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State Representative Rick Hansen
100 Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Blvd.
651-296-6828
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Statement on Passage of Bonding Bill
(ST. PAUL) – Today, the Minnesota House of Representatives passed a $566 million bonding bill. State Representative Rick Hansen (DFL – South St. Paul) supported the final bill.
“We all came here saying that job creation was our top priority; this is a jobs bill," said Rep. Hansen. “Given our crumbling infrastructure and the backlog of worthy public projects, I would have preferred to see a larger bill, but this is a start and prevents the backlog from growing even larger.”
The bonding bill contains $7.3 million in funding for Dakota County Technical College. The funding will go to the renovation of the Transportation and Emerging Technologies Labs.
“Minnesota has the highest concentration of Fortune 500 companies by population in part because of our highly-educated and highly-skilled workforce, but we’re slipping,” said Hansen. “We need to invest in our colleges to train a workforce ready for emerging, high-demand fields. Investments like this one at Dakota County Technical College are laying the groundwork for Minnesota’s future economy.”
The bill contains $4 million in inflow and infiltration funding. These funds would be used to help upgrade local public sewer infrastructure to alleviate clean water flowing into the regional wastewater system.
“Inflow and infiltration funding has region-wide significance and can have positive impacts on our environment and public health,” said Hansen. “This funding will go to asset preservation, saving taxpayer dollars, and creating jobs while maintaining our most basic public infrastructure.”
$44 million is also included in the bonding bill for restoration of the State Capitol. This comes after a $221 million Capitol Restoration bonding bill failed to pass the House. The language of the bill is crafted to include work on the University Avenue tunnel as well. Rep. Hansen is a member of the Capital Investment Committee.
“Our beautiful State Capitol is in dire straits and this is the proper way to begin restoring it,” added Hansen. “It didn’t make sense to set aside $220 million in bonding when we couldn’t actually use that taxpayer money for years — especially when we have such a long list of important statewide and regional projects. This will get the project going and free up money for other needed investments.”
Finally, the bill includes $6 million in funding for the Reinvest in Minnesota (RIM) program. RIM’s goal is to encourage private citizens and organizations to help fund the acquisition and development of critical fish and wildlife habitat by having their donations of land or cash matched from a special state fund. This includes restoring wetlands, improving forest habitat, planting critical winter cover, protecting undisturbed plant communities, preserving habitat for rare plant and animal species, protecting native prairie and grasslands, and preserving spawning and reproduction areas for fish.
Rep. Hansen has been a long-time supporter of this program.
“The RIM program helps us forge public-private partnerships to restore wetlands, improve forests, and continue protecting our beautiful environmental and natural resources,” said Hansen. “While I believe that there should have been additional RIM funding in this bill, every dollar counts. This bill isn’t perfect, but with a struggling economy and crumbling infrastructure, a bonding bill is a necessity.”
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