A lot changed in Minnesota’s legislative districts thanks to this year’s new redistricting map. Some incumbents were paired in newly drawn legislative territories; others found themselves installed in districts that bore little resemblance to their old electoral stomping grounds.

House and Senate races across the state are rapidly shaking out after the release of the 2012 legislative map last month. And with local endorsing conventions set to take place throughout March, incumbents and challengers alike have little time to make decisions about their political futures.

House and Senate races across the state are rapidly shaking out following the release of new legislative maps.

In the first hours and days after the state’s new redistricting maps landed at the Capitol Tuesday, the collective sense of relief among Minnesota Democrats was unmistakable.

In hopes of enacting long-awaited changes to Minnesota’s rules governing shoreland development on Minnesota lakes, the Department of Natural Resources is working to remove a number of controversial provisions from the last iteration of its plan.

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

Amid the flurry of big-ticket budget bills and spreadsheets that have overtaken the Capitol in the past week, the comparatively puny environmental budget bills moving through the Legislature have attracted little attention in most quarters.

Fourteen Republican state legislators, including gubernatorial nominee Tom Emmer, received perfect ratings from Minnesota Majority for their voting records during the 2010 legislative session. Conversely, seven state senators, all Democrats, received zero ratings from the conservative advocacy group.

Capitol lobbyists are speculating that Sen. Tom Saxhaug is the likely choice to be chairman of vaunted Environment and Natural Resources Committee.

Session 2010's tempest over whether to take a federal deal that would have jump-started Minnesota's entry to a new federal Medicaid expansion hasn't subsided. It simply followed legislators out the doors of the Capitol and onto the campaign trail.