When it comes to battles over natural resources policy, efforts to change the state’s Wetlands Conservation Act (WCA) usually aren’t resolved overnight.

At least three prospective Republican candidates for the Minnesota Senate crowded a gathering of activists in the newly drawn Senate District 39 over the weekend.

The most anticipated political event of the year at the Capitol — the unveiling of court-drawn state legislative and congressional districts that will be used for the next decade — arrived at 1 p.m. Tuesday.

Gov. Mark Dayton’s administration and a host of rural economic development interests are hoping to boost the amount of renewable energy produced by farmers, homeowners and assorted small businesses. But that goal is running into a controversy over the rate at which those producers are paid for the power they generate, and just how much power they can sell to utilities.

As more farmers, businesses and homeowners look to put up wind turbines and solar panels to generate power, utilities like rural electric cooperatives are pushing back against a state law that they say puts them at a disadvantage.

Republican lawmakers are wrangling on several fronts as they move Legacy funding bills to the floor. The Legacy amendment, which was approved by Minnesota voters in 2008, provides roughly $550 million in dedicated sales tax dollars for arts and culture, parks and trails, water cleanup and habitat acquisition.

Tempers flared and debates grew heated around the Capitol over the past week as Republicans in the House put their controversial legislative redistricting map on the table. The map carves up a new political landscape that pits 26 incumbents against one another - 20 in the House and six in the Senate - and all but one of the matchups put a DFLer, or two, in peril.

Rep. Sarah Anderson has released the first plan for redrawing legislative districts based on 2010 Census figures. The proposed map would pit 20 current House members against each other and six sitting senators, according to an analysis by Minnesota Public Radio.

Former Republican Rep. Dave Bishop remembers sitting in the office of then-House Speaker Steve Sviggum, trying to calm him down. Sviggum was fuming, as Bishop recalls, because he had just been voted down on an issue by the executive board, a small group of GOP representatives that serve as caucus advisers to the speaker of the House of Representatives.

Legislature will test limits on the uses of the $540 million in proceeds from the state's 2008 Legacy Amendment