Dear Neighbor,
Before we get to this week’s news from the House, just a quick reminder Sen. Torrey Westrom and I will be co-hosting in District 12B this Friday, March 8. No reservations are needed, so hope you will join us to talk about a wide variety of issues. Once again, here is the schedule:
Friday, March 8 Town Hall Meetings
- 9:15 a.m., Albany City Hall (400 Railroad Ave.)
- 10:30 a.m., Melrose City Hall (225 1st St. N.E.)
- 11:45 a.m., Sauk Centre City Hall (320 Oak St. S.)
- 2 p.m., Glenwood Pizza Ranch (14 E. Minnesota Ave.)
At the Capitol this week, the House passed a bill to provide more money for our state’s new driver’s license and registration system (MNLARS) that has experienced widespread problems since its inception.
While the $13 million more might help bring improvement, I strongly disagree with the fact the bill that was approved did not include relief for our local deputy registrars who operate across the state. There are three such local DMV offices in District 12B (Glenwood, Sauk Centre and Albany). The folks who run those operations do a nice job and have been in the difficult position of trying to deliver good customer service through a problem-plagued state system, all while managing glitches and errors that have cropped up by no fault of their own. House Republicans attempted to get funding for deputy registrars added to the bill, but House Democrats refused to do so and then voted to send the bill to the governor without those relief dollars.
Time remains in this session to pass a follow-up bill with funding for deputy registrars. I hope that happens, but it would have made more sense to take care of this issue in one swoop instead of stringing along the people who have suffered undue damages due to the state’s faulty system.
As for committee meetings, this week we received information regarding damage mounting levels of snow have caused agricultural buildings, with around 50 structures collapsing in our state during recent days. This is causing significant hardships in the dairy industry, where farmers have had to move their herds off their property to be milked at other operations – or, in some cases to be liquidated. On top of that, deep snow in some places has left milk trucks unable to complete their routes and some farmers have had no choice but to dump product.
It’s a tough situation and I am co-authoring legislation that would provide an additional $5 million to the Rural Finance Authority to issue low- or no-interest loans to help farmers rebuild.
All this snow is going to melt at some point and officials now indicate the probability of widespread flooding in our state is now up to 75 percent this spring. The degree to which this happens all depends on how gradual the spring melt is, but the odds are increasing that we will see fairly substantial flooding. The state has a disaster relief account to help deliver emergency funding promptly in such situations and bills are being drafted to make sure enough relief is available.
Look for more on these issues as things develop and I hope to see you at Friday’s town hall meetings.
Sincerely,
Paul