Committee advances bill funding SEIU home‑care contract with $70 million biennial investment

The House Committee for Human Services on April 1 advanced House File 2367, a bill to fund a negotiated contract between the state and SEIU Healthcare Minnesota and Iowa that covers more than 38,000 home‑care workers in several state programs.

The bill, as amended, would invest roughly $70 million in the upcoming biennium to implement the agreement, including about $30 million in one‑time funding and additional “tails” funding in subsequent years. Representative Nadeau, the bill’s lead author, told the committee the agreement mirrors the governor’s budget proposal and targets a range of home‑care programs including PCA Choice, Community First Services and Supports budget model, Consumer Directed Community Supports and the consumer support grant.

The contract includes several provisions the author and union witnesses said are intended to improve retention and service continuity: a 40‑cent‑per‑hour raise in 2026 and 2027 for a subset of experienced workers in two programs; $1,200 one‑time retention stipends funded with one‑time dollars; increases in enhanced rates for clients who require more than 10 hours of care per day (from 7.5 percent to 12.5 percent for the most‑severe clients); $250,000 to expand training and language access; a $1.5 million grant to create an online matching service; and holiday pay for workers who work on Christmas. The bill also invests $350,000 to create a joint state‑union body to study the feasibility of a defined‑contribution retirement program; any future retirement benefit would require agreement in a future contract and funding from a future legislature.

Tiffany Flynn Forslund, testifying for SEIU Healthcare Minnesota and Iowa, described personal experience as a PCA and said the retention stipend would help with out‑of‑pocket medical costs. “Please support House File 23 67. This bill will help us care for the most vulnerable,” she said.

Representative Nadeau said the bill also requires Department of Human Services (DHS) to calculate rate increases for PCA Choice and the CFSS budget model and to provide the same rate increase to the traditional PCA and CFSS agency models; those agency rate increases "go directly to provider agencies and can be used to improve wages and benefits, although there's no obligation to do that," she said.

After committee discussion and public testimony, the committee adopted the A‑1 amendment and voted to forward House File 2367, as amended, to the Taxes Committee by voice vote.

House File 2367 will now proceed to the House Taxes Committee for consideration; the committee vote was by voice and no roll‑call tally was recorded in the transcript.

Outlook: Sponsors and union witnesses framed the bill as a workforce and continuity‑of‑care measure designed to keep people cared for at home and to address recruitment and retention in a tight labor market. The bill contains both one‑time and ongoing ("tails") costs; DHS fiscal materials were placed in the committee packet but a final fiscal note was not available at the time of the presentation.