broadening the net investment income tax and imposing a 1% tax on equity holdings exceeding $10 million.
On Thursday, we heard legislation, HF 4841, which would raise Hennepin County sales tax revenue to permanently fund the Hennepin County Medical Center. While the details of the legislation continue to be worked on, it’s imperative we find a bipartisan solution to save HCMC, the number one trauma center serving our entire state. It is my hope that any increase in the sales tax would be temporary and that we would find a statewide solution for this important statewide asset.
When Co-Chair Davids held the gavel, we heard a bill on expanding the sustainable aviation fuel credit, as well as a handful of bills on exempting different types of businesses from a variety of taxes.
Minnesota Values Project Survey
Groceries, rent, healthcare, childcare costs are all adding up. As we’re seeing the consequences of the Trump administration’s federal budget emerge in Minnesota, I’d like to hear from you. Please take a moment to fill out this survey: surveymonkey.com/r/MVP2026Survey
Connected to Community
Constituent meetings are winding down with five weeks left in the session. I was grateful to meet with Linda Sandvig from Beacon Interfaith hear about the work they are doing on affordable housing and the important role supportive housing plays in stabilizing lives.
High school students Edhita (Edina) and Jonathan (Eagan) shared the opportunity that HOSA has provided them in their school districts to explore the medical professional field while in High School. Edhita is thinking of going into surgical medicine and Jonathan into epidemiology.
I also met with a group of teachers on a statewide teacher health insurance pool as well as teacher pay. Additionally, two neighbors were at the Capitol with the Carpenters Union to talk about the need for us to pass a bonding bill and the importance of investments in building out our housing supply. These workers take care of us (our students and our important infrastructure), we need to take care of them.
Keep in Touch
Please continue to contact me anytime at rep.cheryl.youakim@house.mn.gov or 651-296-9889 with input or questions. Email is the quickest way to get in touch.
Thank you for the honor of representing our Hopkins, St. Louis Park, and Edina neighbors at the State Capitol.
Have a great weekend,
Rep. Cheryl Youakim 46B – Hopkins, Edina, & St. Louis Park
We’ve made it to Friday. It’s been a busy week at the Minnesota Legislature.
Despite being tied in the House, we are passing handfuls of good, bipartisan bills through the House Ways and Means Committee (on which I sit) and off of the House floor. Although with that progress comes deep frustration as we’re getting blocked on solutions that desperately need action like: gun violence prevention, more mental health support for our students, and delivering economic aid for families and businesses impacted by ICE. It is also important to pass a robust infrastructure bill will create more local jobs, and help jump start our economy. There seems to be some movement and bipartisan support to make that happen.
On Tuesday, Governor Walz gave his last state of the state address. He emphasized the importance of restoring civility to continue the good work for Minnesotans. It was great to have Hopkins Council Member Heidi Garrido join me as my guest. You can read the governor’s full remarks here.
With just over two weeks left in session, the House Ways and Means and the Taxes Committees have kept me busy. I sit on both of these committees and we will be wrapping up the bulk of our work this week. You can see below the stack of bills we heard in the House Ways and Means Committee on Wednesday. I also thought you would appreciate the little token our House Taxes Co-Chairs gave us Thursday to memorialize our work together this session.
Progress continued this week with the passage of a bill regulating HOAs, banning predictive market wagering, and our Housing Committee’s tenant-landlord relations bill, which passed unanimously. There are several smaller bills that also passed this week brought by individual members and others that help clarify existing laws.
Connected to Community
As the session is winding down, we are not getting as many groups visiting the Capitol. But on Monday I had a special treat, seeing our local firefighters at the Capitol. Thank you Hopkins Fire Chief Wenshau and Deputy Fire Chief Odden as well as Edina Fire Chief Slama for stopping by!
HCMC Update
Thursday, I sat in on a meeting with Hennepin County legislators to get an update on the work being done to stabilize Hennepin County Medical Center (HCMC), the state’s largest safety net hospital and trauma one center. Legislators met with medical providers and hospital administrators from HCMC. Many of you have written me about the importance of keeping HCMC open. Thank you for sharing your thoughts and we are working hard to make something happen before we adjourn. This one of the top bipartisan priorities.
