Representative Steve Elkins Contact information

Steve Elkins was born on April 17, 1952. He is an American politician who has been serving in the Minnesota House of Representatives since 2019. He is a member of the Minnesota Democratic–Farmer–Labor Party (DFL) and represents District 50B in the southwestern Twin Cities metropolitan area, which includes the city of Bloomington and parts of Hennepin County.

Elkins attended the University of California, Berkeley, where he graduated with a Bachelor of Arts in economics. He was a member of the Bloomington city council for three terms until Governor Mark Dayton appointed him to the Metropolitan Council in 2011. He was chair of the Metropolitan Council Transportation Advisory Board, and served on the Bloomington School District Transportation Task Force and the Bloomington City Planning Commission. Professionally, Elkins is an IT architect.

Elkins was first elected to the Minnesota House of Representatives in 2018 and has been reelected every two years since. He first ran after four-term DFL incumbent Paul Rosenthal resigned to take a position in another state. After 2022 legislative redistricting put him in the same district as fellow state representative Andrew Carlson, Elkins defeated Carlson in the DFL primary election.

Elkins serves as vice chair of the Veterans and Military Affairs Finance and Policy Committee, and sits on the Health Finance and Policy, Taxes, and Transportation Finance and Policy Committees as well as the Property Tax Division of the Taxes Committee. From 2021 to 2022, he was vice chair of the Local Government Division of the State Government Finance and Elections Committee, and from 2019 to 2020 he was vice chair of the Subcommittee on Local Government.

Elkins supported bipartisan legislation to allow undocumented immigrants to register vehicles with a consular ID. He authored legislation to reduce penalties for fare evasion on public transit and create “uniformed transit safety officials” to ride light-rail trains instead of police officers. He has said that suburban police departments are willing to help monitor Metro Transit sites. Elkins supported efforts to audit the Metropolitan Council’s management of the Southwest Light Rail project.

Elkins has written many bills to address housing prices and supply, including a Housing Affordability Act in 2021, saying, “NIMBYism is alive and well” in Minnesota.