Minnesota House Faces Power-Sharing Challenge, Working Together

(KNSI) – Legislative leaders hope to hold hands and sing kumbaya long enough to get the people’s work done in St. Paul.

Starting Monday, the Minnesota House of Representatives will be tied at 67, triggering a pre-negotiated power-sharing agreement between Democrats and Republicans. That occurred after a judge ruled the District 40B seat winner back in November was ineligible because they didn’t live in the district and vacated the seat. On Tuesday, the post was filled by a Democrat, restoring the tie.

The deal calls for Republican Lisa Demuth, from Cold Spring, to remain as speaker of the House. All committees will be run by a co-chair model, except the fraud prevention and oversight committee. She told KNSI that means everyone needs to play nice. “They need us to work with them just as much as we need them to work with us to pass anything off the House floor.”

She says lawmakers will need to get busy starting next week. “What we know right now is that bipartisan work, common sense middle of the road, good for Minnesota work, not extreme things, that is going to have to happen earlier, even to move out of committee now.”

Demuth pointed out that due to the valuable loss of time, thanks to a 23-day DFL boycott at the start of the session, every day is critical, and they have no time to spare. That boycott ended when the current power-sharing agreement was struck. She says the state’s top priority is passing a budget and addressing a projected $6 billion budget shortfall by 2028.

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