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Legislative News and Views - Rep. Barb Haley (R)

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Rep. Haley Legislative Update (11-17)

Friday, November 17, 2017

Hello Friends and Neighbors,

This week’s legislative update has information on a new program linking high school students with manufacturers and an update on the new vehicle licensing system called MNLARS.

Youth Skills Training Program:

On Tuesday, I hosted a workshop and roundtable discussion at Minnesota State College Southeast with business and education leaders to discuss the new Youth Skills Training Program, and other grant opportunities available to industries. The Youth Skills Training Program matches 16 and 17-year-old high school students with area businesses to teach these student learners valuable technical skills they can use after they graduate. The program comes from a bill I co-authored this session, and my hope is that our area school districts will receive one of the five pilot grants offered by the Department of Labor and Industry.

If you’re interested in learning more, I documented the event with a short video you can see here.

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Licensing Issues:

I’ve heard from many of you about frustrating visits to local license centers. It’s important for you to know that the issues you’re experiencing are not the fault of our local centers and registrars. They are doing "yeoman's work" to try and meet your needs! The problems stem from the new statewide system called MNLARS. Though this system has been in use for well over three months, we’re still seeing persistent glitches and outages. The rollout by the Driver and Vehicle Services (DVS) started poorly, and unfortunately hasn’t improved much since.

In the legislature, we’re working to identify the problems so we can help DVS come up with solutions. We have held many hearings in St. Paul so that the challenges and issues can be brought forward and fixes found. If you’ve experienced delays or outages when trying to transfer a title, update your tabs, etc. please share what happened here or contact my office.

ARC Legislative Forum held at ProAct:

I attended a legislative forum sponsored by ARC to hear from parents and caregivers of disabled children and adults. This forum gave me a chance to hear about their concerns related to wages, workforce shortages, and Medicaid. These are important issues that we will continue to discuss in the Health and Human Services committees this session. The parents and caregivers are remarkable people who need our support!

Stay in Touch:

If you’d like more information on the Youth Skills Training Program, or have other comments or concerns, please contact my office at rep.barb.haley@house.mn or 651-296-8635.

Sincerely,

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