Gigantic policy bills carry risks, rewards

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With supplemental budget talks on hold and the state party conventions close at hand, there’s a general — and generally accurate — perception that activity at the Legislature has slowed to a snail’s pace. Some key figures, like Senate Majority Leader Larry Pogemiller, DFL-Minneapolis, have even talked of a mid-session recess.

But don’t tell the Legislature’s policy committee chairs there’s nothing going on. Most of them have omnibus bills in the works right now.

The omnibus policy bills are loaded with both substantive and technical policy changes. House Agriculture Chairman Al Juhnke, DFL-Willmar, said he’s packed 29 bills into the omnibus agriculture policy bill.

“I think it’s a time saver,” Juhnke said.

But assembling a large omnibus bill also has political risk.

Rep. Gene Pelowski, DFL-Winona, who chairs the House State and Local Government Operations committee, said he doesn’t assemble omnibus bills in his committee because of the risk of gubernatorial veto. If Gov. Tim Pawlenty disagrees with only one section of the bill, he doesn’t have line-item veto authority to surgically remove it. His only option is to veto the entire bill.

“With this governor, if there’s anything [he doesn’t like] in there, it’s vetoed,” Pelowski said.

Juhnke said he’s aware of the risks of losing an entire bill with the stroke of a veto pen. He knows Pawlenty isn’t too keen on provisions in the agriculture bill that allow industrial hemp to be made if the federal government allows it. Juhnke said he’ll have to work to get support for the industrial hemp language before the bill is ready to be voted off the floor.

“It’s a bipartisanly accepted issue. But the governor has been reluctant, so we have to work with the governor and the other chamber to get a bill that’s acceptable,” Juhnke said.

Senate Transportation Budget and Policy Division Chairman Steve Murphy, DFL-Red Wing, has seen omnibus policy bills get struck down by gubernatorial veto. Last year, the transportation policy bill was vetoed.

Murphy said he’s removed provisions Pawlenty found objectionable. He is also pushing for a so-called DWI interlock proposal that locks cars if the driver, by blowing through a tube in the vehicle, registers a blood alcohol level above the legal limit. Pawlenty supports the idea.

Murphy expects that the House might have different priorities. Omnibus bills are an effective format for dealing with situations in which lawmakers come to the table with competing priorities, he said. By combining proposals in an omnibus bill, lawmakers reach agreements that reflect a mixture of priorities. Bills that travel separately, he said, are more likely to fall short of the support they need to pass.

“It’s a way to negotiate not only with the House, but also with the governor’s office,” Murphy noted. “Everybody has certain initiatives they want to move forward. It may be important to me but not to others. Others might have a few things they feel are of high priority.”

Lawmakers who excel at legislative bargaining tend to thrive on the omnibus format. Juhnke said cunning legislators will include provisions that they don’t mind seeing defeated in conference committee. In negotiations, lawmakers typically have to yield on some positions in order to secure their priorities, he said.

“It’s part of that giant chess game to anticipate the moves of the Senate and the governor,” Juhnke said.

Omnibus bills are large reading assignments for lobbyists. Some lobbyists are concerned with only small portions of a very large bill. For lobbyists like Thom Petersen, director of government relations at the Minnesota Farmers Union, the omnibus bill concerns a large volume of legislative changes that are important to his group’s members.

For example, Juhnke’s ag bill addresses a problem in which cooperatives like the Wedge Co-op in Minneapolis have violated the corporate farm act because they’ve started growing crops for sale. Another part of the omnibus bill allows foreign entities to get into the wind generation business in Minnesota. Yet another provision deals with the concern that counties, such as Washington County, are going to stop their 4-H programs due to budget cuts. There’s a proposal in the omnibus bill to allow cities to run 4-H programs.

“[The counties] get down to whether they pay the jailer or pay the 4-H coordinator,” Petersen said.

The state Constitution requires that all bills consist of a single subject. Lawmakers tread a fine line in tailoring omnibus bills to assure that they don’t depart from the single-subject requirement. A Ramsey County District Court judge in 2004 struck down the conceal-carry handgun law with a ruling that the original measure wasn’t related to the state Department of Natural Resources bill to which it was attached. The Legislature repassed the law.

Murphy said that chairmen need to guard against attempts to load up omnibus bills for political reasons. Even if they pass constitutional muster, omnibus bills can fail if chairmen allow too many “hitchhikers.”

“Some omnibus bills have gone down due to their heft,” said Murphy. “You have to be diligent about what you put in the bills. Otherwise you have a fate similar to what the Bismarck received,” he added, referring to the massive German battleship that was sunk by Allied forces during World War II.