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(upbeat music) - Good evening and welcome to this week's version of Your Legislators.

My name is Barry Anderson.

I'm your host this evening for our program that will cover the affairs of the Minnesota House of Representatives and the Minnesota Senate as the legislative session has now concluded, I wanna remind you that this is your program, and if you're joining us via Facebook or YouTube, we invite you to call in with your questions.

For the rest of our viewers, we will be coming to you via a recorded, as a recorded episode, won't be able to give questions to our panel, but hopefully we'll cover many of them in the course of our conversation.

I wanna remind you that this will be our last program of the year.

We will be returning in 2024, late January or early February when the legislature will reconvene for its so-called short session, off year session.

So we begin this evening as we do each week by giving our distinguished panel of guests an opportunity to introduce themselves, and I've invited each of them to maybe share a few thoughts with our viewers about this session as it has concluded matters that they thought were significant developments and other issues that perhaps they want to share with you, our viewers.

Let's begin with Senator Mary Kunesh from District 30, excuse me, district 39 in New Brighton.

Senator Kunesh, tell our viewers a little bit about yourself and the recently concluded session.

- Well, thank you so much.

I'm Senator Mary Kunesh.

I represent the communities of St. Anthony Village, New Brighton, Columbia Heights, Hilltop, Spring Lake Park and Fridley.

I'm just finishing my third year in the Senate.

I am currently an as assistant majority leader.

Prior to that, I spent four years in the Minnesota House and I was 25 years as a teacher and library media specialist.

I'm also the chair of the education finance Committee.

And so I guess my, you know, the thing I wanna crow most about is the, you know, like the bodacious funding that we have put into our early education, our earliest kids as well as K-12 education.

It's been just an honor to chair that committee.

Well, by the end of it, we have put over $5.2 billion into the education of our children here in Minnesota.

And we know very clearly what a struggle that has been for the last few years, especially with the complications of Covid.

But we were able to give our schools a really healthy formula of 4% and 2% in the next couple of years.

And we did kind of a hybrid version of not only the formula set for the next couple of years, but we also sort of tied it to inflation.

And so we promised our schools that they would have an inflationary increase going forward, never lower than 2%.

We would cap it at 3%, but that doesn't mean that if there were additional dollars that we wouldn't be able to put money in there.

We, you know, invested in early education by adding more and more of the scholarship seats for our early learners and just a plethora of incredible things that we were, we were able to accomplish in the education committee like we've never done before.

But I'm also very proud that we, Minnesota passed and strengthened MIFPA bill, Minnesota Indian Family Preservation Act, just in case the federal ICWA, Indian Child Welfare Act were to go away.

That was something that I wanted to get done early and we absolutely did.

I'm also really proud that we will have another new specialty license plate in Minnesota.

It will be the missing and murdered indigenous relatives license plate.

And that license plate, the funding for that will go towards our permanent Office of the Missing and Murdered Indigenous Relatives and help with some of the cold cases and reward fund and making sure that that office has the funding to go forward.

So those are some of the most exciting things that I think happened on my end.

I served on the Egg committee, so it was great getting those dollars out to rural Minnesota and I just think that this whole session has been such a success.

I'm so proud to have been a part of it.

- All right.

Thank you Senator Kunesh.

Senator Duckworth, if you'd be so kind just to introduce yourself to our viewers and talk a little bit about the session from your perspective.

- Sure, I'd be happy to, and thanks very much for the invitation to be here.

Zach Duckworth, I live in Lakeville, represent that city as well as the Elko New Market, the city of Credit River.

And very happy to be here with you.

I'm a volunteer firefighter in Lakeville, member of the Minnesota Army National Guard and a small business owner, in addition to being a legislator.

In terms of maybe some of the wins or positives this session, in one instance, we ended on a high note when we were able to help secure a big investment for our nursing homes, which unfortunately we know many are struggling across the state and we think it's important to take care of our elderly and our seniors.

And so it was good to see that come together in a bipartisan effort to help kind of cleanse the end of session.

We were able to reduce, I guess, a threshold, meaning fewer people will be paying social security tax, although we didn't fully eliminate it.

We did pass a good bipartisan bill for our veterans, it'll help folks.

And toward the end of session, of course, we did pass some funding for a lot of local projects across the state, which I think will help people, cities and counties.

On the flip side, if you recall, we started the session with a $19 billion surplus, most of which was spent.

We didn't quite get a substantial amount of it back to folks.

Unfortunately, we did not eliminate the tax on social security fully.

We ended up with a gas tax and a delivery tax on stuff that comes to your home.

And so we kind of used that surplus to grow government by about 40%.

And I think that's gonna be something that we continue to grapple with in the sessions as we move ahead.

So I'm normally a pretty positive person, but you asked for a little bit of a summary at the end of session.

There was some good stuff, but it did come at a cost as well.

- We'll come back to that budget question in our round table discussion after giving everyone an opportunity to share their thoughts with our viewers.

Let's go to representative Long.

