Though passage of the pair of financial bills were seen as inevitable, their path off the chamber floors could hardly have been more different.

The first 279 House bills of the 2014 legislative session are already on record, thanks to a pre-filing deadline earlier this month. Many of those bills find legislators eager to peel back last year’s new business taxes, while another stack bears witness to members’ best efforts to push pet capital investment projects to the front of the line.

K-12 education finance bills that account for roughly 40 percent of the state’s general fund spending are moving through the House and Senate floors this week.

Democrats in the House have approved an $11.2 billion health and human services budget bill that would trim $150 million from spending over the next two years while also making first-ever investments in mental health programs in schools.

The bill passed off the House floor Monday night on a 70-64 vote after more than nine hours of debate. The bill would provide a 3 percent increase to cost-of-living for nursing homes and a 2 percent increase for long-term care providers while cutting about $150 million from projected HHS spending.

David Mosley has more than two decades of experience scrutinizing public health programs at the state and federal level. In all of that time, he's never encountered a state that did not collect paid claims data to provide a basis for setting its Medicaid rates.

Hundreds gathered for the afternoon rally held in the rotunda to push back against the recent introduction of bills in both chambers to legalize same-sex marriage. The rally was held at the same time House and Senate members were holding floor sessions.

After House and Senate DFLers announced the introduction of their gay marriage bill on Wednesday, it didn’t take long for the reaction to make itself felt.

January is generally not the time of year for four-hour committee hearings at the Capitol. But Wednesday’s gathering of the House Commerce and Consumer Protection Finance and Policy Committee nearly reached that dubious mark.

An unusually large number of legislators and prominent Minnesota politicos are opting to run in county commissioner races across the state.