Minnesota Lawyer

The GOP-controlled Legislature has advanced its second round of changes in as many years to Minnesota’s environmental permitting laws.

A bipartisan group of state legislators announced legislation that would remove the state Department of Natural Resources (DNR) from its role in managing school trust lands. The move reflects simmering disappointment with the amount of money the agency is generating from timber and mining operations on the lands.

Legislation to allow a wolf hunting season in Minnesota is scheduled on Thursday to be heard in a state House committee. The House bill and the DNR disagree about the timing of the wolf season.

The advocacy group Conservation Minnesota next week will release a detailed accounting of state lawmakers' track record on Legacy spending. In it the group raises concerns that lawmakers are using Legacy funds in ways that voters didn’t intend when they agreed in 2008 to increase the sales tax to pay for outdoors and cultural projects.

News that Susan Thornton, the chief staffer for the Legislative-Citizen Commission on Minnesota Resources (LCCMR), had been fired came as a shock last week to many state legislators and people who lobby on environmental funding issues.

Susan Thornton has reportedly been fired as director of the Legislative-Citizen Commission on Minnesota Resources. A House GOP spokesman says she is still employed at the Legislature. Thornton's attorney questions if she can be fired without a vote from the LCCMR members.

The House Judiciary Policy and Finance Committee will no longer be a stand-alone committee and Rep. Steve Smith will no longer be a chairman, according to House Speaker Kurt Zellers. Also, Rep. Tom Hackbarth has been given a gavel on a new energy subcommittee.

Environmental and conservation groups harbor growing doubts about the constitutional soundness of state lawmakers’ use of so-called Legacy dedicated funds for outdoors and cultural projects.

While neither a land-roving beast nor a fish, all-terrain vehicles (ATVs) became its own animal in the game and fish bill. The House and Senate this afternoon passed the conference report

The House and Senate are stuck in a rut over all-terrain vehicle (ATV) legislation in the Game and Fish bill.