Minnesota’s Catholic Conference credits bishops for success at State Capitol

by Pat Norby

The Catholic Spirit

Those who lobby for Catholic interests through the Minnesota Catholic Conference are happy the legislative session is over.

“We were very active this session and there are a lot of things that we are proud of - that we were working on with others - that were successful,” said Chris Leifeld, MCC executive director. Tony Pucci, MCC communications manager, and lobbyists Leifeld, Kate Krisik and Peter Noll were able to help work on language in some bills and support bills that fund key programs.

However, with the bishops’ agenda covering issues from conception to natural death, Leifeld said, “There are always things that are passed that we are pleased with and others that we are not pleased with.” Krisik, who is social concerns director with MCC, said, “I think the overall main focus of my work this session was to try to make sure that we didn’t have any additional cuts to services and programs on top of the cuts made in 2003, which totaled $2.1 billion.

“The bishops supported a partial, graduated rollback of some of the 1999 and 2000 income tax cuts,” she added. “That did not pass, but the governor and the legislative leadership came up with the cigarette tax and some other measures to increase the revenue so there weren’t further cuts to some programs and services we supported.”

Those programs include:

• Affordable health care through MinnesotaCare. MinnesotaCare eligibility criteria were maintained at current levels and the $5,000 annual benefits cap for adults without children was repealed. But, the bishops would have liked to have seen benefits to 30,000 people restored.

• Minnesota Family Investment Program, also known as the welfare-to-work program. Although lobbyists were unable to reverse significant budget cuts and policy changes made two years ago, they held off additional cuts.

• Housing. Funding was provided for homeless families and for long-term chronically homeless individuals.

• Child care. “Child care was a big disappointment,” she said. “There were cuts of $86 million made in the last biennium. . . . Legislators enacted a rate freeze of $61.5 million, which amounts to an additional cut on top of the cuts before, so child care providers are reimbursed at 2001 levels.” The cost for utilities, food, health care and other essentials increase with the rate of inflation, Krisik noted. “What that does is leave parents, who have children in these subsidized child care programs, oftentimes, with a gap between what the costs are for the program for what the state’s reimbursing and what the parental copays are. And, oftentimes, they are asked to make up the difference, and we are talking about low-income, hard-working parents.”

• Early childhood programs got a $14 million funding increase.

• Parental fees for disabled children were decreased.

• The minimum wage was increased $1 dollar an hour to $6.15, beginning Aug. 1. That will help a lot of low-income folks, Krisik said.

• Handgun permit and carry law. “Our biggest disappointment was reenactment of the handgun permitting and carrying law,” she said. The bishops introduced added requirements to the bill, but the Senate stripped the amendments, which other states with similar handgun laws “found to be important,” she said.

Noll, MCC education director, said that everyone at MCC had been immersed in a variety of different bills at one time or another throughout the regular session and the special session. “Of particular interest in education were a variety of parental-choice-in-education bills that would expand choice in education - especially for low-income families,” he said.

• Education access grants. The bill, which did not pass, was introduced in the first session and reintroduced in the special session. It would have allowed low-income families to access funds for nonpublic education.

 • Tuition tax credits. Tuition tax credits that would allow low-income families to enroll children in a nonpublic school got a lot of partisan interest, but was not passed.

• Education tax credit bill. The bill removed the eligibility restriction of allowing just two children in a family to now allow all the children in a family to use the credit. It also raised the income levels.

• Telecommunications and Internet access aid passed. It provides funding to public and nonpublic schools. It encourages districts and nonpublic schools to work together to provide Internet access.

• Lobbyists successfully opposed a provision that would have eliminated an automatic inflationary increase for nonpublic school aid for health care services and guidance and counseling for students in grades seven through 12.

• Special education improvements.

1. A special education task force was established that would call for stakeholders from public education and nonpublic education to investigate issues of access for nonpublic school students, particularly those with learning disabilities. That task force will meet and provide a report before the next session.

2. A new provision requires that there be a nonpublic school parent representative on each of the state mandated local parent advisory councils for special education services.

3. Another provision permits school superintendents to reimburse special education teachers for travel to nonpublic schools to work with qualifying students. Previously, students had to travel to public school campuses for services.

Leifeld said that this legislative session was a positive year for life issues.

• The Positive Alternatives Act was enacted July 1, with bipartisan support in both the House and the Senate. “We opposed allowing embryos being destroyed for research,” he said.

Pucci said, “We are hoping for direction from the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops on language about stem-cell research. . . It’s slippery and technical. . . . There is a lot of emotion around it. . . . And there are benefits from stem-cell research that involves umbilical cords and adult stem cells.”

Early in the session, the MCC arranged for all the Minnesota bishops to meet with Gov. Tim Pawlenty and legislators over a two-day period. Leifeld noted that about (continued from page 6) 50 House and Senate members attended the session, about 25 percent of the Legislature, just to talk about issues. Krisik said the bishops were especially helpful in MCC’s success this year. “I think [the Catholic bishops’] strong leadership and active involvement made a huge impact on our ability to be successful on some of our work at the Capital this year,” she said. The bishops were publicly involved by testifying before committees and at press conferences and writing about the issues in their diocesan newspaper columns.

In the U.S. bishops’ document on the economy, they spoke out for progressive income taxes and against regressive taxes, such as sales taxes and the cigarette tax, which passed this session. “We are concerned about the poor being more impacted” by the tax, Leifeld said.

“We are one voice among many voices vying for the time and the ear and the heart and soul of legislators,” Pucci said. “We are not going to single-handedly change laws. This organization is working to build the common good on behalf of the bishops.”

Leifeld said one goal for next year is to get a marriage bill on the ballot that would solidify the definition of marriage as a union between one man and one woman.

“We will be working on that issue, and working to have the right language,” he said. “For it to be in the Constitution, you have to be very careful.”