6.2a ERMUSR 09-14-2021 - Laserfiche WebLink

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and Means Committee and the Senate Finance Committee. No public testimony was taken, and no amendments were allowed unless necessary to correct an error in the bill. Some bills were subsequently referred to a policy committee for an “informational hearing” where limited testimony was sometimes taken, but because these hearings were informational only, no action could be taken by the policy committee to change or block the bill. This process led to many long nights and a protracted Special Session as House Republicans, who had been largely left out of bill negotiations, filibustered each bill as it came up for passage off the House floor. MMUA originally thought the energy provisions of the Omnibus Commerce and Energy Bill were going to be harmless with only the extension of the CWR being of interest. But, when the bill was released just before its informational hearing, it was discovered that not only were the CWR extension provisions contained in the bill, but previously unintroduced language changing notice and reporting provisions related to disconnects was also in the bill. It turned out that MREA had spoken to the bill authors about including language clarifying the authority to conduct disconnects remotely using AMI devices. The Senate was fine with MREA’s request but the House conditioned acceptance on co-ops and munis having to inform both the Department of Commerce and the local energy assistance agency of any notice of intent to disconnect, and to compile reports on disconnects if requested by the Department. MREA accepted the conditions without checking with MMUA. The House author also failed to reach out to us. Had MMUA been given the courtesy of being consulted on the language, it hopefully could have been drafted in a clearer manner that would not conflict with the Data Practices Act. But, because this courtesy was not extended, MMUA and MREA are now negotiating with the Department of Commerce to minimize the extra workload and to deal with the Data Practices provisions affected by the poorly drafted and secret amendment. Technically the First Special Session ended when the House adjourned sine die in the very early morning of June 30, but the Senate stayed in Session. Since no legislation could be adopted with the House already gone, the Senate’s stated reason was to verify that the Governor actually signed all the budget bills and the tax bill. It turned out, however, that that the real reason they had not adjourned was so that they could take up confirmation hearings for a few more commissioners appointed by Governor Walz. Two commissioners were quickly confirmed and two more were set to be confirmed, but MPCA Commissioner Laura Bishop was essentially given the choice to resign or endure hours of testimony before not being confirmed which would have been tantamount to being fired by the Senate. She resigned shortly before her confirmation hearing was scheduled to begin. The next day Senate Democrats, still angry about the way things had gone down, moved to adjourn sine die, even though two commissioners’ presumed approvals had been slated to be acted upon. After an interesting floor discussion, the motion to adjourn sine die was approved and the true end of the First Special Session occurred July 7. Unexpectedly, MMUA became part of the floor discussion about the handling of Commissioner Bishop’s appointment. While not expressly named, the MPCA’s handling of air quality modeling of intermittent generators, particularly within the City of Glencoe with whom MMUA has been closely working on behalf of all municipal utilities, was cited as an example of a pattern of behavior the Senate majority did not like in the Commissioner. For the record, MMUA had no involvement in the confirmation process and had no advance knowledge of the intent to cite the Glencoe situation as justification for the commissioner’s not being confirmed. 3 109