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This week more than 9,000 State Employees are receiving layoff notices stating that they will be laid off if the legislature and Governor cannot pass a budget by July 1st. Negotiations are making progress, but the final details still hang in the air.

In 2012, when Republicans controlled the House and Senate in St. Paul, a law was passed to address invasive aquatic species. A bipartisan group of legislators at the time opposed the larger game and fish bill for varying reasons, but it still passed the House on a narrow 68-62 vote and in the Senate by a 34-28 vote.

Yesterday afternoon Governor Mark Dayton announced he'd accept the offer from Republican House leadership, $525 million in new spending for K-12 education. The amount also includes funding to expand PreK for lower income families. The Governor originally sought $418 million in K-12 funding plus an additional $1 billion over four years for taxpayer-funded PreK for all Minnesota 4-year-olds. He dropped the plan and accepted the Republican plan to spend more on existing PreK programs, some of which Republicans helped to establish in 2011.

In order to end the budget stalemate, Republicans quickly dropped all reform measures and added $125 million in new K-12 Ed spending on top of the $400 million increase they passed on May 18th.

The State of Minnesota is the largest statewide employer with over 40,000 employees. Today, 9,451 of them received a 30-day notice that they will be laid off if the legislature and Governor can't pass a budget by July 1.

Last year--when Democrats had control of the legislature-- $4 million was allocated to expand school lunch and breakfast programs in Minnesota. Of that amount, $569,000 was spent to provide free breakfasts for all Minnesota public-school kindergartners.

Minnesota College Republicans' Chairwoman Aly Eichman speaks about the future of Republicanism.

When the legislative session ended on May 18th, there was some resolution on data privacy issues in relation to law enforcement.  Legislation was negotiated...

While the majority of Minnesotans spent their Memorial weekend grilling and relaxing, Governor Mark Dayton was busy vetoing an additional two key spending bills, adding to the existing controversy and speculation surrounding the upcoming special session, which was originally generated after his veto on the legislature’s education budget.

State Auditor Rebecca Otto has been in activist mode since the legislature passed a bill that would allow Minnesota counties to hire private auditing firms instead of being obligated to use the auditor's office for their needs. The auditor's office has oversight of the billions of dollars that local governments spend every year, but unlike Minnesota cities and school boards, the counties were required to pay the state office for annual audits. Governor Dayton has already signed the state government bill that would enact the changes, but an upcoming special session may cause the issue to be revisited as Dayton has stated that he wants legislators to repeal the provision.