District 16, 16A lawmakers ready for special session

GRANITE FALLS -Two Republican lawmakers expressed optimism Thursday that a special legislative session will be held in time to avoid sending pink slips to state employees.
“It appears the talks are going pretty smooth,’’ said Sen. Gary Dahms, R-Redwood Falls, during a town hall meeting Thursday morning in Granite Falls. Dahms and Rep. Chris Swedzinski, R-Ghent, are hosting meetings throughout District 16 and District 16A this week to update constituents on the session. The House and Senate districts straddle the south side of the Minnesota River from south of Ortonville to New Ulm.
Dahms was speaking about negotiations going on between the two parties in hopes of reaching agreement on bills vetoed by Gov. Mark Dayton. A special session would need to be held by June 15 to avoid layoff notices for state employees, he said.
Dayton vetoed the K-12 education bill, the agriculture and environment bill and the jobs, economic development and energy bill.
The legislators on Thursday pointed to legislation that improves funding for nursing homes as one of the session’s accomplishments. The legislation increases overall funding to nursing homes by $138 million. Most of the increase will go to rural facilities, according to Dahms.
Rural counties would like to see increases in the County Program Aid they receive from the state. Peg Heglund, Yellow Medicine County administrator, said the county was receiving nearly $1 million annually before reductions began in 2003. Now the county receives $167,000.
The County Program Aid formula is based largely on property values and would essentially keep rural counties such as Yellow Medicine, Swift and Renville at current levels, Heglund said.
Property taxes are carrying more of the burden for programs required by the state.
Gary Johnson, a member of the Yellow Medicine County Board of Commissioners, said the state provided $232,000 toward the budget for the 6W community corrections in 1983. The three member counties, Yellow Medicine, Swift and Lac qui Parle, together contributed $70,000.
Today, the three counties are responsible for $885,000 of the 6W corrections budget, and the state $480,000. “The mandates have to stop,’’ Johnson said.
The state needs to do more for broadband and transportation, according to others attending the meeting. Dan Richter, a member of the Governor’s Broadband Task Force and president of a wireless Internet service, MVTV Wireless, said the $12 million allocated in the current legislation is too little.
Dahms said he agrees that broadband is an important economic development tool for rural areas, but warned that additional funding faces a major hurdle. He said he wants any broadband funding to go first to unserved areas, which are primarily rural. The legislator said that puts him up against communities such as Rochester and Duluth, which are seeking state funds to upgrade their systems.
Richter and Granite Falls Mayor Dave Smiglewski also expressed frustration that the Legislature did not approve a transportation funding bill.
Dahms and Swedzinski said they would like to see revenues generated from automotive-related fees dedicated to transportation, rather than go to the general fund. Swedzinski said he recently signed on to a bill that would constitutionally dedicate revenues from a variety of transportation-related sources, such as auto part sales and car leasing, to transportation. “It assures those dollars are constant and reliable,’’ he said.
They defended decisions not to spend down the state budget surplus, projected at nearly $1 billion. They noted that there was not an agreement on transportation and taxes. Keeping a surplus on hand will be very important in crafting agreements on those issues next session, they explained.
Dahms expressed some optimism that a transportation bill will be possible next session. He noted that while it may not have gotten much attention, the two parties came to an agreement on how many dollars are needed for transportation. “I feel confident we will move forward with something,’’ he said in reference to the 2016 legislative session.