Keep in Touch
As bills are progressing through the final weeks of session, there are a lot of moving parts. I may not be as responsive to your emails regarding individual pieces of legislation. But please know that I read each of your emails and take your thoughts to heart as we hear final bills on the House floor. Please continue to contact me anytime at rep.cheryl.youakim@house.mn.gov or 651-296-9889 with questions or input. Email is the quickest way to get in touch.
Have a great weekend!
Rep. Cheryl Youakim 46B – Hopkins, Edina, & St. Louis Park
We made it to Friday. It was a busy week with a flurry of activity to meet our committee deadline for policy bills to advance. We will be on a brief break before we come back to work on bills that include funding before the April 17 budget deadline.
Floor Activity
On Monday, we unanimously passed legislation off the House Floor to repeal César Chavez Day amid a lengthy investigation into his involvement in the sexual abuse of young girls.
If you’ve been following the local news, you may have seen coverage of the Governor/House Republican school voucher standoff. As I mentioned in my last email newsletter, my education co-chair Kresha publicly threatened to block all other legislation if the GOP didn’t get their main priority passed, which prioritizes aid to nonpublic schools.
Unfortunately, on Wednesday, in what should have been a short, procedural floor session to continue advancing bills, my Republican colleagues lived up to their promise and made a motion to go end session and go home. All but four GOP House members voted to go home without fraud prevention solutions and without finishing our work on bipartisan bills that have passed off the House floor.
They voted to go home without relief for our small businesses, restaurants, or renters from the federal actions. To end session without stabilizing our food shelves after SNAP cuts or help for those who will be losing their insurance coverage. And without passing legislation to protect our schools, hospitals/clinics, or places of worship from unfettered federal agents. I was very disappointed to say the least, and I’m glad some of my Republican colleagues used common sense and voted no with all of my DFL colleagues.
Equally frustrating was when my DFL colleagues and I brought three common-sense bills forward — two on gun safety and one to keep ICE out of schools without a judicial warrant. Instead of honest debate, the other side simply blocked us. This motion would simply have allowed the bills to be placed on the General Register so that they could be brought up on the House floor for further discussion and amendments.
In the years I have been here, I’ve never seen a good bill pass without some back-and-forth. Shutting that down — especially with grieving parents watching and our students experiencing the level of trauma and learning loss that they are— is unacceptable.
School security upgrades and increased mental health supports for our students still need to be part of the discussion, but we also need to limit access to dangerous guns to keep our kids safe. I’m asking my colleagues across the aisle: come to the table and work with us. The people of Minnesota deserve better than this.
I spoke during the debate on the bill on prohibiting ICE from staging on school grounds or entering our schools, unless they have judicial warrant, to describe the undue stress their actions have put our students, teachers, and administrators.
Committee Work
This week in the House Tax Committee, staff presented the results of this year’s Tax Incidence Study which showed that Minnesota has the second most progressive tax structure in the country.
Minnesotans at all income levels (except the lowest one) pay about 12% of their income in state and local taxes, with more affluent taxpayers paying mostly income taxes while lower income households pay proportionately more in sales and property taxes. We also heard a bill including extending the funding to counties to build affordable housing and a variety of other bills that were laid over for future consideration
In the Ways and Means Committee we voted to send the majority of those bills to the House floor and then another one back to the Commerce Committee where it will reside for final action.
In the Education Finance Committee this week, when the GOP had the gavel, they brought back up a bill that would require the Governor to opt-in to a tax credit for school vouchers. It was a tied vote, with all DFL members voting no and all GOP members voting yes, so the bill will remain in the Education Finance Committee. We also informationally heard a few bills that would have made changes to PSEO.
On Thursday, when I had the gavel, I presented the K-12 forecast article bill. This bill, of whom I am the chief author, adjusts the funds that go to our schools to the February forecast numbers. I am happy to report that the bill was sent to the House Ways and Means Committee with a unanimous voice vote. I also presented a bill on a proposed structure for student mental health grants to organizations that work with youth outside the school day and in the summer. Organizations that get young people physically active, away from technology, and making connections with their peers could apply for these competitive grants through the Minnesota Department of Education. The bill had a positive reception, but I would like to work with some more stake holders so we laid the bill over for further conversation.
