The Minnesota Department of Transportation, the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources, the Minnesota Department of Health and, especially, the Minnesota Pollution Control Agencies were cited by Republican-endorsed gubernatorial candidate Tom Emmer during a Monday visit with supporters in Crookston as examples of bloated, overly aggressive state agencies that he'd rein in if elected. Their budgets and staffs are so large and the regulations they oversee are so immense, Emmer said at RBJ's Family Restaurant, that it seems as though they actually compete as enforcement agents when Minnesota businesses and farmers are in apparent violation.
It all adds up to a state government that's seriously off-mission, he said. "We need our government to serve us like it once did, not rule us like it's trying to do today," Emmer told about 20 supporters, some of whom shared their stories of struggle with various Minnesota agencies, mostly the MPCA.
One of those who shared a story was rural Crookston resident Bryan Boll, who for the past four years has been trying to secure the necessary permits for a 5,000-head cattle feedlot in Gentilly Township. His biggest problem, he said, has been the "moving target" at the MPCA, mostly the result of project managers at the agency that Boll said have changed about every six months. Some are more strict than the person they replaced, he explained, and some are more lenient.
"I was told I had to do an air emissions study, which had never been done anywhere in the world," Boll said. "Then the next person stepped in and said we didn't need one of those."
Sounding a popular refrain during Monday's 90-minute session, Boll said if he was in North Dakota, he would have been up and running three years ago. “My biggest problem is that no one wants to put their neck on the line and say, yes, you can do this, this project is good to go as is,” Boll said. “It’s a joke.”
Asked by Emmer how much he's spent trying to get his feedlot approved in Minnesota, Boll estimated around $100,000.
mmer, who said his campaign stops are more like "listening sessions" so he can hear from Minnesotans fed up with their state government, said Boll's story was one of the most egregious he's heard so far. "You gave me a huge horror story that I'm going to use to change the MPCA," he said. "I don't know of one Minnesota farmer that hasn't had at least one negative impact with the MPCA."
He said the agency started as a board within the Minnesota Department of Health consisting of around eight people. "Now it's over 400," Emmer said.
State government agencies weren't Emmer's only targets Monday. Asked what he thinks of Local Government Aid, an important facet of the City of Crookston budget, the state representative and attorney from Delano didn't sugarcoat his opinion. "I don't like it, I don't like it at all," he said.
The original LGA concept was right, he said, because it was meant to ensure that all Minnesota communities, despite their differing economies, would be able to provide basic services like public safety and water treatment for their citizens. Today, Emmer said, LGA funds things far beyond essential services, which is why he introduced a bill in the House that would have, for a five-year period, given LGA allotments to county boards across the state, who would have decided how to divide it up among the communities in their counties. It was only the first phase of what he said would have included a second phase to reform state aid in general, but the bill never received a hearing in the House.
LGA allotments are another "moving target," Emmer said, recalling his days as a city council member, when they'd approve a budget, only to have the state reduce its LGA allotment after the fact, leaving the council scrambling to make up the difference.
Deb Kiel, a Crookston School Board member and Republican challenging State Rep. and Crookston DFLer Bernie Lieder in the election, compared LGA to another "moving target": education funding.
"We have to cut teachers and programs, and then wait to see what the state is going to give us, and now we're having to borrow because our state funding has been delayed," Kiel said.
Emmer said the state's education funding system is an area that has to be "attacked with a vengeance" because the evolution from the one-room schoolhouse of days gone by to funding today's "temples of learning" isn't working.
Despite supposed reforms, the achievement gap hasn't been "nicked one bit," he said, and, despite pre-K funding, children under the age of 5 aren't being taught enough. While Crookston receives about $5,100 in state funding per pupil, Emmer said a Minneapolis student gets about $19,000, and the dropout rate there is still around 60 percent.
"We need more opportunities online, we need options and we need choice," he said, adding that school district leaders blaming parents that aren't engaged, mostly the working poor, is "arrogant and condescending" and sets kids up to fail in the classroom.
Emmer stressed that he wasn't anti-government across the board. There are good agencies and good regulations in place and good work is being done. But, he said, common sense must prevail if budgets are to be brought into line, redundancies are to be reduced, and efficiency increased. The state's budget, he said, has about doubled in the last decade. Given that, he added, "managing" the state's projected $5 to $7 billion deficit is doable, without tax increases.
"I don't know if people realize how urgent this is," he said of both the state and federal budget situations. "Four years (his first term, if elected) is a short time in our lives, but it's the right time for a lot of people to come together and start climbing that long, steep hill."
Will they reach the top? Not likely, Emmer said. "But even if we only get halfway, think how much better things will be than they are now," he said.
