Gen Tosses a Shut-Out.  In what may be her last bill as a legislator, Senator Gen Olson (R-Minnetrista), the Chair of the Senate Education Committee, pushed the conference committee report on HF 2949--the 2012 omnibus education funding/policy bill--through the Senate on a vote of 64-0.  With the overwhelming vote of 119-9 in the House, it's pretty clear that the Governor will sign this bill.

There are some bugs in the bill (there always are bugs in an omnibus bill), but the Governor did have a considerable amount of input and a number of provisions that were promoted by the Governor last session and several fixes that were sought by the Minnesota Department of Education in the wake of the passage of last year's bill are included in HF 2949.  Further, the conference committee did remove a provision or two that the Governor found objectionable.  This should assure signature.

So good work Senator Olson!  You have served the state extremely well throughout your tenure as a tireless advocate for education.

School Trust Land Conference Committee Report Posted.  Below is a link to the conference committee report on HF 2244.  The conference committee finished its work late last week, but there were a couple of items that needed to be clarified before the report could be published.  While this bill passed both the House and Senate floors by wide margins as it headed to conference committee, there is some question whether or not the same level of support will be there as the bill seeks final passage.  The House and Senate bills were considerably different and the final product may run into some objections in each of the legislative bodies as the changes may erode some of the initial support.

I don't follow Twitter a lot, but I did see a Tweet yesterday that reported the Governor having problems with the bill.  I don't know if that is true or not, but we will likely find out in the next few days as passage through the Legislature is virtually assured.