Peter Callaghan

1 month ago | minnpost.com | Peter Callaghan

Minnesota’s budget is facing a deficit. Or it’s not. Both statements are true, depending on how far into the future the governor and the Legislature look. The current two-year budget that ends on June 30 has a surplus. The budget that lawmakers will approve — hopefully before the deadline of July 1 — is also projected to be in the black.

2 months ago | minnpost.com | Peter Callaghan

A Republican senator tried Thursday to open up ongoing negotiations between Gov. Tim Walz and 10 of the state’s tribal nations that are expected to give the tribes broad access to the new recreational cannabis market. He failed. But Sen. Mark Koran’s two amendments to a mostly unrelated bill are the first moves to slow down, or at least require public input into, closed-door negotiations over tribal cannabis compacts.

2 months ago | minnpost.com | Peter Callaghan

For two straight sessions, backers of placing an equal rights amendment in the Minnesota Constitution were minutes away from a victory they’d been seeking for more than two decades. Amendments had passed one house — the state Senate in 2023, the House in 2024 — and needed only a vote in the other to send the amendment to voters. They didn’t get it.

2 months ago | sctimes.com | Peter Callaghan

Peter CallaghanMinnPostMinnesota's projected budget surplus for the next two years has decreased by $160 million, now sitting at $456 million. The budget shortfall expected for fiscal year 2028-29 has worsened to nearly $6 billion, an increase of $852 million from previous estimates. Minnesota’s economists are expecting a slight worsening in projected tax collections in the next two-year budget, and an already looming deficit in later budgets got even more looming.

2 months ago | eplocalnews.org | Peter Callaghan

How can Republicans and DFLers agree on a budget that resolves a looming budget deficit if they can't agree on what is causing the looming budget deficit? Gov. Tim Walz and legislative leaders from both parties had the same numbers in front of them: The next two-year budget is in OK shape, but the one after that, the one that begins in the summer of 2027, will have a gap between what taxes bring in and what spending might be.