Representative Jamie Long from District 61B in Minneapolis.

Representative Long introduce yourself and tell our viewers a little bit about the session from your perspective.

- Sure.

Thank you Barry.

So I am Jamie Long.

I'm the House majority leader and I'm in my third term.

I chaired the Climate and Energy Committee last term before being elected majority leader this term.

And I think we had a really remarkable session, worked very closely with Senator Kunesh and her team to get quite a bit done.

And I think that we focused on trying to help Minnesotans afford their lives and tackle some of the biggest challenges that they're facing.

And then we address real backlog of issues that we haven't been able to take care of in decades in the state.

And that includes things like our transportation funding, where yesterday we passed a really historic transportation investment bill.

We don't have a surplus in transportation funding.

We have ongoing needs into the future.

And so that was a really big step to make sure our roads and bridges are safe.

Senator Kunesh talked about the amazing work we did in K-12 and early childhood, but we also tried to deal with some of the big costs that Minnesotans are facing.

And that includes things like housing costs.

We are moving aggressively to try to reduce housing prices, give people more access to home ownership, help renters, help homeowners who are in their homes with the tax relief that we're providing in that bill.

And we also are trying to help folks with healthcare costs and bringing down the cost of healthcare, prescription drugs as well.

So we, I think, had a very successful session, the Star Tribune called it perhaps the most consequential legislature in history.

And so I think we have a lot to celebrate and look forward to the discussion today.

- All right, very good.

Thank you.

And last, but certainly not least from District 7A, Representative Spencer Igo.

Spencer, tell our viewers a little bit about the session from your perspective.

You are muted, I believe.

- Look at that.

Rookie mistake.

Thanks again for having me.

I'm Spencer Igo, again represent House District 7A with the easiest way to say that is I represent about half of Minnesota's Iron Range.

I'm in my second term and I'm an assistant minority leader for the House Republican Caucus.

You know, Senator Duckworth said it great.

There were some good things that we got done that Vet's Bill was fantastic passing those bonding bills last night, there was a lot of good projects scattered throughout the state in communities that really needed it, whether that be clean water infrastructure needs.

We saw a lot of good things.

But there is that flip side.

I mean we saw the state budget grow away 40%, went through a surplus that ended up being $260 checks back to taxpayers.

And now we're gonna be faced with the situation, you know, it was just said that we had a consequential session.

Yes, but I don't think we know what those consequences are yet.

And we're gonna need to be looking into those things because I think as these bills become law here and as we move into the next couple of years, we're gonna start seeing the effects and whether they're gonna give that hand up to people or they're gonna push them down.

And a lot of the tax increases that we saw in that almost 10 billion tax increase had a lot of regressive tax.

You know, when I represent aging and poor communities in Northern Minnesota, when you put a gas tax that's aside to inflation, that hurts people who drive, you know, dozens of miles every day.

So, you know, we're gonna need to be watching these things and evaluating them to come back to the table and try and fix this stuff 'cause I'm very concerned as as many in my district are.

- So let's start with the point that Representative Igo made with regard to taxes.

There are claims that there are tax increases and tax cuts in the bill of large tax cuts and large tax increases.

And I think it's a good way to begin our conversation this evening with some discussion about the tax issue as you see it.

Let's start with you representative Long, let's talk about taxes, increases, cuts, what would you like to tell our viewers about that?

- Sure.

Well I'm really proud of the tax bill that we put together.

It is the largest tax cut in state history, $3 billion in tax cuts from Minnesotans.

And that includes, as I mentioned, some property tax cuts for individuals, renters' tax credits.

It includes the largest reduction in child poverty in years.

One third cut in child poverty because of the child tax credit, which was something that Governor Walz pushed very hard for in his budget and his work this session.

And then it does include some revenue, it includes a billion dollars in revenue and that is focused on corporate overseas profits.

So corporations that are trying to hide their earnings overseas and on the wealthiest Minnesotans to ask them to do a little bit more of their fair share.

And I think that that's only fair given the context we've seen in the last five to 10 years where the wealthiest Minnesotans in our estate have doubled their incomes since the pandemic and we've seen an 8% to 9% drop for individuals in the lowest bracket.

So we know that a lot of families are struggling and we're trying to help provide some direct relief to those individuals, whether it's through property tax, renters' credit, child tax credit, social security tax relief that we mentioned.

And so I think this is a very balanced bill that does a lot of good for Minnesotans.

- All right, very good.

Senator Duckworth, your thoughts, tax increases, tax cuts, what do you think of the tax legislation in this session?

- Sure.

Well, I think respectfully, I think the three, calling it simply a $3 billion tax cut is a little bit of a misnomer or just really only tells one side of the story.

Holistically, when you look at all the legislation that was passed over the course of the session, you're looking at about a 9 to $10 billion increase in taxes across the board.

I don't call it new revenue, I call it tax increases.

And mind you, we started with $19 billion in surplus of taxpayer dollars and so to burn through it all and then increase spending by 40% or 9 to $10 billion in additional taxes, I think is what has some Minnesota's frustrated.

