Good morning, and welcome to another summer Monday.
Minnesota lawmakers passed a record $2.6 billion public works funding package in May, and MPR’s Brian Bakst and Dana Ferguson report they’re already looking at a mountain of requests for next year. Leaders say the competition for dollars will be intense: The project descriptions delivered to the state run more than 2,200 pages alone. Starting this week, Senate Capital Investment Chair Sandy Pappas, DFL-St. Paul, and other members of her committee will set out across the state to visit the communities that made the requests. And she has a message that some might not like. “I want to help them out. But I really need to actually lower expectations,” Pappas said. “I don't believe we'll have the kind of cash that we had last year toward a bonding bill.” Now, she’ll set tougher parameters for getting project funding. Pappas suggested local communities would have to put up 50 percent of their funding or more and be ready or nearly ready to break ground when funding comes through. Plus, lawmakers will be asked to prioritize projects in their districts since it’s unlikely that they’ll all get authorized. “I want to be enthusiastic and encouraging,” Pappas said. “But on the other hand, I do feel like I'm not sure how much we're going to be able to do.”
Campaigns for seats on school boards are getting more expensive. The Star Tribune reports: Off-year school board elections are typically among the sleepier political affairs in Minnesota. But a surge of interest in the inner workings of the state's public schools has made these once-docile affairs more competitive and their campaigns more expensive than ever. Much of the increased focus on school board races, experts and insiders say, was a direct result of the pandemic. That trend seems likely to hold in the current election. "There is certainly a greater interest," said Kirk Schneidawind, executive director of the Minnesota School Boards Association. "I think a part of it is COVID. All of a sudden, some people who may not necessarily have been engaged before are interested in running for these seats."
The Minneapolis city council is expected to vote on a measure Thursday designed to increase wages and improve working conditions for Uber and Lyft drivers in the city. If passed, the ordinance would require that drivers be paid the $15 an hour minimum wage for rides which originate in Minneapolis. Both Uber and Lyft oppose the ordinance. Officials with Uber say they want to work with drivers and elected officials to create a compromise to raise rates for drivers while not hurting customers. The ordinance is similar to a statewide bill that was vetoed by Gov. Tim Walz earlier this year. It is not clear if the Minneapolis ordinance has the support of a veto-proof majority.
Why does St. Paul Mayor Melvin Carter want to spend $1.1 million to buy $100 million in city residents’ medical debt? The Pioneer Press has a story: In an interview this week, Carter likened medical debt to fines for overdue library books — a disincentive to participate in the system. “They don’t make people bring their books back. They make people stay away from our libraries,” he said. “Medical debt works the same as library debt. It keeps people away from the doctor. … That’s a public health crisis for us, one that we as a community cannot afford.” The U.S. Bureau of Consumer Protection estimates that some $88 billion in outstanding medical debt has gone to collections throughout the U.S., hanging like a proverbial dead weight around the necks of U.S. patients, hospitals and healthcare officials alike. It’s been widely chronicled how medical debt ruins patient credit and undermines the likelihood the patient will seek further medical care, at least at that location. For communities of color, the problem is heightened. As of June 2022, about 4 percent of residents of color in Ramsey County had medical debt in collections, which is twice the share of white residents, according to the Urban Institute.
Local communities in Minnesota are losing their newspapers. The Rochester Post Bulletin reports: According to the Minnesota Department of Employment and Economic Development, from 2000 to 2021, the number of newspaper establishments — those that offer print newspapers, not just online editions — fell from 344 to 254, a 26 percent drop. During that same period, DEED noted, the number of newspaper employees fell from 9,499 to 2,844, a 70 percent drop, with the average number of employees per newspaper falling from 28 to 11. None of that, admits Lisa Hills, executive director of the Minnesota Newspaper Association, is good news for the industry.
A small central Kansas police department is facing a torrent of criticism for raiding a local newspaper’s office and the home of its owner and publisher, seizing computers and cellphones, and, in the publisher’s view, stressing his 98-year-old mother enough to cause her weekend death. The Associated Press reports several press freedom watchdogs condemned the Marion Police Department's actions as a blatant violation of the U.S. Constitution’s protection for a free press. A search warrant tied Friday morning raids, led by Marion Police Chief Gideon Cody, to a dispute between the newspaper and a local restaurant owner, Kari Newell. She is accusing the newspaper of invading her privacy and illegally accessing information about her and her driving record and suggested that the newspaper targeted her after she threw the Marion County Record's editor and publisher Eric Meyer and a reporter out of her restaurant during a political event. | 