Gov. Mark Dayton on Wednesday afternoon signed the Supplemental Budget bill that contains a variety of appropriations spanning many areas of state government including E-12 education. This bill establishes a new pre-K pilot program and provides additional funding for rural school districts.
The Minnesota Department of Education (MDE) will provide applications for the PreK funding soon. View the potential on your school districts with MREA’s PreK Estimator Tool.
Get a closer look at what’s in the bill in MREA’s side-by-side by viewing the conference report column.
Tax Bill Await Signature
This bill does not, however, contain the school bond property tax credit for agricultural property otherwise known as Ag2School. The Governor withheld his signature on the tax bill until legislative leaders agree to his bonding and transportation terms. He has laid out his conditions for a special session.
Governor Dayton noted on Wednesday that drafting errors related to sales taxes on suites at the new Viking’s stadium and a failure to fix a sales tax issue for the State High School League are preventing his signature on this bill. He won’t sign the bill until legislators agree to fix these issues and make changes to their bonding bill, which failed to pass the regular session.
Special Session
His demands for a special session to address these issues are outlined in this letter to legislative leaders. Those demands, however, won’t be easily met as demonstrated by the response from House GOP Speaker Kurt Daudt.
For those waiting on the Ag2School property tax credit to go into law, you’re going to have to wait a little bit longer. Hopefully the Governor and Speaker are able to sort these issues out soon and we can have a resolution to the situation before the 4th of July.