And I get that many of the things that were in the tax bill are well intended and are seeking to help people.

But in the long run, I think the cumulative effect it's gonna have on the state is it's gonna increase the cost of living for everybody.

And the folks that are gonna unfortunately suffer under that cost of increase in living the most are gonna be folks that are at the lowest rung of income earning.

And so you're gonna see them impacted substantially more than you are others.

So while it may be touted as a pretty substantial cut when you look at the overall tax burden that's gonna be placed on the people of Minnesota from now and into the future, I think unfortunately it's gonna have the unintended consequence.

The last thing I say is this, the other aspect of this session is there were many bills that were passed that inevitably are gonna lead to significant property tax increases.

I'll save it for a conversation as it relates to education if we have that one.

But there are bills that don't necessarily fully fund certain things.

It's gonna force our cities and counties to increase property taxes on folks who cover the shortfall they're gonna have when it comes to their budgets.

- Senator Kunesh, tax increases, tax cuts.

What's your view of the tax legislation?

- Well, somebody recently told me that if we want nice things, we're gonna have to pay for them.

And we know that Minnesotans enjoy a high standard of living here in Minnesota.

Due to the weather, we see the really hardware and tear on our roads and our bridges on our infrastructure.

And for such a long time those investments have not been made in ensuring that we have that our cities, that our counties, our municipalities have those dollars to ensure that they can address those issues.

And just as Representative Long said, these are dollar, these tax breaks are really targeted at the folks that are struggling the most.

When you think of the millions of families who are going to benefit from this childcare tax relief, it's going to make a difference, a big difference in how they can take care of their family, doesn't mean that they'll be able to now purchase a home and be able to pay a mortgage.

And we know that housing home ownership is the beginning of generational wealth.

And so for a lot of families who have struggled for so long, this is really, really going to make a difference.

And you know, I feel like there's a good balance going forward and plugging those holes and plugging those areas that have not been, had the attention, the financial attention.

You know, when we look at transportation and those sort of things, I think that we came up with a really good balance of tax and revenue building as well as relief for families.

And I'm certainly proud to have been part of this legislative session.

- Representative Igo, you had a swing at this issue a little while ago, but you get another opportunity.

Your comments, tax increases, tax cuts, your view of the tax legislation.

- Yeah, you know I just found it very interesting, right?

I mean when we were going through the Covid pandemic, we learned a lot of things about how we need to be supporting people and giving 'em the most opportunity that they have to be able to have money in their pocket to be able to pride for themselves.

You know, now fast forward to this session and we're dealing with, you know, inflation through the roof and we have people that said, hey, statewide mandates blanket policy doesn't work.

And that's what this tax bill did today.

It created blanket policy that's gonna be hurting Minnesotans based on whether you live in my district or you live in Southern Minnesota or the Metro.

If we really want to create that generational wealth, we wanna give people the most to prosper.

Well, it's giving them a handout with giving 'em more money in their pocket.

And when you increase regressive taxes that are gonna hurt people, and when you look at ways where we are gonna incentivize more wealth migration, I mean that was an issue that we're dealing with right now.

We are seeing people and wealth leave our state because of the increased taxes.

And now my deep concern is if we keep on that trend, we're gonna start looking like a state like Illinois or California where that wealth disappears and when you lose that wealth, you lose those businesses and then you lose the jobs and all of a sudden Minnesota's spiraling and we need to stabilize ourselves.

So I mean that there's a lot of things connected to this.

Another tax that I feel like I need to mention is the renewable energy standard.

There's many co-ops and munis and IOUs around the state that are very concerned about reaching those goals because we don't have an all of the above approach where we can use other facets to keep energy affordable and reliable.

And the reason I bring that up is 'cause your cost of electricity, your cost of energy is just another tax on you being able to live your life.

And the best way to lift people out of poverty and give them the needs to succeed is lowering energy costs.

So I just wanted to add that note too 'cause I think that's another tax increase that we need to mention.

- We'll probably have an opportunity to talk about taxes and connection with some more budget discussion as we get along a little further in our program.

But I wanna move to a topic that we get a lot of questions from our viewers about and that of course is the bonding bill.

And this was an area of agreement, didn't start out that way, but kind of wound up that way.

And let's start with you Senator Duckworth.

Maybe you could give our viewers a little bit of a roadmap as to how we got there because of course in order to get a bonding bill passed you have to have both majority and minority support and maybe give our, give a picture of how that transpired to our viewers.

Start with you Senator Duckworth and then we'll go to Representative Long.

- Sure.

Appreciate the question.

And just to give a little bit more context, when you say that you need both majority minority support, it's a math question.

You need more than just a simple majority of votes.

You need a few from the minority as well, a total of seven.

And that's why that bill sometimes is a little bit more involved in negotiations than others.

And so at the beginning of the session there was work to done to try to build consensus regarding a bonding bill, building off one that was in talks from the previous session.

