State Rep. Bernie Perryman, R-St. Cloud, said on April 29 she is against a House Democrat bill that would reduce state funding to cities and counties choosing to fly the old Minnesota state flag instead of the new one.
The proposed legislation (H.F. 5077) comes as several local governments have chosen to display the customary 1983 version of the flag rather than the new design created by a commission in 2023. The measure would cut local government aid by ten percent for those displaying any flag other than the official version adopted in 2024.
Perryman said this funding is important for essential services such as police and fire departments, making any reduction a significant penalty for not complying with the proposed rule. “You could look at this as yet another unfunded mandate on Minnesota taxpayers,” Perryman said. “By authoring this bill, House Democrats are saying, ‘fly the flag we want you to fly, like it or not, or you’re going to pay for it.’ This is big government at its worst. I thought we were supposed to be pushing back against this kind of authoritarianism.”
She also noted that while a commission selected the new design, voters or legislators did not directly approve it; instead, state law specified that their choice would automatically become official on May 11, 2024. “We could have avoided this fiasco if the former trifecta had done more to involve the public in the process of developing a new flag,” Perryman said. “Or, we could have just left well enough alone and kept the old flag if that’s what Minnesotans wanted.”
Some cities—including Champlin, Zumbrota, Elk River and Inver Grove Heights—have continued flying the previous version of Minnesota’s flag on public property amid ongoing resistance from residents and officials about adopting a new design.
Apart from opposition among House Republicans in an evenly divided chamber, Perryman said procedural issues remain because H.F. 5077 was introduced after legislative deadlines passed and does not yet have an equivalent measure in the Senate.
