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Letters from a legislator
January 30, 2005

MPR's Cathy Wurzer chronicled a day in the life of Rep. Matt Dean early in the session. He's agreed to pen occasional notes as he completes his first session as a Minnesota lawmakers.

St. Paul, Minn. — The Freedom to Breath Act (FTB) seeks to restrict smoking from workplaces including restaurants and bars. I knew this bill would be very controversial long before I saw it in this week's agenda for the Health Committee. In committee, each side was given fifty minutes to present their case. Chairman Fran Bradley showed Solomon's diplomacy in crafting the ground rules to keep things civil and on track.

Surprisingly, there was such bipartisan opposition to FTB that it became evident that there was no chance of its passage out of the health committee in its original form. An amendment was quickly crafted to exempt bars and VFWs to keep the discussion moving.

During the testimony, I listed all of the restaurants in my district that would be impacted if the ban came into effect. I started with Hugo, then Mahtomedi, then Stillwater. When I listed the Lowell Inn, I thought about the River boats also owned by Innkeeper Dicky Anderson. Is a river boat a bar? What if it was on the Wisconsin side of the river? Could you smoke on the Wisconsin side of the boat? I did not know. So I asked the authors. They did not know either.

The email bin filled up with folks on all sides of every political and geographic stripe. It passed out of our committee without recommendation and heads to the commerce committee next.

We have made changes to my schedule to give me more work time. Lobbyists still are filling remaining time slots with introductory meetings and bonding proposals. I appreciate the great information they provide, but I need to balance that with more work time for bills and constituents.

My classroom checkbook funding bill has started to take shape. This will allow teachers to purchase classroom curriculum materials to help student progress. In a very short meeting with house research, my idea was transformed into a real proposal with parameters and legislative detail. The total dollars and numbers of classrooms will begin as a pilot program targeting a small number of classrooms. The phrase "easy by the inch, hard by the yard" must have been coined in a legislature somewhere. The reality is that to keep accountability and progress, things often begin small and grow in the right direction.

My temporary stationary is running low and we still have seen no sign of its permanent replacement. Crack legislative assistant Mike is improvising by laser copying old cardstock with my information so we can continue to correspond on paper.

--Matt Dean