The legislature returned from its time off to recognize Easter and Passover. Both the House and Senate worked almost exclusively on finance bills to fund state government. Both chambers are expected to finish work on every finance bill by Wednesday, May 1 so that conference committees can begin working out the differences between bills.

On Tuesday, the Senate Finance committee added the language from Sen. Bruce Anderson’s SF 2358, the Veterans and Military Affairs omnibus bill into SF 2227, the State Government Finance bill authored by Sen. Mary Kiffmeyer. The committee also appropriated additional money to the Care Management, Outreach, Referral, and Education (C.O.R.E.) program. With that change in place, the bill was sent to the Senate floor.

On Thursday, the full Senate took up SF 2227. No significant Veterans related changes were made. With a 37-28 vote, the Senate passed the State Government Finance bill. The Minnesota House is expected take up its version of the bill on Tuesday, April 30.

The Senate also unveiled its tax bill this week, SF 5 is authored by Sen. Roger Chamberlain. It included changes to the Homestead Market Exclusion for disabled Veterans. The first is changing the application due date from July 1 to Dec. 15. The second change gives county Veterans service officers and county assessors permission to share data in order to administrate the exclusion. Finally, it eliminated the 8-year limit that surviving spouses can use the exclusion upon death of the Veteran.