As session nears, budget, clean drinking water on minds of northwest Minnesota legislators

Feb. 3—GRAND FORKS — The 2024 session of the Minnesota Legislature begins this month and District 1 lawmakers, all of whom are Republicans, hope to have a more balanced approach to legislation this session.

"In northwest Minnesota, a lot of people saw (the last session) as a huge step backward from where we've been as far as balanced legislation," said Sen. Mark Johnson, R-East Grand Forks. "We're still digesting what happened last year as a state, but we have to turn and face the next legislative session and the landscape is significantly different than last year."

In 2023, the Legislature

legalized recreational cannabis

,

codified abortion rights

, made school lunches free and much more. Lawmakers from northwest Minnesota are concerned about how the new changes and programs will be funded.

"I'm very concerned about where we're going to be at for our families, and what they're going to be able to tolerate with regards to raising more money to run the government," Rep. Deb Kiel, R-Crookston, said. "I am really disappointed with the fact that (state) surpluses have been squandered."

The Democratic Party has control of both houses and the governor's office. The party won control of the Senate in the 2022 election, allowing Democrats to have complete control for the first time since 2014.

Representatives from Minnesota Senate District 1 and House Districts 1A and 1B, which cover most of northwest Minnesota, want a more balanced approach to legislating. They also want rural issues to be at the forefront of priorities as the 2024 session gets underway.

The session is scheduled to begin Feb. 12 in St. Paul and must end by May 20, a span of roughly four months.

With numerous changes and new programs, the outlook of last year's $17 billion surplus leaves questions about the prospects of a bonding bill this session.

"In two years, we're looking at a deficit," Johnson said. "We're going to be constrained on what we can spend in the upcoming year in a bonding bill because of the debt service capacity (of the state)."

Rep. John Burkel, R-Badger, anticipates a structural deficit, and also questions the use of last year's dollars.

"I think there's a lot of one-time money that was spent on some new agencies and some new projects that we have to continue to fund now," he said. "That one-time money could have been used to look heavily in our infrastructure."

Kiel is concerned that state spending will have to paid through taxes and fees, which could negatively impact some residents' ability to stay in the state.

"The concerns are that, will the people be able to afford to live in Minnesota, just with gas, mortgage rates and energy prices continuing to rise?" she said.

District 1 lawmakers also want to increase and maintain access and infrastructure for clean rural drinking water. For instance, in southeast Minnesota, nitrate contamination of drinking water has become a very large issue. In northwest Minnesota, maintaining infrastructure and finding people to run the infrastructure is a concern, as well as maintaining clean drinking water.

"One of the big issues is (drinking water) infrastructure in our communities, especially if you go just south of East Grand Forks and going into Polk County, Norman County and Mahnomen County," Johnson said. "There's a proposal of connecting (these communities) to one facility and making more of a regional network for drinking water. I think it's a really good idea and something that we should be looking into because it cuts down on capital costs for these towns."

Kiel supports providing funding to Norman and southern Polk counties to deal with arsenic in the water, hoping a rural water system is set up. She also wants to see lead pipes replaced in small-town water systems.

"We know that any amount of lead in your water is dangerous," she said. "So when the governor talks about rural water or making sure we protect water, I'm hoping that northwestern Minnesota sees a fair amount of funding for that."

Burkel hopes problems such as the nitrate issue are tailored to each region, based on differing geographies. For nitrates, he anticipates feedlot and fertilizer feed related bills coming into the Legislature.

"I'm hoping that we can kind of compartmentalize the issues where we see the problem," he said.

Other issues likely to be considered include revisiting the changes to the school resource officer law, which resulted in many SROs being pulled out of schools due to liability concerns. The educational bill passed in 2023 was interpreted to limit the ability of SROs to use force.

"There was a lot of confusion on what the liability for the individual officer was going to be, what their professional liability was going to be, and what the liability to the community was going to be," Johnson said. "That's an area that we're going to be looking at this coming session."

Kiel would like to focus on rural hospitals and rural nursing homes. Both are reimbursed, though they are struggling with funding. On the nursing home side, this includes ensuring the homes are in good shape and staff is paid properly. For hospitals, the focus is on ensuring they have services that keep people healthy in rural areas, reducing the need to travel for services.

One example noted by Kiel: People having to travel to Grand Forks and Fargo for dialysis. She would like people to have services available so they can be stabilized locally before being sent off to a larger hospital.

"I've been in the ambulance of somebody who needs care," Kiel said. "I am thankful that they were stabilized in Crookston and then brought to Grand Forks rather than ride to Grand Forks when we can't know what needs to happen until they're there."

Burkel would like to see more work done on infrastructure. He wishes more could have been done with the surplus money during the previous session. Roads, bridges and other projects are on his mind, and he's happy some projects at the local level have already been funded. He's also interested in agriculture and — with the recent increase in electric, solar and wind power — in

mining

. To have energy like this requires mining minerals like nickel, copper and lithium.

"The mining industry played a big role in whether you can expand solar or windmills or whatnot, along with transmission lines and all that," he said. "It's important to understand ... the big-picture stuff surrounding energy and the fact that we're shutting down our coal plants without a real plan on how to replace that power."