Legislative Update: Join Me to Oppose Legislative Pay Raises

As the Minnesota House and Senate begin ironing out differences between our budgets in conference committees, I want to let you know in no uncertain terms that I staunchly oppose including legislative pay raises in the final product.

Unlike the Senate, the House budget does not include legislative pay raises.

The core components the House budget includes investments in education, middle class property tax relief, and initiatives to create good jobs. For example, our plan includes a bill I authored to close Minnesota’s “skills gap” by equipping workers with skills to secure unfilled manufacturing jobs. Our plan also pays back the remaining $854 million school shift and balances our budget without using any gimmicks.

Our budget’s historic investments in education are designed to create the world’s best workforce by closing Minnesota’s achievement gap, reaching a 100 percent high school graduation rate, 100 percent literacy by third grade, and 100 percent career and college readiness by graduation.

To meet those goals, the House budget funds all-day Kindergarten, invests in early learning childhood scholarships, and increases the basic funding formula for K-12 schools by over $315 million—all of which is paid for without the gimmicks or shifts seen over the past decade.

My focus is on creating good jobs, providing our children with a high-quality education, and providing relief from skyrocketing property tax rates, which have increased by 86 percent over the past decade. As we emerge from the recession, pay raises are the last thing we should talk about.

I encourage you to contact the legislators who sit on the conference committee that will decide whether a legislative pay raise is part of the final budget. I hope you’ll join me and voice your opposition. As your representative, I will not support any effort in the House to raise our wages.

If you have any comments or questions about the budget passed by the Minnesota House of Representatives, please contact me by phone at (651) 296-7153, by email at rep.jason.isaacson@house.mn, or by postal mail at 545 State Office Building, 100 Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Blvd., St. Paul, MN 55155.