Minnesota Outdoor Heritage Alliance Report - Greg Flor
MOHA Director of Minnesota Trappers Association
WOW! What a hectic legislative session we have going this year. Our ongoing battle to protect the Legacy Funds may become even more intense. Mary Murphy (MPLS) - DFL (06 B - 17th term) and Jean Wagenius (Hermantown) - DFL (62 B - 12th term) appear to be leading voices in that effort. One chairs the (NEW) Cultural and Outdoor Resources Finance Division that "oversees” the spending of the Legacy Funds (We voters thought we did that with a provision in the original bill as a (our) Citizens Council oversight committee). We had provided language in the original Legacy Amendment on the intent and direction on how these funds were to be spent. The House has attempted to broaden that language by a much different definition and places Rep. Murphy and her "Resource Finance Division" as a way to accomplish that. We also have another "Finance Division" to hurdle chaired by Rep. Wagenius. It's called the Environmental and Natural Resources Finance Division. This committee, in my option, has kept funds from reaching our DNR for years. We developed the Legacy Amendment to get direct funding through to the outdoors, and this committee has done its’ best to choke these funds also. They haven't succeeded so far but the session is still going strong at the submission of this report.
The reversal of the Governors Un-allotment, by the courts, will make this pool of funds provided in the Legacy Fund, further encouraging for Legislators to take a "dip". We need to discourage this by engaging contact with your House and Senate members. We can also provide them an extended vacation with our votes . ALL 134 House seats are up for re-election. We provided direction by voting in the Legacy Amendment, we can provide direction on the spending of throes fund, and can further that intent by voting out members of the House and Senate that continue to try to further the diversions of the Fund!
Less that 9% of the original Minnesota Lottery Trust Fund makes it to the outdoors. This was Minnesota's Voters first attempt at secured funding on outdoor issues. We can't and won't allow that same mistake to happen again! We thought the Citizens Council with the bill language would prevent that (it sill can and will with our persistence). But the Legislative "Vultures" will always circle pools of funds with hopes of swooping in for a piece of fresh meat. See how your legislator has voted on these issues, speak with them then give direction by voting them in or out this November.
Greg Flor
MTA Representative to MOHA, and sitting member on the MOHA Executive Board
Don McMillan, President
Minnesota Outdoor Heritage Alliance
Hello all
To bring you up to date on our negotiations with the House regarding the definitions and other components of the House Bill, H.F. 3790, here are some recent developments. Several of us, Joe Duggan, Mark Johnson, John Schroers, Garry Leaf, myself, and Tom Landwehr from the Nature Conservancy met with The speaker, Rep. Margaret Kelliher late Thursday afternoon and evening. We expected this to be a 15 minute meeting with the Speaker, Rep. Dave Dill and Rep. Mary Murphy. However, three other members of Rep. Murphy’s committee showed up also; Reps Hansen, Wagenius and Morgan. We had two meetings, the first for approximately 2 hours and the second for about an hour. We came to some agreement regarding the proposed function of the Legislative Auditor, limiting the scope and quantities of the audits to more specific projects. We also rewrote the definitions to make them closer to the definitions of the L-SOHC and the Senate version. The word ecosystems was removed from the definitions. We were not happy with that rewrite but believed that we should get the bill moving through the House to avoid a possible negative vote at that time so we signed off with the Republican leaders and the bill passed as amended. During these meetings we were assured by both the Speaker and Chairman Mary Murphy that this was not over by any means and that we could work with the coming conference committee to further resolve our differences. We also had counsel from Rep. Dave Dill throughout this process.
The conference committee met on Sunday afternoon and several of us were present and we were able to talk with committee members on both the House and Senate side. The committee will meet again at 3:30 this afternoon and a number of us will be there again to testify as to why the House definitions should be removed and the Senate bill adopted. It appears to us that Speaker Kelliher wants to resolve this in our favor. We are receiving signs from the loyal opposition on these issues that they want “peace in the valley” as Senator Anderson so aptly put this in an e-mail to me.
Although this legislative process is not over by any means, we hope that we will see a positive result come from the conference committee. That action will then go to both the Senate and House for ratification. This will all play out rather quickly, I believe because the House and Senate have a much bigger fish to fry and that is to balance the budget. I know that the leadership has told members that items such as ours should be wrapped up no later than Wednesday. Note that we have other options if we do not win in the conference committee. At this point it looks good. It is obvious that the House leadership does not want to incur the wrath of the sportsmen and women in this state in an election year.
Best regards,
Don