The 2024 legislative session kicked off this week, and I am back in St. Paul fighting for Southwestern Minnesota. My office has recently been receiving a lot of questions about what to expect for the 2024 legislative session, and I would like to highlight some issues that are likely to come up and ones that I believe must be prioritized.

Since it is a bonding year, an important item on our to-do list is putting together a bonding bill-also known as a capital investment bill-to fund public infrastructure projects across our state. The governor is asking for a bonding bill in the neighborhood of $1 billion. For this bill to have a chance, I believe it must be confined to critical infrastructure items such as water and wastewater projects, highways and bridges, state-owned buildings on college campuses, etc. However, if Democrats choose to grant money to many non-profit organizations as they did last year, I believe the bill is doomed.

I have always supported bonding bills and there are many requests from Senate District 21. In fact, the Senate Capital Investment Committee took an entire day to visit projects in our district. But I should warn our communities with requests, that the bonding chair will no doubt call you if she includes your project to put pressure on me. I would simply reply that she needs to ensure the bill is a pure infrastructure bill if she wants to get it passed.

Additionally, Democrats last year pushed their extreme and expensive agenda into law. As time has gone on, a number of issues have arisen, leaving the public in a quandary. Our small businesses are concerned about some of the employer taxes added. Our schools are now dealing with countless new mandates and a lack of funding to cover those costs. Our local communities and law enforcement agencies have questions and concerns about the legalization of recreational marijuana. You name it, none of these bills were ready to be passed.

That is why we need to focus this session on correcting the many issues popping up due to Democrats’ excessive government regulation and one-size-fits-all rules. We need to repair the damage to family budgets and help Minnesotans afford their lives. We need to put our students first and reduce the number of school mandates from the state. We need to fix the changes that have caused school resource officers to leave our schools. Unfortunately, I am sure the majority has different priorities, mainly giving government even more power to control the lives, businesses and education of our people.

Single-party control has broken Minnesota, and my Republican colleagues and I will focus this session on repairing the damage caused in 2023.

— Bill Weber represents District 21 in the Minnesota State Senate