Dear Neighbors,
As I write this, the rains continue at my home in North Mankato. As we all know, this has been a super wet year resulting in Gov. Dayton making an emergency declaration order for our much of our area including Nicollet and Blue Earth Counties. Natural disasters can occur at any time and neighbors join together to get through them. That’s why policymakers and the Minnesota Department of Agriculture created programs to help farmers, who depend on stable weather.
The Disaster Recovery Loan Program operates under the Rural Finance Authority through the Minnesota Department of Agriculture. The program provides low-interest loans covering farmers for expenses not covered by insurance. The funds can be used to help clean up, repair, or replace farm structures and septic and water systems, as well as replace seed, other crop inputs, feed, and livestock when damaged by high winds, hail, tornado, floods or excessive rainfall.
Please contact me if you have any questions. These programs are designed to help farmers. If you or someone you know are facing expenses from a natural disaster don’t hesitate to apply for funding.
New Laws this July
As many may know, the House and Senate Majorities decided to combine nearly all of the proposals we worked on during this legislative session into one large bill. There certainly were many parts of the bill that had bipartisan support, but there were many controversial programs that Governor Dayton would not support and had clearly indicated that he would veto. Consequently, just a handful of new laws took effect on the first of July. Among the topics addressed were: athletic trainers, claims against the state and tweaks to a development fund. To read more about the new laws click
here.
Sincerely,
Clark Johnson
State Representative