2025 Minnesota State Legislative Session Recap

Defending Minnesota’s Nation-Leading Climate Impacts of Highways Law

Senate, SF 4676 | House, HF 4627

PASSED

Our Streets joined other advocates from across the transportation and environmental space to defend the climate impacts of highway law. 

This law requires MnDOT to think differently about highways, requiring the agency to offset the impacts expanding a highway would have on the distance Minnesotans drive, which drives climate change and pollution. 

This session, republicans, county engineers, and highway lobby interests organized to repeal or delay the law, and Our Streets advocated for maintaining the law as it stands today. 
This meant showing up at the legislature to testify in support of the law, participating in negotiations, and tracking the implementation of the law at MnDOT’s technical advisory committee, where other decisions are being made to undermine the effectiveness of the law long-term.

Unfortunately, MnDOT pushed back with bad-faith objections intended to slow the bill’s progress. The Transportation Committee Chairs (Representative Frank Hornstein and Senator Scott Dibble) used this as an excuse to block the bill from passage this year. We plan to continue to work alongside our coalition partners, including Jewish Community Action, RISE, Ayada Leads, and the MN Environmental Justice Table, to pass the transportation cumulative impacts law in 2025.

Define Highway Purpose to Include All Modes of Transportation

Senate, SF 817 and SF 1972 | House, HF 186 and HF 1630

IN PROGRESS

Our Streets led the movement to holistically invest in transportation this session, taking conversations to clarify highway purposes to include all modes of transportation to the forefront of policymaking. 

In collaboration with the Bicycle Alliance of Minnesota and Sierra Club North Star Chapter, our provision clarifying highway purposes to include transit, biking, and walking infrastructure was included in the Senate Transportation Omnibus Bill and passed through the Senate. 

This measure honors Minnesota’s constitutional intent—to provide a multimodal transportation system that facilitates holistic use of state highways—and allows MnDOT the flexibility to invest in transit, bike, and pedestrian infrastructure where appropriate using highway dollars. 

We also included language that completes the state’s new Vehicle Miles Traveled (VMT) requirements for highway projects by funding mitigation measures. Clarifying highway purposes is the missing link for implementing the VMT law, and combining our efforts on these two policies presents a vision forward, while opponents who worked to repeal the VMT law sought to move us backward. 

The measure builds good transportation finance and governance, too, where today’s funding structure can lead to misaligned projects that don’t support the ways Minnesotans actually move today and will move tomorrow. 

If we fail to do so, we risk misaligning projects and failing to invest holistically. This session highlighted the critical need for coordinated funding for projects like the Metro F Line, where MnDOT and the Met Council say just one misaligned project would waste $18 million, create duplicate planning and rework, and cause two extra years of construction disruptions. Clarifying highway purposes would allow us to address this problem system-wide, getting Minnesotans moving faster and maximizing our transportation investments to benefit communities. 

We’re proud of the progress made this session and are grateful for legislative champions advancing this important transportation reform. We’ll continue to organize next year to expand how highways can move people of all modes of transportation, not just cars. 

Cumulative Impacts for Transportation

Senate, SF 817 and SF 3222 | House, HF 186

IN PROGRESS

Thanks to community support, the effort to protect environmental justice communities from harmful highway projects took a big step forward this year. Our bill, the cumulative impacts law for transportation, was one of the three pillars of the Highway Justice Act, which was introduced in both the House and the Senate with multiple authors in both chambers.

The cumulative impacts of transportation are often left out of cumulative impacts policies around the country, a critical gap that needs to be filled to protect frontline communities in Minnesota and around the U.S. 

This session, the bill was heard in the Senate, where community members and advocates discussed the many ways that highways harm marginalized communities and why existing protections do not go nearly far enough to ensure that every neighborhood has access to clean air and healthy communities. 

The bill was referred to the state and local government committee for additional consideration. MnDOT had concerns with considering environmental justice concerns before projects enter their Statewide Transportation Improvement Plan (STIP) and the costs associated with these analyses. The agency used this rationale to delay the implementation of this important policy. 

At the same time, MnDOT stripped environmental justice protections on the Highway 252 project’s Environmental review process, sparking community outrage and leading to a unanimous resolution from Brooklyn Center asking for environmental justice to be considered in the project process. Metro District Engineer Khani Sahebjam spoke about the need for a parallel state process for considering environmental justice impacts, despite MnDOT’s opposition to the Highway Justice Act that would accomplish this. 

We will continue to work with communities along Minnesota highways and coalition partners to advance this important policy in 2026.

Community Preferred Alternative Act

Senate, SF 817 | House, HF 186 and HF 3121

IN PROGRESS

The Community Preffered Alternative Act, another pillar of the Highway Justice Act, also moved forward this session. The provision was introduced in both the House and Senate and was heard in the Senate along with other Highway Justice Act Provisions. 

Currently, impacted communities and elected officials who represent them play a limited role in major highway projects that divide and pollute their communities. This role is largely symbolic consultation rather than a meaningful advisory role. Failing to do so repeats past planning and policy harms and leads to less successful project outcomes that meet local needs. 

This bill would address that challenge, requiring MnDOT to establish a committee of local elected and appointed leaders to inform major highway projects and obtain majority approval before the project can begin construction. 

The bill was passed out of the transportation committee and referred to the committee on State and Local Government this year. A limited set of its provisions did advance and were passed in the Senate Omnibus Bill, including bylaws and additional powers on three existing Policy Advisory Committees on the Rethinking I-94, Highway 252, and Olson Memorial Highway projects. 

An expanded version of this provision was also introduced in the House through the leadership of Chair Erin Koegel (39A) that would establish a community-preferred project development process. 

Reform Project Development, Scoping, and Purpose and Need for Major Highway Projects

Senate, HF 3080 and HF 3121

IN PROGRESS

In collaboration with Senate transportation leaders, language that updates the process for highway project development was introduced in the Senate transportation omnibus bill and was passed out of the Senate. 

These provisions address critical gaps in project development, ensuring that MnDOT cannot use purpose and need statements, a document that defines the transportation needs a highway project will address, to bias certain predetermined project outcomes, such as expanding a highway. 

These requirements would also create a multi-disciplinary project development process that would ensure MnDOT will more holistically consider projects, beyond just the perspectives of traffic engineers. 

Open MnDOT’s “Black Box” for Project and Funding Transparency

House, HF 3080 and HF 3121

IN PROGRESS

In collaboration with Chair Koegel (DLF, 39A), who leads the House Transportation Committee, we created policy language that would build public trust in MnDOT through transparency. As one of the few Minnesota transportation organizations that work on the project level, we know firsthand how difficult it is to access information on projects and funding, and MnDOT’s existing websites have varying levels of information accessible to the public. 

This measure expands and centralizes MnDOT’s project-based reporting requirements, ensuring that the public has access to the most up-to-date, detailed information about projects that are shaping their communities. The measure also requires new fiscal reporting measures to show how MnDOT spends its money to meet transportation goals and priorities. 

We will continue to develop this work in 2026 and make MnDOT more transparent.