Housing gets boost

A raft of new measures from this year’s legislature officially became law July 1. Summaries of all laws passed by the Legislature in regular and special sessions are available online from nonpartisan House Public Information Services at house.mn

We continue a synopsis of those bills started in last week’s Pine Knot News.

Housing

The $15 million funding increase in the omnibus agricultural finance law is evenly divided between housing development and redevelopment efforts, and prevention and efforts to end homelessness. Programs where increases are focused include: $5 million for the Challenge program for developing affordable permanent rental housing; $3.5 million for Homework Starts with Home to identify, engage and stabilize students experiencing homelessness and their families.

Public safety

Additional dollars for the judiciary, public defenders, corrections officers and the Department of Human Rights are included in the omnibus public safety law. It calls for $2.48 billion in spending, a $123.6 million increase. Among the increases are: $11.93 million for the Public Defense Board primarily to raise salaries of the approximately 580 public defenders across the state along with other staff, and $6 million to hire new attorneys and support staff; $7.6 million to hire an additional 78 prison correctional officers; $5.34 million to maintain full funding of the offender health care contract; almost $2.68 million for prison staffing recruitment and retention; $1.48 million for cybersecurity enhancements; $1.31 million to re-establish a prison ombudsman office that was eliminated in 2003; and $366,000 in the first year of the biennium for critical technology needs associated with prison security.

Transportation

The omnibus transportation finance law will appropriate roughly $6.7 billion over the next two years for the Department of Transportation, transportation-related functions within the Department of Public Safety, and the transportation division of the Metropolitan Council, including Metro Transit. The law will appropriate just shy of $100 million in additional transportation spending that includes $52.7 million to replace the Minnesota Licensing and Registration System, and $13 million in reimbursement to deputy registrars that were hit hard by the problematic rollout of the system in July 2017.