A lighter amount of bills were heard in the legislature last week as six Veterans related pieces of legislation were heard across four committees.

Two bills were heard on Tuesday. In the House Judiciary and Civil Law committee, HF 1855 (Greenman – Minneapolis) was heard. This bill seeks to require federal accreditation and prohibits service providers from guaranteeing benefits. The bill was debated and ultimately failed to pass the committee on a tie vote. After the vote, the bill was laid over for future consideration.

SF 1074 (Klein – Mendota Heights) was also heard on Tuesday in the Senate Higher Education committee. This bill would create a higher education benefit for dependents of disabled Veterans at state colleges and universities. It was laid over for possible inclusion in an omnibus bill.

On Wednesday morning the House Veterans and Military Affairs Division heard three Veterans bills. Two were informational. The first was HF 2444 (Bliss and Xiong) which is the proposed budget for the Departments of Military Affairs and Veterans Affairs. The second bill was HF 2773 (Clardy – Inver Grove Heights) which would provide funding to Lutheran Social Services to help feed Veterans dealing with food insecurity. The last bill was HF 2410 (Bliss – Pennington) which would allow surviving spouses to keep their education benefits if they remarry. The bill was laid over for possible inclusion in an omnibus bill.

Finally, the last bill heard was SF 1706 (Kupec – Moorhead) in the Senate Judiciary Committee. This is the bill amending MDVA’s read-only access to the MAXIS database. The bill was laid over.

This week, the Senate Veterans Subcommittee is expected to unveil the budget bill for Veterans and Military Affairs.