The DFL-controlled Minnesota House and Senate are on a collision course over transportation funding.
The House passed a bill Wednesday on a vote of 71-59 that would create a 75-cent fee for packages delivered to your door, plus a 0.75 percent sales tax increase in the seven-county metro region to pay primarily for transit.
The Senate will soon vote on a companion transportation package that doesn’t include the delivery fee and would reduce the sales tax increase for metro transit.
Senate Transportation Committee Chair Scott Dibble, DFL-Minneapolis, originally sponsored the fee and supported the 0.75 percent metro sales tax increase. But last week he removed the fee from his bill and dropped the sales tax increase to 0.5 percent.
Dibble told reporters he made those changes because he didn’t have enough DFL votes in the Senate to pass those tax and fee increases. The DFL has a one-vote majority in the Senate, so any proposal that doesn’t have unanimous party support cannot pass.
Biggest split between House, Senate this session
This difference marks the first biggest split between the two chambers after more than three months of DFL unity on major pieces of new legislation.
The split will likely have to be resolved in a House-Senate conference committee.
House Transportation Committee Chair Frank Hornstein, DFL-Minneapolis, said he would continue to support both the delivery fee and the larger sales tax increase because Minnesota’s roads, bridges and transit services desperately need more money.
Hornstein previously said he sees the delivery fee as an alternative to a gas tax increase, which he called overwhelmingly unpopular with both motorists and lawmakers.
The House bill provides $1.1 billion more in new spending for transportation projects over the next two years.
The 75-cent delivery fee, in the unlikely event the Senate concurs, would raise $168 million in the next year and would grow to about $176 million in subsequent years.
A 0.75 percent metro sales tax increase would generate about $600 million a year in new revenue, while a 0.5 percent increase would produce at $400 million more annually.
Both the House and Senate bills also would increase motor vehicle sales taxes and license tab fees.
GOP opposition
House Minority Leader Lisa Demuth, R-Cold Spring, said the House bill would increase taxes and fees by $3.5 billion over the next two years. That’s unnecessary, she asserted, when the state has a $17.5 billion budget surplus. She wants the state to use more of that cash for transportation projects.
But House DFL Majority Leader Jamie Long of Minneapolis contended the surplus is mostly one-time money that couldn’t meet all the state’s transportation needs. He said roads, bridges and transit need on-going revenue sources.
House Republicans offered a long list of amendments aimed at cutting spending and lowering taxes, but all were defeated on mostly party-line votes during a debate that started late Tuesday night and spilled over into Wednesday afternoon.
In addition to pumping more money into roads, bridges and transit across the state, the House bill provides $5 million over the next two years to provide a second daily passenger train from Minneapolis-St. Paul to Chicago plus $194 million next year to launch the proposed Northern Lights Express train between Minneapolis and Duluth.
St. Paul would get $25 million next year to rebuild Rice Street north of University Avenue.
More than half the new money in the House bill — $638 million — would go to the Minnesota Department of Transportation, mainly for state highways and bridges. Combined with other revenue sources, MnDOT would receive $8 billion over the next two years.
