It was good to see Jacob Bertram of Paynesville participate in the House Page program recently. Jacob is the son of former House member Jeff Bertram. The Page program is a great experience for high school juniors and here is a link with more information. This year’s sophomores are encouraged to take a look in preparation for submitting an application for the 2019 session.
Dear Neighbor,
Congratulations to the Kimball FFA Food Science team for competing at the state level. The team will be recognized during the state FFA convention on April 24 at the U of M.
At the Capitol, buffer strips were back in the news this week when the Minnesota Board of Water and Soil Resources introduced a proposal that could have resulted in thousands of dollars in fines annually for farmers who are even a few feet out of compliance across their entire property.
The Administrative Penalty Order BWSR issued last week would fine farmers out of compliance with Minnesota’s riparian buffer law by up to $500 per linear foot. Thankfully, an emergency hearing was scheduled in the House Thursday to address this subject and BWSR pulled back its proposal. It is good to see some common sense prevailed and, really, the focus should be on incentivizing buffer compliance instead of handing out fines.
A comment period on this issue lasts until 4:30 p.m. April 16 and can be submitted by email to buffers.bwsr@state.mn.us.
We also had an important hearing on the debacle related to our state’s faltering new vehicle licensing and registration system. The project head who was fired over this debacle testified and, in my opinion, he is just the fall guy for what clearly is a systemic failure that stretches far beyond one person.
One major problem is many of the pages from an investigation into MNLARS have been redacted. The non-partisan Office of the Legislative Auditor subpoenaed the complete set of documents more than a month ago and has yet to receive it. This is outrageous. The OLA is the office that is able to investigate and offer recommendations so we can avoid repeating mistakes. From what I see, not only are we not learning from our mistakes, but officials in the Dayton administration are blatantly resisting cooperation on this issue.
My bill (H.F. 3447) to require large IT projects such as this to go out for bid, continues making its way through the House.
Other bills I’ve been working on are moving through the process as well, including one (H.F. 118) that would bring asset testing to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program. To be clear, we aren’t trying to kick people off SNAP. The goal is to make sure people who need assistance are getting assistance, without having taxpayers dole out assistance to those who are not in need.
No asset testing currently takes place, which literally means wealthy citizens can legally receive food stamps. In fact, one millionaire who is advocating for asset testing successfully applied for food stamps just to prove the point.
Naysayers tell me this isn’t a widespread problem, but the fact is we don’t know because the system is broken. Let’s put some common-sense thresholds in place and see what we learn. I am flexible as far as where those guidelines are placed, I just want to see them implemented.
On a somewhat related note, I am working with our congressional delegation to update code so that IRA draws count as income relative to SNAP, just as Social Security income does. Currently, people are able to defer Social Security and draw from an IRA to preserve their SNAP eligibility. This goes against the spirit of public assistance and should be fixed.
Until next time, your input always is welcome.
Good luck,
Jeff