And Senate Republicans, and Republicans in general, in the House as well were frustrated with the lack of tax relief or the lack of surplus that was being proposed to be refunded to people.

And so we kind of were very upfront with folks from the very beginning of sessions saying, hey, unless there's meaningful tax relief in here, unless we're gonna eliminate completely the tax on social security and give folks back meaningful checks like was promised not that long ago, checks of 1,000 to $2,000 that we just don't feel comfortable borrowing more money, how are we as a stake gonna borrow more money while folks are out there struggling to meet their needs for these projects?

So long and short of it is it took a few months as the clock was running low toward the end of session, we had to pivot a little bit when it became clear that there just was not support from Democrats for substantial tax relief or substantial refunds for checks.

And also pressing were our nursing homes and taking care of our seniors and elderly.

So part of negotiations to still move a bonding bow forward which would get to many critical as projects across the state, we said, hey, work with us on providing the funding that's missing currently in the human services bill for nursing homes so we can take care of grandma, grandpa, mom and dad and if you can work with us on that, if you can prioritize our seniors, then we can get some support for this bonding bill to help get these products completed across the state.

So that's long and short of how it played out.

- Representative Long, your thoughts on the bonding bill?

- Well I'm really glad that we came to an agreement.

It was the largest bonding bill on state history and so that's going to mean great projects across the state and a lot of job creation for our folks who build these projects.

It did take us a while to get there.

We didn't have a bonding bill for three years and when we were in divided government the last two years, we weren't able to reach agreement.

So it took a unified government to be able to get to this point that we have a bonding bill.

The House passed our bonding bill several months ago on a bipartisan basis.

And so we were waiting on the Senate and I'm really glad they came along and we were able to get a deal done to get this important workout, we'd prepared an all cash bill and we were ready to do that.

But I'm glad that we were able to come into agreement because it's a lot better to bond for these projects and pay for them over time and it means we can do more work.

My colleagues on the call have mentioned the spending that we're doing this year.

Well this is part of that spending and this is spending they support to get out the bonding investments across the state.

40% statistic that they both used is talking about the two year budget that we have right now and not the on ongoing budget because we have this one-time surplus where we have the advantage of being able to use that money for some of these infrastructure investments.

This is the perfect place to use one-time money is for some of these bonding projects and infrastructure investments because that doesn't create an ongoing challenge for our budget into the future.

And so I think this was a great area for us to find agreement and I'm glad we got there.

- Representative Igo, your thoughts on the the bonding bill?

- Yeah, well, you know, it definitely was a rollercoaster if you will, right.

with the house passing our bonding bill back in March and kind of working through the process, it was very important that, you know, the Senate Republicans and the house residents worked together to make sure that we got that nursing home funding in at the end 'cause it was critically important.

If we're gonna pass a bonding bill, which in Northern Minnesota it's called the jobs bill, if we're gonna pass something like that, we need to also take care of our seniors.

So it's good to see that happen.

And again, there's a lot of good infrastructure in the first geo bonding bill, you know, the cash bill that was brought to the House floor here yesterday and passed for the Senate.

That definitely changed a lot.

We saw new spending going to a lot of nonprofits, which was something unique that I don't know if I was fully in support of when I was going through the list.

I mean it was very last minute, but there was a lot of things in there that had to happen.

There was people in communities in the state having to drink bottled water for the last two years 'cause we needed to get a bonding bill done.

I got a community in my district that we have a project that a rising pit lake of water was ready to break and destroy three cities in northern Minnesota if we didn't get this bonding bill passed.

So those are some of the things that we are really addressing is really getting at the core of helping people providing jobs and building out infrastructure, which is our duty by constitution.

But it is important to make sure those projects are vetted properly and sent to the right places so they can do the most good, provide the most jobs and give Minnesotans the highest quality of life.

- Senator Kunesh, bonding bill?

- Well I was really glad and so relieved that we finally came to an agreement and were able to access those one time dollars and the other numbers that were available to us to make sure that those dollars are going to go into the communities that need the most.

It's, you know, I think, it's been since 2020 that we've had a bonding bill and so there are a lot of communities that were in a, you know, a bit of a hurt.

We talked a little bit, it was mentioned about the water and wastewater projects.

I mean that's huge.

I think that there's close to 50 projects in this bonding bill across the state to address that issue.

But I think it's also, and I mentioned transportation earlier, so that's going to be another good one.

But there's also dollars in there for our natural resources and every spring we hear about flooding across our states.

So the fact that there's quite a bit of money in there for some flood mitigation is going to be really important to those communities.

We've talked about our youngest, we've talked about our oldest, but there's also important dollars in there for our veterans, which I am glad to see, especially making sure that that there are upgrades to the shelters or to the homes that veterans are living in and being able to expand it.

But I think that if you look through the list of the cash projects and you look at where all those dollars are going to, I think it's really so important that we are also supporting the community organizations that provide those boots on the ground services to our communities.

There's lots of homeless shelters in that bonding bill.

There are educational, all sorts of things in there.

