By Rep. Paul Anderson
It appears there will be no special session in St. Paul this summer to finish work on several major bills left over from the bizarre finish to the legislative session this past May. Leaders emerged from negotiations last Thursday with no agreement that would allow both the tax reduction bill and a bonding bill to become law. The main sticking point was the governor’s insistence on including funding for the Southwest Light Rail project in any agreement to hold a special session.
SWLT would be tremendously expensive to build, with an estimated construction cost of $2 billion. To that, one must add millions of state general fund dollars each year to subsidize its operation. The 14-mile long project from Eden Prairie into downtown Minneapolis is currently the subject of several lawsuits, one of which (the Lakes and Parks Alliance case) has been scheduled for trial beginning in September of next year.
What’s especially frustrating is that the tax and bonding bills are being held up by this one issue. It was a last minute hand-written amendment in the Senate on the last night of session that brought the bonding bill down. In addition to funding projects all over the state, that piece of legislation contained $700 million in road and bridge funding. And the tax bill, which would have provided a half billion dollars in relief, also had solid support from both parties in the Legislature.
There is talk now of getting these bills done early in next year’s session. Let’s hope that proves to be true. The tax provision giving owners of ag land a state credit on school capital referendums was scheduled to become effective next year, so getting it done early in the next session could still possibly make it effective in time for the May, 2017 tax payments.
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Visited over the weekend with the owners of the Whispering Oaks Winery south of Melrose. Chris and Terri Ellering said they are reluctantly planning to close their business. The reason is because of their frustration with the Dept. of Agriculture making them obtain a “food handlers license” in order to continue selling wine at their winery. They told me that the expense and red tape involved in getting such a license make it impractical to do so. Six years ago they were told by the same department that they didn’t need such a license to operate their winery.
This business has been a wonderful addition to our area. It attracts tourists from around the state to their location, and while here these folks purchase wine and also pay sales tax which goes directly to the state. We shouldn’t be over-regulating these businesses to the point where they choose to shut down. And, according to the Ellerings, it’s not just their winery that is considering this, there are others around the state doing the same. Yes, safety is important, but there must be some sort of compromise we can work out to keep these businesses going.
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For the most part, crops around the district look good. Abundant rainfall and heat have allowed crops to remain green and lush. The high humidities though, have made putting up quality hay a challenge. We were praying for rain at our farm two weeks ago, and now we’re hoping for dry weather to finish out the crops.
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