Minnesota State Legislature
The Minnesota State Legislature is the legislative branch of government in the U.S. state of Minnesota. It is a bicameral legislature located at the Minnesota State Capitol in St. Paul and it consists of two houses: the lower Minnesota House of Representatives and the Minnesota State Senate. The House has twice as many seats as the Senate.
In 1984 the Legislature ordered that all gender-specific pronouns be removed from the state laws. After two years of work, the rewritten laws were adopted. Only 301 of 20,000 pronouns were feminine. "His" was changed 10,000 times and "he" was changed 6,000 times.
The legislature oversees the funding for the University of Minnesota and Minnesota State Colleges and Universities (MnSCU) systems.
Former Governor Jesse Ventura advocated the idea of changing the legislature to a unicameral system while he was in office, but the concept did not obtain widespread support.
In 2004, the legislature ended its regular session without acting on a majority of the planned legislation, largely due to political divisiveness on a variety of issues ranging from education to same-sex marriage (See same-sex marriage in the United States for related events during the year). A proper budget failed to pass, and major anticipated projects such as the Northstar Corridor commuter rail line were not approved. As of mid-2004, a special session has not yet taken place, and it is unclear whether Governor Tim Pawlenty will request one.
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