So I know that Senator Pappas and Representative Lee worked really hard to ensure that there was a good balance across Minnesota to address the really unique and specific needs of the communities.

A lot of dollars going directly to the city, to public safety.

And so I would give it an all around A+ on a bonding bill because this has been a long time coming and our communities really need it and I'm sure they're going to appreciate it.

- Before we get to some specific questions that our viewers have, I wanna wanna wrap up the budget discussion with sort of an overall question, and I'm gonna start with you Representative Long.

If you look at the spending in the last biennium compared to this biennium, St. Paul Pioneer Press had a piece suggesting that the differences are about 38% in references to 35 or 40% depending on how you do the math.

That of course includes some one time money.

We also have the Star Tribune business column as to raise this question about slowing economic growth over some period of time, knowing that Minnesota is more in the 2% range than perhaps multiples of that number back in the '70s when the last significant budget increases occurred, at least on this order.

Taking all of that into account, are there any concerns about the sustainability of these budget increases going forward?

Was that a topic of discussion and how would you respond to viewers who have concerns about that issue?

We'll start with you Representative Long and give everyone a shot at it.

- Sure.

Thanks Barry.

I appreciate that.

So as I mentioned, the 40% is really misleading because we're just talking about that two year window when we have this really record breaking surplus that we're able to spend over those two years.

So when you're thinking about the ongoing budget, that's not an accurate number.

So when you're looking at the ongoing spending into the future, all that spending is paid for.

We are not putting ourselves into a situation where we're getting into unbalanced with our state, where we're setting up the possibility of a deficit.

We have paid for all of the investments that we're putting into really important areas that we have underinvested in for decades.

And that includes education as Senator Kunesh mentioned, and includes infrastructure as we talked a little bit about, higher education where we finally are making a real dent on trying to help people afford the ability to get higher education, childcare, housing, all of these things are areas that help our competitiveness as a state that help our businesses grow.

Because if you don't have an educated workforce, who are you gonna hire, right?

Who are you gonna find to fill those jobs if you don't have folks with affordable housing and affordable childcare?

The number one reason why people have given that they aren't going back to work is because they don't have affordable childcare.

So to create an environment where businesses in our state are able to succeed, you have to have a solid public infrastructure that includes roads that are in good shape for people to get to work and transit systems as well for people to get their goods to market and includes the educational infrastructure, includes the housing infrastructure.

These are all components of making sure that our businesses are succeeding.

And that is the vast majority of where we are investing our resources in going forward.

- Representative Igo, your thoughts on the sustainability issues that Representative Long and I were just discussing?

- Yeah, no, I think it's something we need to be deeply concerned about, right?

I mean there's, and there's some things I've already mentioned, right?

We have negative wealth migration in the state due to policies that we already have.

So when you have increased some of these taxes and the way the spending has been done, I'm worried we're gonna see more of that and then when we come back to do the budget in two years from now, we're gonna have an even bigger problem 'cause there'll be less money.

And I think the most concerning thing that I just heard there was the fact that we had surplus, we gotta spend it.

Surplus doesn't mean you have to spend, this is taxpayer dollars we're talking about here.

And some of those dollars were one-time funds from the federal government that had rolled over from the Covid pandemic that we should have used for the things that were mentioned, right?

The infrastructure taking care of those needs.

But some of this growth, the amount of FTEs we've added to the state, those are things that you can't just go back and cut without causing a lot of hurt.

Like I said, we need to think twice act once on these things.

And I unfortunately, I don't think we had that.

And now when you have places, I mean the city of St. Paul with what's been instituted just with some of these policies around housing and stuff, is gonna have a sales tax of almost 9%.

You talk about wanting to lift people up and create generational wealth, it's gonna hurt a lot when you go to buy that toaster and you have to pay 9% sales tax.

These are things that we should have talked about more and maybe pump the brakes a little bit on because now I think we're gonna see spending start to slow down.

We're gonna see that wealth migration continue to go up and we could be facing some huge problems in the future.

- Senator Kunesh, the sustainability overall budget issues that we've been discussing, your view on that?

- Well, I kind of look at it as through the lens of a, you know, a homeowner, a house, you know, a home budget.

And when you have had to live very carefully for a long time and maybe haven't kept up on the repairs in your home or been able to keep up on your healthcare because it was not affordable or you weren't able to, you know, send your kids to college because you didn't have those funds available.

But when we look at it from the governmental level, we had that surplus, it's kind of like a little bonus there, well, a big bonus, where we could plug a lot of those holes.

A lot of the areas that had been underfunded lift up a lot of communities that have been underinvested in.

Support education, we now have tuition free education for those below that poverty level.

Those are all long-term investments.

And just as Representative Long said, you know, these are things that are we paid for.

We made sure and we were very intentional.

I've heard the conversations, I heard my other members talking about how to do this in the best way that isn't going to cause those future deficits, shall we say.

And so I'm quite confident that the investments that we have put in place this session are going to really make a difference in the long term and it will prevent a lot of those issues that might have been percolating for so long that they became almost irreparable because we have now done what we needed to do to invest and continue the progress of each and every one of those areas.

