Greetings,
Good luck to Kimball’s “Monster” Mike Schultz as he competes with Team USA in the Paralympics starting March 8 in PyeongChang. Schultz will be in snowboard events March 12 and 16. A special send-off took place this week at the high school in Kimball and let’s hope the community’s support gives Monster Mike a little extra boost as he departs for South Korea. Click here for a great “Going for Gold” video where Mike talks about proudly representing our nation in these Paralympics and also shares his tale of triumph in recovering from a devastating leg accident. Go get ‘em, Mike!
On another note, I want to thank the people who produced a new Scheels Hometown Hero video which shares some of my story serving in the military, at the local level and in the Minnesota House. The video is quite humbling to me and really hits home.
As for news from St. Paul, the big headline this week is that our state now has a $329 million surplus through June of 2019. This is an improvement of $518 million, the largest three-month turnaround in 20 years. The estimate for the 2020-21 biennium shows even larger gains with a $650 million increase.
Our economy continues to grow and some of the questions which caused an overly conservative November forecast were answered, putting our state in strong shape for this report. The historic tax relief and other decisions we have made are helping to drive economic growth.
This set of figures will provide the framework as we take on issues with fiscal impacts this session in St. Paul. It is not a budget year by name, but the Legislature will need to determine what action should be taken on the surplus this session, or, specifically, how this revenue will be applied. That will be a key focus from now until we adjourn in late May.
On another subject, Minnesota’s new and abysmal system for processing vehicle licensing and registration was back in the news this week. I have touched on this MNLARS fiasco in previous emails, but the gist of it is the state has spent $100 million in taxpayer money to build a new system that doesn’t work and the governor and his administration keep asking for more money without providing details as to why. Just last week, they ignored a legislative request for more information and said an immediate infusion of $10 million is needed to keep the lights on with their operations.
We in the House pumped the breaks on that $10 million request and instead drafted a bill that puts the onus on the governor and his administration to accept responsibility and find the money they say they need. The Legislature is not an ATM for withdrawing taxpayer dollars.
The bill being offered follows reporting which suggests the Dayton administration ignored a number of warning signs and rolled out the new system despite knowledge that it would not function properly. Our proposal would allow the governor to utilize funding currently dedicated to his executive agencies to provide the first $10 million requested by his administration to continue MNLARS operations.
Another bill in the works would study the feasibility of using a commercial vendor to “develop, deploy, and maintain” a system to replace MNLARS, instead of relying on the same government agency that created this mess to fix the problem. We hired a private vendor to take care of the Real ID project, so it may be appropriate to take the same action here to ensure that Minnesotans get the service they expect and deserve.
Stay tuned because I’m sure this is not the last word on this issue. As always, your input is welcome.
Good luck,
Jeff