A Powerful State Senator: Richard Cohen

His five-room corner office suite in the state capitol building, four interns, and three full-time staff members flaunt his importance in the law-making process. In his position as chair of the Finance Committee of the Minnesota State Senate, Sen. Richard J. Cohen, DFL-64, is perched high on the ladder of power.

While the chairmanship of the Finance Committee lacks some of the pecuniary omnipotence that it held before its 1997 fracture into multiple committees, Cohen keeps an iron grip on the budgetary process by maintaining seats on three of the ten finance subdivisions: "Finance-Economic Development Budget Division," "Finance-Higher Education Budget and Policy Division," and "Finance-Judiciary Budget Division." The Finance Committee has the final say on all bills that "expend money, or [establish] a policy that to be effective will require the expenditure of money." In effect, almost every bill must be passed by the Finance Committee.

Along with his colleague in the Tax Committee, Cohen is "among the most powerful senators This importance is reflected in the Senate's filing system. All bills, called "yellow jackets" for the yellow piece of paper upon which their summary page is printed, are filed in three different locations in the state capitol building. One of these places is in the office of the committee to which the bill is assigned. About 75 percent of the bills that pass through the Minnesota State Senate's hopper will find their way into the Finance Committee or its 10 subdivisions and consequently find their way through my hands into green, legal-sized folders, which are placed numerically by bill number into the five towering file cabinets that dominate the intern office of the Finance Committee's quarters.