What’s in play for climate budgets, as the legislature races into the final month?

I’ve been writing about where climate action shows up in our Minnesota state budget. Now, we are at crunch time in the legislative session with just weeks left until the May 22 adjournment. 

The question at the legislature now shifts from what’s possible in our state budget, to what’s possible now. More precisely, we’re past committee deadlines, and all the pieces of the final state budget are somewhere in a House or Senate bill. At this point, we know the pieces of the puzzle, but we don’t yet know the final budget picture and what is included and what is left out.

It’s a key time for shaping our final state budget, which is why we at the 100% Campaign hosted an event to talk about what’s in play as the legislature moves into its final month.

We brought together a great group of panelists from different advocacy groups working on climate, asking them to share why their legislation matters for climate and, more importantly, how to take action now to pass it. The event took place on April 13. If you’d rather watch a recording of the virtual event, we’ve got you covered.

Here’s a summary of what we learned.

This moment in session

The evening started with Aurora Vautrin, the 100% Campaign’s legislative director, giving an update on where we are in session. Aurora is the 100% Campaign’s person at the capitol, keeping tabs on the quickly shifting legislative landscape. 

Aurora’s basic take-away was that we are at a key moment in session with the omnibus budget bills for each body largely constructed. The amounts (called targets) each committee can spend have already been agreed upon by legislative leaders and Governor Walz. 

Importantly, these omnibus budget bills look different in each body, which means some important climate investments show up in both House and Senate bills, some in Senate but not House bills, and vice versa. 

The House and Senate ultimately come to a final agreement by negotiating in conference committees – special committees made up of house members and senators, one for each budget bill.

So, what does this mean for advocates? At this point, focusing advocacy on specific policies and budget provisions matters a lot. If you are interested in seeing specific things pass – say an investment in electric school buses or a community resilience program – mention those things when you contact your legislators. Even better, let them know you want the policy/budget in the final conference committee.

Delving into some of these specifics is where the April 13 discussion moved for the rest of the evening, with three panels focused on transportation, resilience, and funding/finance.

Transportation – the largest source of emissions with the potential for big progress

Sam Rockwell, Executive Director of MoveMN, started off the transportation conversation, noting that transportation is the biggest source of carbon pollution emissions. Two big strategies are essential for getting these emissions out of transportation this year – reducing how much fossil fuel vehicles use and reducing the amount of vehicle miles traveled (VMTs) overall.

This second strategy, reducing VMTs, is where Minnesota could take a transformative climate leap this year. The legislature is debating creating a dedicated, long-term funding source for transit as part of the omnibus transportation bill. The source would be a metro sales tax for less than a penny on the dollar, the goal is three-quarters of one-cent to be exact. 

For this level of new, sustained transit funding Minnesota can build out and operate a transit system that is easy to use and accessible, making the choice to not use a car the easy one. The health and quality of life benefits from this system are huge.

Take action by asking your legislator to fund transit for the future.

Next, we heard from Sonita van der Leeuw, Transportation Organizer at MN350. Sonita has been working with a coalition to secure funding for more electric school buses. Electric buses have important climate benefits and, as important, huge health benefits, too. Turns out not sending kids on buses powered by diesel engines means kids aren’t exposed to as much air pollution (I know, that’s not too surprising, but it’s still a great reason to fund electric school buses.)

Right now, the House has $14 million for electric school buses in its omnibus climate and energy bill, while the Senate has $7 million. You can take action by asking your legislators to fund electric school buses at the higher amount.

Adaptation and resilience – better preparing for our climate future

The second group of speakers covered climate adaptation and resilience – from the perspective of local governments and of our state lands.

Abby Finis, founder of Local Climate Solutions, gave an overview of how current omnibus bills fund programs to help local governments plan for and take action to address climate change. Local governments are at the forefront of dealing with climate change impacts. For example, right now in MInnesota, local governments are dealing with managing floodwaters and patching potholes. Both of these challenges will get worse with climate change. 

Among the programs Abby mentioned, we are particularly excited about climate action planning grants for local governments (funded in the House bill), the resilient communities grant program (funded at a higher level in the Senate bill), and the UMN Weather-Ready Extension program (funded in the House bill).

Stephanie Pinkalla, Government Relationship Director, MN at the Nature Conservancy, made the connection between Minnesota’s investments in lands and our climate readiness. As climate changes, healthy forest, grasslands, peatlands, and agricultural lands help sequester carbon, and they slow down water during big storms. 

Minnesota spends the state budget in a bunch of ways that make our lands more climate resilient – from funding conservation easements to helping private landowners manage their forests. One big item this year is funding our state forest nursery and ramping up tree seed collection. It turns out to actually plant all the trees we need to, we need to spend state money to grow our ability to grow more seedlings. You can sign up for updates and action alerts from TNC on these and other nature-based solutions for climate change.

Money matters – funding and financing climate action

Finally, we turned to money more generally. Figuring out how to fund and finance climate action over years is part of how we build our climate future together, and we had two great speakers to help us learn more..

Eric Harris Bernstein, Director of We Make MN, gave us an overview of how taxes and climate action are interlinked. Essentially, a robust public sector at the state and local levels will help fund the collective solutions we especially need in the climate change era. Things like transit, emergency preparedness and response, scaling clean energy, and more. While Minnesota has a big state budget surplus this year, over the last few decades we are spending less as a percentage of state GDP on state and local government. And we can feel that, with less robust and lower quality things we all value, like schools and transportation infrastructure. 

We rounded out the evening hearing about the proposed Minnesota Climate Innovation Finance Authority (MNCIFA), from Sara Wolff of Interfaith Power and Light (MNIPL). Funded with a chunk of state money, MNCIFA would help develop financing to get more clean energy and climate resilient projects happening across Minnesota. Importantly, MNCIFA matters for making an equitable clean energy transition because by using state support to organize and “de-risk” clean energy projects, MNCIFA will help bring private sector financing into communities and projects that the private sector is currently not financing.

Right now, the House funds MNCIFA at $20 million, while the Senate comes in at $5 million of funding. Funding at the House level is closer to what’s needed to make sure the Finance Authority is a success. You can check out MNIPL’s list of actions to find the one about MNCIFA.

Whew, that is a lot of potential for big state investments in climate action. And we didn’t even cover a lot of them. Thanks for following along on our Climate in All Budgets series. Stay tuned as we race to the May 22 legislative adjournment.