Tag Archives: constitutional amendments

Election 2026: Constitutional Amendment 1

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This is a statewide vote, and there’s only one constitutional amendment on the ballot despite the number. Here’s the question as it appears:

CONSTITUTIONAL AMENDMENT 1

Increasing funding to school districts

Shall the Minnesota Constitution be amended to increase the funding going to all school districts from the permanent school fund, which is a fund that supports school districts without raising individual income or property taxes, effective July 1, 2027?

You can vote yes or no. Non-votes will be counted as a no. This needs a simple majority to pass, but it needs a simple majority of all voters.

The permanent school fund was created when Minnesota became a state; it was originally 8.6 million acres of land (that I assume were stolen from the Dakota and Anishinaabe). Over time, a lot of the land in the southern part of the state has been sold off. The fund includes 2.5 million acres of land, 1 million acres in mineral rights, and a very large pile of money ($2.4 billion) in a whole lot of investments, managed by the State Board of Investments. Right now, constitutionally, the dividends of the fund can be distributed to schools, but capital gains can’t. The legislature would like to be able to distribute a small percentage of the capital gains, as well.

To be clear, they are not proposing to spend the fund down to zero. What they want to do is basically what every college with an endowment does: manage the investments, distribute the dividends, and distribute some of the money, so that the fund is available to support students today as well as in a decade.

There are several websites that are in favor of this amendment, two of which you can find here and here. I couldn’t find an organized “vote no” effort. The two sites kind of focus on the “more money for schools without raising taxes!” argument, which, fair, I guess! But here are the reasons to support the amendment that I found most compelling:

  1. The legislature appointed a committee (of utterly wonkish, thoroughly obscure investment experts, as far as I could tell from googling them) to discuss whether to make this change. This was their recommendation.
  2. This really is what private universities with endowments do. The amount they’re proposing to spend is very conservative. They’re not going to spend this fund dry. They’re not going to even come close to spending this fund dry. This fund went from $1.3 billion to $2.4 billion in the last nine years; they can, in fact, spend some of this money right now on the kids we’re currently educating as a state.
  3. This passed the MN House unanimously.

I am going to vote yes and I hope this passes. Remember: not voting is the same as voting “no.”

This seems like a good year to fundraise for a trans nonprofit, so I’m fundraising this year for TIGERRS. I don’t have a Patreon, and a fundraiser lets me see in a tangible way that people value my work, which is really helpful as a motivator. (This project is a lot of work.) I raised $7,230 during primary season so I’ve raised the goal.

I also have a new book out! Obstetrix is about an obstetrician who gets kidnapped by a cult because they want someone on hand to deliver their babies; it’s a story about enduring, surviving, and not giving up. You can buy it anywhere fine books are sold, and I’ve been doing my best to keep Uncle Hugo’s, Moon Palace, and Dreamhaven Books in signed copies.

Election 2016: Constitutional Amendment 1

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There is a constitutional amendment on the Minnesota ballot this year! Statewide. (Obviously.) Here’s what it says:

Remove Lawmakers’ Power to Set Their Own Pay
Shall the Minnesota Constitution be amended to remove state lawmakers’ power to set their own salaries, and instead establish an independent, citizens-only council to prescribe salaries of lawmakers?

You can vote Yes, or No. If you leave it blank, that counts as a No.

So my first gut reaction to this is as follows: I suspect that the legislators have put this on the ballot because they would really like a raise, and they would really like it not to be on them to give themselves a raise, because if you do vote yourself a raise people will slam you for it and sometimes people will indignantly run against you because you gave yourself a raise after not accomplishing whatever it was they particularly wanted you to get done that session.

How much are legislators paid at the moment? I found that info over on the Minnesota State Legislature FAQ:  a Legislator’s salary is $31,140 per year. That said, it’s allegedly not a full-time job; you’re not in session all year. If legislators have another job, the FAQ notes they’re protected from firing over their legislative-session-absence and also their employer isn’t allowed to fire them if they dislike how they voted, which is hilarious but also a good idea, I’d say.

They get a per diem during the legislative session (key, for people who live somewhere up on the Iron Range — it’s not like they can go home at night to sleep) and I was trying to find that info out from this helpful document about compensation and that wasn’t in there, but it did mention that the last time the legislature got a raise was in 1999. It also noted, “The 2013 Legislature proposed a constitutional amendment regarding how legislators’ salaries are determined. The 2014 Legislature modified the text of the proposed amendment and passed a bill that put that amendment to voters. The amendment will be voted on at the 2016 general election.” So this has been in the works for a while.

There’s a MinnPost article from 2013 about the question of whether legislators are underpaid.  It covers the per diem issue but also quotes former Senate Majority Leader Roger Moe on the whole “part time” issue. “It’s difficult for the public to understand that it’s really not part-time,” Moe says. “It’s a 150-percent of the time job for five or six months of the year, and about a 75-percent of the time job the rest of the year. It’s more than a full-time job and you kind of build your life around it.”

(They’re not as underpaid as the Minneapolis and probably also the St. Paul school board. I can tell you that Minneapolis school board members work a more-than-full-time job for under $15,000/year and a measurable percentage of the job is to be the target of hatred, resentment, and angry criticism. I would raise both Minneapolis and St. Paul school board members’ salaries tomorrow to a reasonable full-time salary, if I could, because I sincerely believe that they’d get better people who would be more likely to be able to solve the district’s problems if people who need to work for a living could afford to serve. That salary: also set by the legislature.)

The MinnPost article notes that the legislature has the same problem, to some degree: the skimpy pay doesn’t stop people from running, but it causes a lot of people to decide they can’t afford to run again.

The comments section on that article kind of illustrates the problem: “Slackers and lemmings not ‘entitled’ to increases.” “That does not justify higher pay because constituents did not benefit from your choice to work long hours.” Several people pointed out that we might get better, smarter people running for office if we paid them a living wage; a not-outstandingly-smart-sounding retired woman who can’t spell said she’d serve for free.

A more recent article in MinnPost talks about this issue again, noting that even mentioning legislative pay is just full-on radioactive for legislators, and that a lot of legislators wind up really struggling financially.

Apparently in New Mexico, state legislators don’t get paid at all. This piece compares legislative pay and talks about the benefits (and drawbacks) of a well-paid legislature.

Here’s the fundamental thing, I guess. I do think people should get paid fairly for their work, and that includes lawmakers. The solution to crappy legislators is kicking them out of office at election time, not saying “none of you get paid today!” I think a citizen commission will pay people fairly. (I don’t think it will pay them lavishly. I think it will compensate them reasonably for the actual hours they work, or at least, they’ll do a better job of this than the legislators can politically do for themselves.) This seems like a good idea to me and I am going to vote in favor of this amendment.