Looking ahead: A holiday message and 2025 policy priorities

By Doug Loon
President and CEO
Minnesota Chamber of Commerce

Here we are at the end of 2024, and we want to wish all of you an enjoyable holiday season and a happy new year! Right around the corner, we also have the start of the 2025 legislative session. On January 14, the Legislature will be sworn in, and the next evening, January 15, the Chamber will host our largest event of the year, Session Priorities. This program will feature legislative leaders and the governor, and we expect a robust discussion around business policy priorities for the upcoming legislative session.

One thing I’ve pointed out previously is that Minnesotans want a balanced approach to our state policymaking. We want to improve the economy, lower costs for families and businesses, and pass reasonable, bipartisan solutions to the state's challenges. That’s what we’ve heard from voters and the business community. It’s a reminder to the Legislature and the business community that a sustainable approach to balancing the state budget is critical this year.

Why? Because it’s a budget year, and the Legislature will need to produce a budget. By constitutional requirement, it must be balanced, and they need to do this by May 19 of next year—which is not that far away. The budget is projected to spend more than it’s collecting over the next four years, based on the most recent budget forecast. Legislators need to recognize that Minnesota businesses and taxpayers cannot afford new taxes to meet this burden. Spending has increased significantly—about 38%, much of which is permanent new spending. Putting more pressure on the economy through new taxes is simply unacceptable.

We also need to address the many additional workplace mandates. In fact, if you look back to the 2023 and 2024 legislative sessions, 35 new workplace mandates were passed. Legislators should provide greater flexibility in how these mandates affect businesses, particularly the paid family and medical leave law that takes effect on January 1, 2026—just a year away. Employers are already raising significant questions about how this will impact the workforce and their competitiveness compared to other states.

Other state-imposed mandates, from health insurance to energy production and consumption, increase costs and weigh down the economy. We need a more effective, balanced approach to these. It’s important to identify, quantify, and address these growing burdens, which are essentially hidden taxes that increase costs for Minnesotans.

On the topic of taxes, there are steps we can take to reinvest in our economy. For example, we need to enhance the R&D tax credit—research and development—which encourages reinvestment in businesses to boost productivity. With Minnesota’s workforce now flat, reinvesting in productivity through measures like the R&D tax credit is essential for maintaining a competitive and growing economy.

Lastly, I’ll mention that we have a rare opportunity to develop a bipartisan strategy around environmental permitting. This is another topic we’ve discussed in the past. Some progress was made during the 2024 session, and we aim to build on that in 2025. Good, productive conversations are already happening with policymakers ahead of the session. Improving and reforming our environmental permitting process can bring efficiency to government and greater certainty for large industrial projects that benefit our state and communities. At the same time, we can continue to meet the high environmental standards we expect.

This is just a sampling of the issues we’re discussing with the business community and policymakers as we prepare for the January 14 start of the legislative session in Saint Paul. We look forward to seeing all of you at our January 15 Session Priorities event. If you don’t have your tickets, check out our website at mnchamber.com. There, you’ll find our events calendar and an opportunity to register for this exciting event, where we’ll discuss the business issues of the day and hear from leaders of both legislative caucuses and the governor, who we expect to attend.

Again, have a great holiday season and a happy new year! We look forward to catching up with you at our next Minnesota Business Podcast on January 10.