During that committee time, we also heard a bill on ways to retain our teachers and one to create an interagency council on student attendance so that folks are not working in silos as we try to find ways to keep kids in school.
Constituent Visits
Monday started out with a visit from Minnesota Association of Clinical Oncology regarding the need to reform prior authorization, so that cancer patients have timely access to important care. After committee and before session, I met with a dedicated group of social service workers to discuss their priorities for their clients, constituents advocating the importance of access to reproductive care as well as Maxine Maxon and others with SEIU to talk about fair wages and workload in hospitals.
I had the chance to meet with constituents visiting the Capitol Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday on a variety of issues. Sue Dorkin from Mount Olivet Rollings and I talked about clear expectations and standards for waivered services and continued services for those living in their own homes. I had an update on the great work that Children’s First is doing in St. Louis Park and Hopkins and meet with their partners at the Education Partnership Coalition. The Minnesota Association of Professional Employees were at the Capitol on Wednesday, and I had a great conversation with constituent Sarah Merkus who works in cybersecurity for the MNIT within the Minnesota Department of Transportation. Thursday was Disability Day at the Capitol, Thursday, I had a visit from the folks at Vail Place advocating for continued for the amazing clubhouse model they run in Hopkins, Minneapolis, and Ramsey County.
Keep in Touch
Please continue contacting me anytime at rep.cheryl.youakim@house.mn.gov or 651-296-9889. Email is the quickest way to get in touch.
Thank you for the honor of representing our Hopkins, St. Louis Park, and Edina neighbors at the State Capitol. Next week, legislators are on Easter/Passover/Eid recess. However you may celebrate, I wish you a restful holiday.
Rep. Cheryl Youakim 46B – Hopkins, Edina, & St. Louis Park
Spring has finally sprung. I hope you get a chance to be outside this weekend! To our neighbors celebrating, Eid Mubarak!
We’re nearing the halfway point of the legislative session. Next week on Friday, we have our first and second committee deadline. This is a point in our work where each bill that contains policy must have gone through the committee process in each body (the House or Senate) to advance either to the floor or to a finance committee if there is also a cost.
In the House Education Policy Committee, I had a bill up (HF 4176) that was brought to me by an education advocacy group called Ed Evolving. They have been working on clarifying and streamlining the statutes around site-based governed schools. This is a law currently on the books that allows districts the flexibility to be innovative at the school site level and still provide the required academic instruction that aligns with the statewide standards. Dr. Georg Nolan, Principal at Gatewood Elementary in the Hopkins School District, came and testified in support. Dr. Nolan spoke on their innovative outdoor classroom program they want to continue and how this legislation could provide stability to do that. The committee laid the bill over for possible inclusion in an House Education Policy bill.
In other education related news, House Education Policy Chair Sydney Jordan (DFL-Minneapolis) and I (as well as other legislative colleagues) had the opportunity to meet with a large group of teachers who were at the Capitol to advocate for a more robust statewide insurance pool for all educators who work in schools; teachers to paraprofessionals. Our school districts are getting hit by increasing insurance and prescription drug costs and a statewide pool could help ease that burden. This is the start of a longer conversation, but the hope is to pass a bill this session to gather data from school districts on their plans and coverage so that we can make an educated decision when we build out a solution.
If you’re still working on your 2025 taxes and have children, please don’t forget about the Child Tax Credit! It is NOT automatic. So far this year, more than 154,000 tax returns have claimed the Child Tax Credit, benefiting over 318,000 children across Minnesota. Families are receiving an average credit of $2,669. The credit is estimated to reduce child poverty by up to a third in Minnesota, making it one of the most impactful investments DFLers protected amid federal cuts. Learn more about eligibility here.
Connected to Community
It was a shorter week up at the Capitol with the Thursday Eid break, but there was still an opportunity to meet with constituent groups! On Monday, I met with constituents who were from the Food Group and Great Twin Cities United Way, which are both part of a larger organization called Hunger Solutions. These groups work to stabilize food access in our communities from working with food shelves to supporting the passage of universal free school meals.
I also had the opportunity to talk with a constituent who visited the Capitol to talk about nuclear energy and on about the CPA priorities.