So I'm confident that we'll be able to sustain this, but we'll, you know, we'll have to be careful.

We'll have to look at every budget.

We'll have to, you know, wait for those dollars that come into the state government and we have to make sure that our state government is working efficiently and at a full capacity in order to do this.

So the investment in FTEs, not only now we're creating those jobs, but we also are creating a platform of professionals that are going to be able to help us in the future.

And this definitely was a good investment.

- Senator Duckworth, your thoughts on the overall budget question before we move on to a different topic?

- Sure.

You know, it was said earlier that Minnesotans want nice things.

I think that's true.

I think Minnesotans want nice things for them and their families and their futures.

I don't think they necessarily want nice things or the nicest things for state government, especially when it comes at their expense.

This isn't all paid for.

A lot of our school districts are gonna find themselves with far greater mandated expenditures than the funding they're receiving.

That's not paid for.

It's gonna get paid for by taxpayers in the form of an increase to property taxes.

There's no question this is not sustainable.

The only way that government increasing its spending by nearly 40% is sustainable is if in the future we continue to increase taxes or we do cuts.

I don't think that we've seen the current makeup of the state government is really necessarily in favor of cuts.

I think what you're gonna see are there, they had many ideas for taxes that they wanted to do this session that they didn't do either because it was deemed to be too much or there was too much outcry about it.

I don't think we've seen the last of those proposals.

The only way that that level of spending is going to be sustained into the future is through future taxes.

I'll admit, maybe we did plug some holes, we maybe plugged a few holes when it comes to our nursing homes, but a lot of that money was used to create new government programs or to grow current government programs.

That's not plugging a hole, that's just making government even better.

And I think that we've seen, let me put it to you this way, the state of Minnesota did not grow by 40% over the last couple of years although our spending and state government will, and I think that's gonna be something that catches up with us very quickly.

And God forbid if we happen to see a little bit of a slowdown or a downturn economically, that's only gonna compound and magnify the financial, the negative financial situation we could potentially find ourselves in in the future.

- Senator Kunesh, we began this evening.

You talked a little bit about education.

I'd like to talk a little bit about higher education and how that fared in this session.

The governor has already hinted at or suggested that, well anyway, let me just give you the floor to talk a little bit about what transpired in higher education.

We do have this question of what we're going to do with the university hospital and some of these questions, but that maybe is more a healthcare question than higher ed.

Let's talk about higher ed start.

Senator Kunesh, your thoughts on that.

- Well, we know that many of our, our post high school students have been, has struggled to be able to afford school.

And it's not just that tuition, but it's the cost of going to school, feeding, you know, the feeding those kids, the books and all of those sort of things.

So we know that when we start to invest in that level of education, those are the kids that are gonna stay, whether they come from outta state or they're instate.

If they have a good college experience, they're gonna stay here and do the work that we're gonna need them to do.

So the 4 billion plus higher ed bill that was passed this session that includes funding for free public college for students from, students that are coming from families that make less than $80,000 per year, I believe is going to make a big difference as we go forward.

The cost has just been, you know, the loans that kids have had to take in order to complete their education has been just a burden.

And so within the K-12 education, we have loan forgiveness and it's just really important that as we look forward, especially with the University of Minnesota and our land grant colleges, that we are continuing to invest in those areas.

And I'm just really proud that we were able to do that in a level that we were, and so very proud of the work that we did for higher ed.

- Senator, just to follow up on that, your legislative colleague Gene Pelowski, been on our program not only this time, but many times in previous years, and he's expressed concern about declining enrollments and declining applications at the higher education level.

Any thoughts on that as it relates to action taking this session?

- Well, I would imagine that we will see, and I would hope that we would see an increase in enrollment across the state, especially those low income families and our BIPOC communities that have found the cost of going to university so prohibitive that they haven't had that opportunity to get the higher learning, the skills that are going to allow them to increase their income and contribute towards the good of Minnesota, whether through jobs, through their experience, their expertise, and their taxes.

And I think what we'll see, just a really positive side effect of this tuition free college for those that need it the most.

- Senator Duckworth, higher education.

- Well, I think higher education is one of the best examples of people actually sitting around their kitchen table and looking at their home budget.

It was kind of referenced that the state of Minnesota was maybe, you know, looking at our budget as if we were a homeowner.

And I think the one advantage that the state has that Minnesotans don't have is Minnesotans can't just raise taxes and reach into the pockets of their neighbors to pay for all the good ideas and programs that they want to do.

That's the biggest difference.

And a surplus should never be looked at as a bonus, by any means.

This is not a bonus that the state has over collected taxpayer dollars and removed it from them and their ability to use it on their families or loved ones and their futures.

And I think when we look at this program in particular as it relates to higher education in college, you've got a lot of Minnesotans out there saying, I would love the chance and the opportunity to save and pay for my child's higher education before the state requires me and forces me to pay for that of others.

