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Policy & Funding

Minnesota’s Legislative Session Ends with a Win for Affordable Transit Access and Many Major Transit and Climate Decisions Unresolved

May 23, 2025

A view of the front of the Minnesota State Capitol building

From its tumultuous start in January to the politically divided legislature facing big budget gaps, Minnesota’s 2025 legislative session promised to be challenging. It was a strong contrast to the previous two years when advocates and lawmakers worked together to deliver historic wins for public transit and climate action. Almost immediately this year, we saw renewed attacks on the critical resources and policies we’d secured to make our communities more connected and our futures more sustainable.

Over the past five months, Move Minnesota and Move Minnesota Action worked with advocates, organizational allies, and legislative champions to push back against these efforts to roll back our hard-won progress—and to push forward policies to make transit more affordable and accessible to everyone. 

Together we made our priorities clear through letters and action alerts, rallies, hearings, and testimony. But lawmakers reached the May 19 deadline for the 2025 session with many important issues still to resolve to pass a budget for the next biennium. State leaders are currently continuing critical bill negotiations in the lead-up to a special session where they will hope to pass more legislation. 

Here’s where we stand now and what to expect in the coming weeks:

What Passed

One of Move Minnesota Action’s top priorities for this session was making public transit more affordable for those who need it most.  After months of educating and mobilizing advocates and elected officials on this issue, we achieved an important win in the final hours of the session when state legislators passed a bill that will make it easier for thousands of eligible Minnesotans to access the Transit Assistance Program (TAP)! The reduced fares TAP provides can effectively cut a person’s transit costs in half, freeing up those resources for other essential needs like rent or child care. The change we secured this year with bipartisan support adds this proven program to the MNbenefits portal, where Minnesotans already go to sign up for programs like Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP). It’s a pivotal, exciting step forward that ensures more people will be able to get where they need to go with less financial strain on families and workers’ household budgets. 

Unfortunately, disappointing bills also made it over the finish line. In the final days, lawmakers passed legislation that will strip away $77 million from the Northern Lights Express passenger train connecting the Twin Cities and Duluth. In a strange move that gained unanimous support in the House and passed 44-23 in the Senate, lawmakers pulled these transit funds to pay for unemployment insurance for education workers. Move Minnesota and Move Minnesota Action spoke up to defend Northern Lights Express funding and other transit investments throughout the session, and we are frustrated to see an outcome like this that pits two obvious public goods against one another. Our state leaders funded Northern Lights Express two years ago because Minnesotans want more choices for sustainable travel, not less. But House Transportation Co-Chair Jon Koznick celebrated the cuts in local news coverage over the weekend, enthusiastically emphasizing the damage they would have on passenger rail in Minnesota and vowing to take even more money from this long-awaited transit project and redirect it to road building.

What’s Left to Do

The bill with the biggest impact on transit funding and climate action remains unresolved—at least for now. This month, both the House and the Senate each passed their versions of a transportation bill but the conference committee didn’t finish a final bill before time ran out. 

As we’ve shared throughout the session, both legislative chambers have proposed deep cuts to public transit funding in the metro and Greater Minnesota—and the House has taken aim at our Driving Down Emissions law, seeking to delay and dilute its impact despite the increasingly urgent impacts of climate change. These remain major issues post-session as some lawmakers are still actively working to claw back as much progress as they can, jeopardizing the transit improvements and climate action Minnesotans are benefiting from and counting on.

Adding to the pressure, legislators negotiating on a final bill have agreed to $248 million in cuts to total transportation funding over the next four years. 

What’s Next 

As lawmakers work to come to an agreement, Move Minnesota and Move Minnesota Action are continuing our work to reinforce support for public transit and climate solutions before they make a deal. (Check out the latest post-session action alert on Move Minnesota’s Action’s site here.)

We’ll continue to advocate for a final transportation bill that will: 

Exactly when Governor Walz will call a special session this summer is anyone’s guess. It could be a matter of days or weeks, depending on how quickly lawmakers are able to finalize pending legislation. 

What’s clear is that Minnesota can’t afford a transportation bill that renews the dangerous trend of underfunding public transit and compromising our health and climate for generations to come. Thanks to the groundbreaking investments in transit and climate solutions we secured two years ago, Minnesotans have already started to see the transformative role transit can play in improving people’s lives when it receives the investment it deserves. And together we must continue to hold our elected officials accountable to create the transportation system that will deliver a more sustainable and prosperous future for all.