Keep in Touch
Please continue to contact me anytime at rep.cheryl.youakim@house.mn.gov or 651-296-9889 with questions or input. Email is the quickest way to get in touch.
Rep. Cheryl Youakim 46B – Hopkins, Edina, & St. Louis Park
I hope you had a chance to enjoy Minnesota’s “false spring” and are ready for round two of snow! I have one last March Community Conversation this Saturday from 10:30 am – Noon at the Hopkins Library before the snow flies. Hope to see you there!
It’s been a busy week at the Capitol.
This week, the Minnesota House unanimously passed legislation renaming the Community Solar Garden Program for Speaker Emerita, former Energy Committee Chair, and our friend, Melissa Hortman.
Melissa’s work on solar and clean energy helped build Minnesota into a nationwide leader in climate policy, renewable energy, and created thousands of green energy jobs. One of her proudest achievements was the community solar garden program, which helps more people reap the rewards of our clean energy grid.
The Melissa Hortman Community Solar Garden Program will stand as a tribute to her legacy as Minnesota’s ‘godmother of solar,’ and I was honored to vote Green on this bill.
In committee this week, we had a full agenda with lots of lively debates. One of these took place in the House Education Finance Committee, of which I am the DFL co-chair. My GOP counterpart held a hearing on a bill that would direct public funding to Scholarship Granting Organizations (SGO’s) for education scholarships/vouchers and other educational costs. The bill had little to no oversight of these SGO’s, provides a $1 for $1 credit that is not available to Minnesotans when they currently donate to any other non-profits, and directs money to non-public schools who are not obligated to follow the same state requirements our public schools are.
Our Minnesota constitution requires us to fund our public schools where 880,000 students (90%) attend. Currently, our public schools our asking us for increased investments in a variety of areas from student mental health to special education funding. This proposal does not provide any of that. Yet that did not stop my House GOP colleagues from holding a press conference where they stated that they would not allow any K-12 funding to pass out of committee unless the Governor opts into the federal school voucher bill. You can read more about the legislation and the topic by clicking on this Minnesota Public Radio article link.
In the Taxes Committee, we heard a bipartisan bill I’m authoring to expand income tax exemption for AmeriCorps Volunteers. Currently, state law allows an income tax subtraction only for educational service awards earned through AmeriCorps National Service. HF 3792 would expand that benefit to include stipends and living allowances received by a wider group of volunteers — specifically those serving in AmeriCorps VISTA, the Civilian Community Corps, and AmeriCorps Senior programs. You can watch video of the hearing at this link.
Photo Credit: Andrew VonBank, Minnesota House Photography
Connected to Community
At the end of last week, Rep. Larry Kraft and I had a chance to meet with Cancer Action Day advocates from our district to learn more about the urgent need for more cancer screening access. Early detection saves lives. Rep. Kraft shared his stash of homemade ice cream with us, as well.
Thank you to St. Louis Park and Edina Superintendents, school board members, and staff that visited the Capitol on Monday to advocate for our students and the supports they need in our schools!
Tuesday I met with an amazing community educator from St. Louis Park, a small but mighty group advocating for accessible health care, and an owner of a day care in St. Paul for child care day. The highlight was connecting with Betsy Holmgren on the need for access to Alzheimer’s treatments! We had a chance to share with each other our personal experiences of family members with Alzheimer’s.
Wednesday I had the chance to meet with a dedicated team from Teach for America. I also connected with some wonderful Adult Basic Education teachers. I finished the day with the amazing Hopkins Councilmember Heidi Garrido at the Capitol advocating for our community.
I started out Thursday speaking at the Children First Breakfast and hearing from their amazing Youth for Change students. I then presented a bill in Taxes to exempt AmeriCorps stipends from income tax. Finally, Rep. Julie Greene and I met with dedicated folks from Moms Demand Action for sensible gun violence prevention before we headed to floor session.
Keep in Touch
Please continue to contact me anytime at rep.cheryl.youakim@house.mn.gov or 651-296-9889 with questions or input. Email is the quickest way to get in touch.
Stay safe this weekend with the coming snow!
Rep. Cheryl Youakim 46B – Hopkins, Edina, & St. Louis Park
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