In announcing the package, Gov. Mark Dayton argued that the state's positive budget forecast makes the business-to-business taxes unnecessary.

Dayton said the existing "operational problems" worry him, and are the kind of hitches that should have been worked out some time ago.

Sen. Vicki Jensen, DFL-Owatonna, didn’t get much of a chance to speak her piece on the final version of the tax bill. There literally wasn’t any time. The DFL majority’s omnibus tax bill passed the Senate with minutes to spare before the session’s predetermined end date of midnight on Monday, May 20.

There’s an old adage at the Capitol that first-term legislators should be seen and not heard. St. Paul can take some getting used to, the thinking goes, and most issues debated at the Legislature are so complex that newcomers would do well to sit back quietly and learn.

Beneath the noisy debate about guns that has erupted at the Capitol this session, there is a quieter legislative push to improve mental health services in schools and public health programs.

In their first joint action of the 2013 session, the newly elected Democratic leaders of the Minnesota Legislature held a news conference to show they were on the same page regarding broad goals for the biennium. First and foremost, House Speaker Paul Thissen and Senate Majority Leader Tom Bakk promised to balance a projected $1.1 billion budget deficit without gimmicks and without heading into a government shutdown.

Just hours after winning control of the House and Senate, DFL legislative leaders gathered with Gov. Mark Dayton at the Capitol. For the first time in two decades, Democrats control all three levers of power in St. Paul.

On the last leg of a nearly week long bus tour of the state, DFL party leaders gathered in Eden Prairie Monday afternoon to encourage suburban voters to get out and vote DFL from the top of the ticket on down.

**UPDATED** DFL House challenger Yvonne Selcer filed a complaint Monday with the Office of Administrative Hearings accusing the state Republican Party of lying about her record of paying property taxes.

For better or worse, Michael Brodkorb was back on the campaign trail last week. This time, however, the former GOP attack dog, deputy Republican Party chair and Senate communications guru who helped mastermind the 2010 GOP takeover of the chamber has materialized in a glossy pink and blue mailer that’s being used to attack Republicans.