And when you look at what this program's gonna do long run is sure it may subsidize higher education for some, you know, I think many could argue that's a good thing, but it's gonna come at a cost to tuition overall being raised on everyone else.

That's the most significant issue at public institutions anyway.

We had a state grant program we could have chosen to fund instead, which would've benefited a lot more students and families and institutions and colleges all across the state rather than being very segmented.

I think what you're gonna see happen is you're gonna see a lot of colleges or public institutions continue to raise their tuition because we didn't actually go about trying to solve the problem, which was how do we help these institutions continue to drive tuition rates down and make it more affordable for folks.

That's part of the enrollment issue.

And if we know that this is gonna continue to increase the costs of tuition, well, we're of course potentially gonna have an impact on enrollment as well.

So I think that's the holistic picture we have to be mindful of when it comes to higher education here in the state of Minnesota and why kids and families are or are not choosing to pursue it.

- Representative Long, higher education.

- Thank you.

Well, I think Senator Duckworth has it backwards.

I think that we have seen the higher education burden shift dramatically towards putting the cost of higher education on students.

20 years ago, the way that we paid for higher education was about 70% state, about 30% students.

And that has flipped.

Now, we're putting 70% of the cost of higher education on our students and that means that a lot of families can't afford to go to college, which is why you're seeing on the enrollment declines that we're seeing in this state that has huge impacts on our overall economy.

We're seeing jobs go unfilled because folks don't have the skills that they need and our higher education is one of the main ways that they can get those skills.

We're also seeing students take on huge amounts of debt and delaying starting families, delaying buying homes, delaying all of the things that help our economy be productive because they're not able to get a good, affordable, higher education.

And this budget makes a really important step in that direction.

We are freezing tuition for all Minnesota state schools for the next two years in this.

And we are, as Senator Kunesh mentioned, paying for the tuition for families that make under $80,000 a year.

That is something that red states and blue states do across the country.

It's a bipartisan approach and it is hugely successful around the country to help students get access to that good higher education, which can be life changing and launch them into new careers.

We've heard from our colleagues on this program that folks are leaving the state, but they haven't told you why they're leaving the state.

It's not wealthy people because of taxation, it's young people, the folks in their twenties are the ones who are leaving the state when you look at the actual data and they're leaving the state because they're going to college in other states and they're staying.

They aren't able to afford college here and they don't see our state being affordable.

So the investments that we're making in higher education and helping folks who want to start families here, afford childcare, afford housing, that's what's going to make our economy successful and keep people in our estate.

- Representative Igo, higher education.

- Yeah.

You know, when I kinda look at large questions like this, I like to break it down like it's an equation and think about how we got to this spot.

And I think, you know, the state of Minnesota does have decreasing enrollments.

You know, our flagship university, University of Minnesota has a decreasing declining enrollment.

One thing that hasn't been mentioned yet, so I won't try to repeat others which is the U of M campus has a crime problem.

If parents and kids don't feel safe going to a university, they're not going to enroll there and then they're gonna go do exactly to Representative Long's point.

They're going to go to another state, get educated and realize, wow, I'm a lot safer here and the state doesn't take as much as my money.

So that's a huge problem.

And I also think the 80K amount, I think is gonna cause a lot of issues too because, you know, we talked about wanting to keep people in the workforce because of childcare on that equation we were working on, let's apply it to this.

Now if two parents are at home and they're making just a little over 80K when their kids are reaching college age, well wouldn't it be the knowledge of them to leave one of them to leave the workforce and all of a sudden they could get free education for their student.

So then we're decreasing wealth, we're decreasing our workforce.

And I think that was part of the equation that we didn't talk about.

So, and finally again, if people had more money and they weren't being taxed as much, they'd be able to set aside for their children or children would be able to work through school and save money to work themselves through school because with more enrollment, tuition comes down.

So all of these things are interconnected and I think that's worth mentioning.

- Representative Long, let's talk a little bit about healthcare and I want you to also, I'll give everyone an opportunity to do this.

The governor sort of teed up the question of the Academic Center at the University of Minnesota Healthcare Center that a special session might be necessary there.

That's part of a much bigger picture, the problems that are various elements of our healthcare center, healthcare centers are having.

What was done about that issue in this session what remains to be done?

Big topic, but let's start with you Representative Long.

- Sure.

Happy to take that on.

So we have a merged system right now between the University of Minnesota and Fairview, used to be that the University of Minnesota had their own separate health program that they ran.

And University of Minnesota trains almost all doctors that are in our state.

So it's really important the work that happens at that University of Minnesota Medical Campus.

The out-of-state company, Sanford, is looking to acquire Fairview and that could put the University of Minnesota Medical System into the control of an out-of-state company.

And so that is something that is of a great concern to the university and to a number of our legislators.

And so they have been trying to determine what might be a good path forward and if they might be able to acquire some of those assets back to keep them controlled by the University of Minnesota.

