Legislative debates on the issue are generally badly informed, partisan-driven, or woefully devoid of fact-based impartial evidence.

DFL-controlled energy committees in the House and Senate have labored this month on omnibus legislation designed to address concerns about climate change and to boost Minnesota’s renewable energy industry.

On Thursday night the Minnesota House of Representatives gave final passage to the bill establishing a state-run health-insurance marketplace, leaving the long-disputed measure just a Senate vote away from reaching the governor’s desk.

Gov. Mark Dayton rolled out the specifics of his revised budget plan Thursday at the Capitol. And as he had intimated, the reworked budget eliminated a raft of proposed sales tax changes, including a hot-button plan to tax a range of business-to-business services.

The campaign finance reports released last week show that political action committees large and small have been funneling lots of money into legislative races.

DFL Rep. Mindy Greiling has spent years wrangling with the likes of education lobbyists as groups tried to sway the former House K-12 finance chairwoman to change longstanding policies or win a bigger piece of the multibillion-dollar budget pie. But no other group was more persistent, or powerful, than the so-called “education cartel.”

As the Republicans and DFL Gov. Mark Dayton persist in a stalemate that could result in a government shutdown, Minnesota Chamber of Commerce President David Olson said he’s not getting pushback from his members on the Legislature’s central budget choice: to hold the line on tax increases.

In the always contentious arena of K-12 education policy, the movement to create a new teacher evaluation system in Minnesota finds Republicans and Democrats, business and labor groups agreeing that changes are needed.

Greater Minnesota business leaders took to the Capitol Monday to protest proposed cuts to local government aid (LGA) in the Republican budget bills.