Steve’s Legislation

Steve is analytic by nature and doesn’t mind being called a “Policy Wonk”. He is an economist by education and spent much of his information technology career analyzing data and designing decision support systems to help policymakers in both the public and private sectors make better policy decisions. He loves researching issues and developing legislation to solve problems. Former House Majority Leader Ryan Winkler once introduced Steve at an event by telling his audience that, in all of his years in the House, he'd never seen another legislator who was so willing to take on difficult issues and research them thoroughly before crafting thoughtful, well considered legislation with bipartisan appeal – many of Steve’s bills have Republican Senate authors or Republican House co-authors.

A few of Steve’s more significant legislative initiatives are described below. He doesn’t wait for lobbyists to bring him bills — these are all bills that he’s researched and developed himself, sometimes in collaboration with lawmakers from other states.

Attacking the Cost of Living!

Much of Steve’s current work is addresses at addressing the high cost of essential living expenses, especially HealthCare, Housing and Food.

Health Care

Steve’s work in health care builds upon his experience in economics and healthcare informatics. Steve believes that you should have the right to know how much your healthcare and drugs are going to cost before you agree to pay for them. The cost of healthcare is the leading cause of personal bankruptcy and there is literally no price competition in the market for healthcare services. A particular radiology scan might cost $250 in one hospital and $1250 at another hospital 5 miles down the road.

In 2023, Steve passed a law requiring Minnesota hospitals to publish their prices in a consistent, legible format to make it easy for organizations like Turquoise Health to create price comparison tools that allow you to shop for the best price on these services. Steve served as the Chair of a federal task force convened by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services that established a nationwide standard for the publication of this data. Steve’s law requires Minnesota hospital systems to use this format and, as a result, you can now trust that you’re seeing apples-to-apples comparisons when you compare the prices of your medical services across hospitals and health plans when you’re shopping for care. Beginning in 2025, the law will also apply to specialty medical practices (Orthopedics, Radiology, …) and large Dental practices.

One of Steve’s bills would require drug manufacturers to publish their prices, as well, so that you could see, for example, that Dupixent, which you see advertised on TV every night, costs $32,000 a year. This same bill would also prevent health plans from forcing you off a drug that’s working for you in the middle of the year just so that they can earn a larger rebate from a different drug manufacturer. This year Steve introduced bills that would require health plans and their pharmacy benefit managers to pass all manufacturer drug rebates on to patients in the form of discounts at the pharmacy counter and to include the lowest priced drugs in your health plan’s “formulary” (instead of the drugs paying the insurer the largest kickback).

Housing

Homeowner and Condominium Insurance

Steve is currently working with the Department of Commerce and the Insurance Industry to address the exploding cost of homeowner’s insurance, especially for condominium associations which are finding themselves having to go to Loyd’s of London to obtain external damage coverage against hailstorms.

The root cause of the increase in home insurance costs is climate change. Hail damage has become more common and less predictable. The loss of predictability has made it more difficult for front-line property and casualty insurance companies to obtain "reinsurance” to buffer themselves from the risk of catastrophic weather events so they are raising their own rates and, in some cases withdrawing from high risk markets. It may be necessary for the state to step in as a reinsurer of last resort.

Housing Supply and Affordability

Building on Steve’s 20+ years of local government experience, He has authored a comprehensive regulatory reform bill which addresses the exclusionary zoning practices that prevent the construction of starter homes for a new generation of young families and sustain segregated housing patterns in many wealthy suburbs

The StarTribune’s big expose on Exclusionary Zoning, last summer, set the stage for this bill. His own 2019 “Flaming Hoops” commentary described the fiscal roots of the problem. Peter Callaghan’s take on his bill in MinnPost provides a good overview.

Steve is proud of Bloomington’s progressive affordable housing policies. Bloomington has always allowed duplexes in single-family neighborhoods, and you see them sprinkled unobtrusively throughout western Bloomington neighborhoods. Bloomington’s longstanding housing policies are the model for several of the provisions in the bill.

Steve was named Legislator of the Year by Housing First for his zoning reform initiative, which has been described as the most comprehensive such bill in the country.

Enforcing the Anti-trust Laws to Protect Farmers and Consumers

Steve is working with Attorney General Keith Ellison on bills to strengthen the AG’s ability to go after large agribusiness that are using their market dominance to squeeze farmers on the prices they’re paid while raising prices on food sold to consumers.

Steve has been endorsed by the Farmer’s Union for his work on this issue.

Other Key Issues

Data Privacy

Residents of California and a few other states have enjoyed personal data privacy protections that we have not. Steve worked for 5 years to win these rights for Minnesotans and, this year, his Minnesota Consumer Data Privacy Act was passed and signed into law. When it goes into effect, next year, Minnesotans will protected by the strongest state data privacy law in the country.

Steve is continuing to collaborate with state legislators in a number of other states on shared legislative language that would enhance these rights for all Americans.

Electrification of the Vehicle Fleet

In Minnesota, the transportation sector is the single largest contributor to greenhouse gas emissions, surpassing even the electric power industry. Steve has been a strong advocate for efforts to promote the electrification of both our transit fleet and our personal vehicles.

