The chair of the House Agriculture Finance and Policy Committee unveiled a committee budget bill Monday that he said “supports all kinds of agriculture here in Minnesota.”
“All sizes of farmers, large and small, organic and conventional. It supports urban farming, it supports rural farming,” said Rep. Paul Anderson (R-Starbuck).
The committee heard a walk-through of an Anderson-sponsored delete-all amendment to HF1704 appropriating $168.9 million from the General Fund for the Department of Agriculture, plus several other agencies and programs under the purview of the committee, including the Office of Broadband Development.
The funding request is $17.1 million above the current amount budgeted in 2024-25, or a 10.1% increase.
Here’s the quick take…
The Department of Agriculture would get the largest share of the total General Fund appropriation request at $145.7 million.
Three other portions of the budget request would go to the following three programs and agencies also under the purview of the committee:
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$13.5 million to the Board of Animal Health;
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$8.8 million to the Agricultural Utilization Research Institute; and
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$2 million for broadband development.
And more on broadband…
Expanding broadband service across the state would get $2 million in the biennium from the General Fund to the Department of Employment and Economic Development and its Office of Broadband Development.
That office is charged with supplying border-to-border high-speed Internet access across the state.
One provision in the bill would remove the requirement that two safety-qualified installers be present at all times while workers are laying underground lines, reduce the amount of class time for training installers, and extend the 2025 deadline for compliance out to 2026.
Supporters said the training requirements were too onerous and would keep desperately needed workers off the job when they need to be out in the field as soon as the ground thaws.
But Kevin Pranis, marketing manager of Laborers International Union of North America, said there’s a good reason why the proposed changes in the broadband regulations are “opposed by cities, gas utilities and organized labor as unwise and unsafe.”
The bill “would send a green light to the same kind of contractors that thought it was appropriate to patch a gas pipeline leak with duct tape,” he said.