Are lawmakers serious about wanting more transparency?

ST. PAUL — Is the Minnesota Legislature serious about giving the public more insight into how lawmakers decide how to spend their tax money?

State Rep. Gene Pelowski hopes so. The Winona Democrat is leading a House special committee while the Legislature is out of session to explore ways to make lawmakers’ work more transparent to the public.

The set of hearings comes after a notably secretive and messy end to the last legislative session in May. Lawmakers needed overtime to complete their work and even then much of the final decision making about how to spend nearly $50 billion in taxpayer money over the next two years was done behind closed doors. (Read more here…)