By Rep. Paul Anderson
Five weeks remain in the 2018 legislative session, with adjournment set for May 21. This Friday marks the third deadline when all finance bills must be completed. Committees have been meeting extra hours in order to get their omnibus bills ready for floor action. Supplemental spending targets were released late last week, and they proved to be a nice mix of tax reform and spending, on such things as school safety and transportation, along with funding to erase a possible seven percent cut for those who care for residents with disabilities.
Those in the ag community were especially busy last week, trying to understand a penalty option proposed by the Board of Water and Soil Resources. Despite current statute that calls for a maximum $500 penalty for buffer non-compliance, a BWSR sub-committee voted to release the new option for public comment. Response was swift and overwhelmingly negative to the plan that called for penalties based on linear footage. Included in the draft release was a table specifically outlining what those penalties should be, the size of which was so high it bordered on ridiculous. Fines could range up to at least $100,000 for a farmer being non-compliant on several feet of buffer!
Because this new option was so onerous, I’m not sure if it was ever a serious plan. With hundreds of negative comments pouring in, it quickly became evident that a wave of negative attitude towards BWSR was growing. The governor sent out a letter dated April 9, in which he distanced himself from the new option. He wrote, “The proposed fines are unreasonable. They have come as a shock to not only myself, but also to Minnesota farmers.”
The BWSR director, John Jaschke, also sent out a letter in which he took full blame for the release of the draft document, saying it was done without taking into account the full effect it would have on farmers. He also testified last week before special committee hearings in both the House and Senate. At the special hearing Thursday before my House Ag. Policy Committee, 15 testifiers talked about the new penalty option and their dealings with BWSR and SWCDs at the local level. A common thread was that local control was lacking because of a perceived need to be in compliance with BWSR’s statewide penalty structure.
Stevens County was a case in point. Their county board chairman testified that they had received a letter from BWSR that, in effect, took away the county’s buffer enforcement because it wasn’t “sufficient” when compared to BWSR’s model ordinance. The Stevens County attorney also testified, saying that state statute calls for a maximum penalty of $500, while the BWSR plan calls for recurring penalties, which could result in much higher fines.
It was also made known that compliance with buffers on public waters has reached 98 percent. So, the obvious question to be asked is, “what is the problem that was being addressed with this new penalty structure?” Yes, it has been dropped by BWSR, but the doubt and lack of trust remain. The Legislature needs to go back and take a look at the buffer law again, and more exactly define non-compliance and what the range of penalties will be. We also need to revisit the entire area of local control and make sure that our local units of government truly have a voice in these matters.
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This spring weather situation is rapidly getting serious. Many areas of the state got wacked over the weekend with yet another storm that set records for April snowfall. It would appear that little, if any, field work will get done in April, and that means the acreage of small grains planted will be reduced. I’m already hearing talk of farmers switching to shorter season corn hybrids as the optimum planting window for that crop is usually late April into early May. When it finally does warm up (we hope), my guess is that we’ll see many more acres of soybeans, as that crop can be planted all the way through May and into June, although yields will be reduced the later it’s planted.
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