So we haven't answered that question yet this session, but what we did do is give the Attorney General's office and our State Department of Health more ability to take a look at whether healthcare mergers, including the proposed Sanford Fairview merger are in the public interest.

And so that is something that I think that review will be ongoing now that we've passed that law.

But the reason we might have to come back for a special session is we don't know what that review will show and we don't know what the University of Minnesota might be able to negotiate or ask for as a way to exit their relationship with Fairview before any potential merger.

So these are big questions and the university is also going through a change in their president right now.

So those are all timing issues that didn't line up well with our session.

So we may have to come back, but I think there's gonna be a lot more discussion to be had in this area.

- Senator Duckworth, Fairview Healthcare Mergers, whatever.

- Sure.

- The floor is your.

- Sounds good.

So being a member of the higher education committee, this session, obviously this is something that was kind of topical, but unfortunately if I were to give a piece of constructive criticism to how this session, I guess was organized or carried out would be this is such a substantial issue that we should have engaged on it early on this session.

We should have had hearings about it.

We should have tried to find ways to fully understand the second and third order of effects of what could and likely is going to take place.

This is something we knew about before session even started.

And rather than diving into it during the legislative session, you know, we pushed through all kinds of other potential bills, ideas, programs and concepts, rather than doing one of our jobs as a legislature, which is to look at something as complex as this, figure out what makes sense, try to help the state find a way forward.

Now here we are done for the year and we've kind of left it to maybe the governor, maybe the Attorney General to kind of figure out potentially having to have a special session in the future, which won't involve the legislature holding hearings or asking questions.

My guess is we're likely just gonna be called in to maybe vote on something.

And I think that the missed opportunity here was to have the voice of the people of Minnesota be a part of this process as the legislature was in session, we could have addressed it early on and been at a point by this time this year having a much more, a better understanding of where this was headed, what the right course of action was to take so that we could take good care of the U and whatever is gonna happen with this potential merger.

- Senator Kunesh.

You're on mute.

- Sorry, I had the garbage trucks go through earlier, so I muted myself.

- We appreciate you muted yourself.

That was a good thing to do.

Go ahead.

- Yeah.

I don't really know that we could have really understood this issue within the legislative session.

And so I am really grateful that the Attorney General is taking the time to understand and review this merger in a better way and then bring it back to us when we have the facts.

Because when you're in the legislative session, there's so much going on, there's so many different viewpoints, there's so many rumors and this is happening now and that's happening now.

And I think it's just really important that we do take our time and are very diligent and intentional in understanding the long-term consequences of an out-of-state hospital system taking over or possibly becoming, you know, a controlling interest in our healthcare here in Minnesota.

And what concerns me is how we saw Mayo flex its muscles and when it came to the Nurses Bill, we don't want that to happen with an out-of-state.

We wanna make sure that Minnesota continues to get the quality healthcare that the U of M can continue to do the kind of medical research and practice and training that they do.

And most especially, we wanna make sure that in Minnesota, our reproductive rights and our health rights are not compromised by an organization outside of Minnesota where we as legislators could at some time be basically powerless.

- Representative Igo.

- Yeah.

What I'll say to that, and there's a lot covered here and there's a lot to talk about, but I think the most concerning thing we're dealing with right now is making sure we have a hospital network.

It's very well documented and reported that Fairview is struggling in hemorrhaging dollars on a daily basis.

And what's more concerning to me than having an out-of-state hospital network running things in our state, which happens all across the country, mind you that's not like this is the first time this has ever happened.

What concerns me is hospitals closing their doors and then us not having healthcare and well, there's Fairview right up here on the range where I'm from, we lose our hospitals because the company goes belly up.

We have a bigger issue than an out-of-state company here.

I appreciate the comments about making sure we wanna do this right and really digest everything.

Think twice, act once.

It's funny, we could have used that for the whole state budget and the whole budget process, maybe we wouldn't be in the situation, but we need to do the right thing here and maybe not be scared away by this out-of-state hospital thing.

There's partnerships to exist.

We have partnerships with the states around us and there's partnerships in business all the time, but we need to make sure that we're prioritizing the healthcare of Minnesotans and making sure to keep hospitals open is the first thing we should be doing.

- We only have about a minute left.

Just a couple of questions.

Well actually, I'm just gonna give each of you name one issue that you think we're gonna be discussing in the next legislative session.

You got 10 seconds.

Let's go with you representative Long first.

What's one issue that we're gonna have again?

- Well, I think that we are going to have another bonding bill.

We left some money on the bottom line and so I do think there's gonna be some more infrastructure projects we need to get done.

- Senator Duckworth.

- Sports Betting.

- Senator Kunesh.

- We'll continue to look at the education issues.

- And Representative Igo.

- They'll be working on energy Again.

- I want to thank our guests this evening.

I wanna thank you the viewers who have joined us faithfully for each week of this program.

We had some issues getting everybody here because of the busyness of the session.

We will be working on those.

We're looking forward to being back with you again next year when we will once again gather to discuss with Your Legislators the issues of the day.

Thank you.

And goodnight.

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