[Music] - This is Michael Wojcik with your R Town Legislative Rundown.

The state of Minnesota paused briefly this week to remember the late Senator David Durenberger, known for his work in healthcare policy, and also a key contributor environmental causes.

One of the things that he was known for was some of the bipartisan compromise legislation that really helped to end the issue of acid rain in the state of Minnesota.

This week, governor Tim Wall signed the Pro Act into law.

This was house file one, senate file one, which dealt with codifying abortion rights in the state of Minnesota.

Now this doesn't change anything immediately because there's a state Supreme Court ruling that assures the same rights, but in the case that a court decision might be reversed in the future, this is an additional layer of protection.

We understood that this was something that was likely to happen given the partisan makeup of the legislature and the results of the last election.

That said, this is formally law and the House and Senate will be moving on to other issues.

Now in addition, this also touches on some areas that are not as well known, including the right that any pregnant person has to carry that pregnancy to completion.

That also is codified as a right within this law.

And it does deal with some instances where there have been potential for sterilizations done in the state of Minnesota in the past.

One of the key outcomes of last week was the house passing, house file seven.

This is the bill that would create a clean energy standard for the state of Minnesota where all of our energy would be carbon free by 2040.

Obviously there's been a lot of discussion about this and we in Rochester have been leaders in this very topic.

At RPU, we actually passed a similar rule that will require all of our energy to come from clean sources by 2030.

Now this is a very complicated topic because in reality, the energy grid does not stop at map lines, it goes to many different places.

So where the energy is coming from is never entirely carbon free until the entire grid is.

We understood this in Rochester, we also understood the importance of reliability.

So even though a 100% of our energy in Rochester will come from carbon free sources in 2030, that doesn't mean it's the case at all times, 'cause there are certain times where other forms of energy may be serving backup.

It's likely to be similar with the state of Minnesota, but legislation like this does help to move towards cleaner energy and address the serious issue of climate change.

Finally, I'd like to mention House File 284.

This is a bill that deals with creating a commission to recommend a new flag for the state of Minnesota.

This is something that has local connections because Lee Herold of Herold Flags is one of the designers of the North Star flag, which is one proposed replacement.

We don't know what the original creators of the Minnesota flag 150 years ago were thinking, but they weren't available for comment.

But this new commission will be able to take up potential designs and recommend them to future legislators.

This is Michael Wojcik (upbeat ambient music) with your R Town legislative rundown.