As an alternative to Republican efforts to impose punitive vehicle registration surcharges on electric vehicles, Steve has authored a bill that would establish a fair mileage-based road user charge on electric vehicles that would be equivalent to the gas tax paid by other vehicles, without violating the locational data privacy of EV owners. Steve has spoken on this topic at national legislative gatherings. He is a member of the Steering Committee for the National Conference of State Legislators workgroup studying the future of road user charges.

State Information Technology Reform

As a member of the bicameral, bipartisan legislative information technology caucus, Steve has been a participant in the Governor’s Blue Ribbon Council on Information Technology reform and its successor, the Technical Advisory Council, which includes representatives of both state government agencies and the private sector.

Steve was instrumental in the successful conversion of the failed MNLARS driver and vehicle services system to the successful new MNDRIVE system by providing information technology advice and by correcting contradictions in existing state law that made MNLARS impossible to program.

Steve regularly provides advice to his legislative colleagues on how to address any IT challenges inherent to their bills and coaches them on how to present those aspects of their bills in hearings and was an advisor to the authors of our new Paid Family and Medical Leave program.

He is currently working to modernize the systems used by the Department of Human Services to track program enrollees and better manage the eligibility process.

Local Initiatives

The least that you should expect from any State Legislator is that they support their City and their School Board in their efforts to secure State funding for their capital projects that are of regional significance and to secure State authority to pursue their policy initiatives. Steve has been in service to the City for over 25 years and has always enjoyed a strong partnership with its City Council and staff.

City of Bloomington

Steve has been an active advocate for the inclusion of Bloomington’s requests for funding to replace its aging and obsolete Public Health facility, modernize the Bloomington Ice Garden and to expand the performing arts space at the Bloomington Center for the Arts in the Legislature’s biennial Bonding Bill.

Traffic Safety

Steve has been working to improve the safety of our neighborhood streets since he was a Bloomington City Councilmember. Because the biggest complaint he was hearing from residents was about speeding in residential neighborhoods, Steve spent countless hours researching solutions at the MNDOT library in St Paul and discovered the concept of “Road Diets” — conversions of four-lane streets to three-lane streets with bike shoulders. He successfully pursued reforms to MNDOT street design standards to make it easier for Bloomington to make these conversions and, because of Steve’s research and advocacy, they are now the standard configuration for our neighborhood collector streets, resulting in lower speeds and improved safety for motorists, pedestrians and cyclists.

As a freshman legislator in 2019, Steve was able to build upon this work to pass a bill enabling cities like Bloomington to also reduce the speed limits on these streets, which the City implemented this summer, reducing the speed limit on our residential streets from 30 to 25 MPH.

This year, Steve passed a bill that immediately implements new federal speed limit policy reforms that will encourage MNDOT and the counties to reduce speed limits on county roads like Normandale, France, Penn and Old Shakopee Rd.

Steve took a MNDOT course in basic street design, including concepts such as “design speed”, so that he could have better-informed discussions with traffic engineers about speed limit policy.

Transportation Options

A transportation economist by education, Steve has been deeply involved in local, regional and state transportation policy for decades, and is recognized as one of the State’s leading transportation policy experts. As a member of the House Transportation Committee, Steve worked to secure funding for a balanced, multi-modal transportation system and for the electrification of the vehicle fleet to combat climate change. Due in large part to Steve’s advocacy, the legislature indexed the gas tax to inflation in 2023. With Steve’s support, we provided a permanent, sustainable funding source for transit in the Twin Cities region in the same bill.

In 2021 and again in 2023 Steve secured a State funding appropriation for the 494 Corridor Commission’s Commuter Services group which enabled them to offer teleworking program support to Bloomington employers both during and following the pandemic.

While Chair of the National League of Cities Transportation Committee and Bloomington’s representative on the 35W Solutions Alliance board in 2010, Steve was instrumental in securing federal funding for the creation of the 35W MNPass Lanes, which also laid the groundwork for the “Orange Line” Bus Rapid Transit line, which he began lobbying for as a Planning Commissioner in 1998. Over the course of 20 years, Steve actively worked to see it funded as a Bloomington City Councilmember, as Bloomington’s representative on the Metropolitan Council and as Bloomington’s representative in the State Legislature, which provided the final funding to build the project in 2019.

Steve’s advocacy work related to the 35W/494 interchange reconstruction, the westbound on-ramp to 494 at Bush Lake Rd and the addition of MNPass Lanes to 494 also stretches back decades.

Bloomington Public Schools

Steve collaborated with fellow economist Rep Jennifer Schulz on a bill that was passed in 2023 which requires the State to build inflation into its baseline budget, including the K-12 Education budget (which is the largest component of the State General Fund budget). Our Schools should not have to scratch and claw for inflationary increases to their basic education funding formula every two years.

Steve also strongly supported the House proposal to completely fund Special Education services from the State budget surplus to relieve Bloomington’s School Board and property taxpayers the burden of funding special ed from local property tax levies.