(MN Senator Michael Holmstrom – R – Buffalo)
The 2026 Minnesota Legislative Session gets underway today (Tuesday), and newly elected District 29 State Senator Michael Holmstrom, Republican of Buffalo, says he’s ready for his new challenges in St. Paul.
Holmstrom won election to the Senate District 29 seat last November after the unexpected passing last summer of longtime State Senator Bruce Anderson left that seat vacant.
Holmstrom says he will assume the committee seat of the late Senator Anderson on the Senate Judiciary Committee…
“Education Finance covers 30 to 40 percent of the state’s budget, and everything else goes through Judiciary basically. So this is a very big assignment. Bruce did a great job on it. It’s a huge hole to fill in that seat. It’s a lot of prep to learn the different personalities on the committee and how maybe to get different priorities accomplished. And of course, coming into the session, we’re going to see gun control, we’re going to see all sorts of legislation go through Judiciary and Public Safety and we’re going to need some strong voices on there to defend the values that Wright County holds.”
Senator Holmstrom will also serve on the Education Finance committee, where he says there is work to be done on the state public school funding formula…
“We have a lot of funding gaps in our schools, and the funding formula doesn’t really favor rural to intermediate rural schools like we have here in Wright County. St. Michael is the third least funded school in the entire state, and that metric kind of slides across Wright County, we’re definitely on the lower end. So we need to address that, and how those categoricals are calculated. I don’t think that students in Buffalo and Howard Lake and Delano are worth less of an investment than students in let’s say…Burnsville or Edina.”
The legislature will also be challenged with trying to pass a bonding bill during the 2026 session as well.
We’ll have more from State Senator Michael Holmstrom later this week in Wright County news.
