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Lawmaker Proposes Quick Elections if Special Session Required

John Croman
KARE 11 News
Wednesday, June 1, 2005

State lawmakers returned to the capitol Tuesday for the special session, prompting at least one of them to question what makes a special session, so special.

When the special session began shortly after midnight one week ago, it had all the markings of history in the making and yet, it's the eighth time in 11 years that lawmakers have gone into overtime.

St. Cloud Republican Dave Kleis says constituents are upset, “People are just upset. Most people are just saying you've had five months to do this, how come you can't get it done?”

The senator points out that the founding fathers got more work done in weeks that lawmakers get done in months, “Less time to do the Constitution of the United States of America. In fact the Declaration Of Independence took less than a month.”

But Kleis thinks he has the idea that would speed things up at the capitol. He’s proposing a law forcing a special election for all 201 seats in the legislature if lawmakers can't pass a budget during the regular session.

“It's all about elections to begin with. Posturing for who's going to control the House, who's going to control the Senate, who's running for governor? It's all about elections, so let's have an election,” says Kleis.

But at the heart of the capitol stalemate lies the tax question and Tuesday a coalition of nonprofits, churches, and labor groups pulled together to support the concept of taxing the wealthy.

Rev Brian Rusche of the Minnesota's Watching Coalition says the poor pay more taxes, “The wealthiest Minnesotans do not pay as much in state and local taxes as does the middle class, or the lower class, or the very poor. They simply don't. That's why we need progressive taxation just to make that whole system fair.”

Among the bills that made it to the governor's desk, one mandating parents of stillborn babies can get birth certificates. Traditional adversaries Michele Bachmann and Ellen Anderson got behind the idea, on behalf of Candy and Steve McVicar who lost their daughter Grace in 2001.

“The issue is whether you're pro-life or pro-choice and you have a baby that's a wanted child, and you give birth to that baby, and that baby doesn't get to live because they're stillborn, you want that birth acknowledged no matter where you stand on that, “ says Candy.

Currently parents of stillborn babies get only death certificates, no matter how long the mother carries the child. Under this law, a birth certificate will be offered to every family that loses a baby carried at least 20 weeks. In fact, it allows any parent who's ever lost a baby through stillbirth, to retroactively get a birth certificate.