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(upbeat music) - Good evening and welcome to "Your Legislators."

My name is Barry Anderson.

I am your host this week for our final program of the year where we'll have a distinguished panel of guests who will help unravel the mysteries of St. Paul.

It was, I think we could say, an exciting finish to the legislative year.

And we will see what our panel has to say about what was accomplished in this session, what was left undone, and maybe some discussion about the close of the session as well.

We're delighted that you're joining us this week, and we are going to begin our program as we do each week by inviting, or by introducing rather, our distinguished panel.

Let's begin with Representative Jamie Long from District 61B in Minneapolis.

Representative Long is the majority leader of the House of Representatives.

We'll also be joined by Senator Nick Frentz from North Mankato, and Senator Zach Duckworth from Lakeville, and Representative Kristin Robbins.

Representative Long, let's start with you.

The end of the session, give us your overall view on this.

One question I would have for you is, it was a controversial end of the session, but there is some history of that in the Minnesota Legislature.

This one seems to have been noisier than most.

Do you think there's going to be any effect on legislative relationships going forward from this moment?

Floor is yours.

Talk a little bit about what you think happened in this session, and how you'd answer that question.

- Sure.

Well, good to be with you all and good to be with my colleagues.

We hopefully got a little bit of sleep in the last days since we wrapped up session.

Well, I think this session is gonna go down as the most impactful in state history.

I think that we have had a tremendous amount of accomplishments that we can be proud of, including historic investments in our schools, paid family and medical leave, which is a benefit that Minnesotan's been asking for for a long time.

Climate action which Senator Frentz and I worked very hard on together and much, much more.

So I think we have an awful lot to be proud of, and we have a lot to be proud of for the work that we got done this year as well.

So I know we'll be digging into that in the next hour.

In terms your question, I think that we had to do what we needed to do to make sure we got our work done this session.

And we have rules that protect the majority and rules that protect the minority.

And I'm sure we can dig into the details of how the process works.

What I'll say from a big picture is that the process as a whole, I think, is broken.

I think we need to reform the rules of the Minnesota House and Senate so that we don't get put in a position like that, because I think the incentives that we have right now are for the minority to obstruct to the maximum extent possible and the majority to have to use the tools available to get their bills passed.

And most states don't act like that.

That's not the way the system is constructed in most states, but those are the incentives that we have in the Minnesota House and Senate.

And so I hope we can come together on a bipartisan basis no matter who's in charge next year and try to fix our system, so that we can have a better control on how the thing is run.

- Let's go to Representative Robbins for your view of the legislative session.

I would observe that there have been legislative sessions in the past that were contentious and controversial.

I recall some going all the way back to the 1980s as a matter of fact.

But I gather from the press coverage that the view from the minority is that maybe this one was something special in that regard.

I'd be interested in your observations about how the session ended and what your view is of the accomplishments of this session.

- Thank you for having me.

Yes.

I mean, I would take umbrage with Majority leader Long's suggestion that the minority was obstructing.

We were debating bills throughout the entire process at the end of session.

And we got our work done.

We were able to finally air our grievances and concerns about some of these bills.

During that regular committee process, often there was times when we ran out of questions for the minority, so we never got to air our concerns.

And so, we didn't have representation on all of the conference committees, so we weren't able to air concerns there.

So the place to finally get the people to understand what our concerns were about these bills was on the floor.

And it was really the Senate where one of the DFL majority members held the Senate hostage for 18 hours, so they couldn't debate bills.

We were getting our work done and sending things to the Senate.

It was the Senate that wasn't getting things back to us.

So I would characterize the end of session as completely chaotic, an abuse of the minority.

When the final garbage, so to speak, bill was brought to the floor, we had an hour left to debate it, and instead of making it available to the minority online or in paper, we were just, it was just rushed through.

And we didn't even get to ask questions like, where is the bill?

Can we wait for the bill?

Can we recess until the bill is available?

Just over our objections and higher order motions, it was passed without us.

So I would say that was unnecessary.

There was an hour left.

There could have been ways to make the bill available, and we still are digging through it trying to figure out what's in it.

So I really think it was an abuse of power, and I hope it is not repeated.

- Senator Frentz, your thoughts on the end of session?

- Well, first of all, thank you for having me.

Thanks for joining me, colleagues.

I am a sucker for the Minnesota Legislature.

I love the work, and I have good working relationships, and I hope they maintain.

The news for Minnesotans is the things that were passed and some of the things that weren't passed.

I've received 20 calls and texts since the adjourned about the things that were included in legislation and about the things that weren't over the end of session process.

I think the $30 million for rural ambulance, that's very important out where I live.

The child tax credit clarification, that's a winning proposition for Republicans and Democrats.

We're helping young families.

That's exactly where we should be going.

There are more things that we could talk about.

I'm obviously very pleased with the energy package.

Thank you again, Representative Long.

It doesn't just include some of our climate commitment, but permitting reform.

The Minnesota Chamber, those far left radicals were urging us to do permitting reform, and the bill not only made improvements in permitting and energy, but included the Hauschild-Lislegard Amendment, which will help us take a closer look at the DNR and the Pollution Control Agency permitting.

I think that's a win for good government.

As to the end of session, sorry to see friends of mine that were yelling into the end of the Senate.

I think that's a decorum issue that we'll have to visit.

I would say I take exception to the idea that the minority voices were squelched.

I'll tell you this, we got a healthy and active Senate minority in the GOP.

They are some bright bulbs, and they made their points well known.

I'll give you an example.

The Transportation, Housing and Labor Bill had a total of 12 hours of debate in the Senate in which I can assure you my Republican colleagues made every point, and they made them effectively.

So that the suggestion that the minority voice was not heard at the end of session because of the use of the moving the previous question, I simply don't see it for most of that work.

I will add my voice as I did at the press conference at 1:00 AM to those who say we ought to take a look at the rules.

If you're a member of the United States House of Representatives, and you're sitting in committee, you get five minutes.

You can talk to the witness.

You can make a speech.

You can play a video, but you're limited to five.

And I hope both parties would agree that the use of the amount of time in debating bills had reached a level I have not seen in my eight years in the Senate.

And I hope Representative Robbins and Senator Duckworth will agree, when we're spending 15, 17, 18 hours on the floor and moving two or three bills, regardless of what you think is the appropriate voice for the minority, we're at a whole new level.

And I think the public will be asking, "Why can't we put reasonable boundaries on the amount of time members of the majority and minority will speak?"

And I think we'll take a close look at that.

Bottom line, productive session.

And I think what Representative Long is referring to is the two year biennium, which I agree.

Historic is probably an understatement.

- Senator Duckworth, end of session, what are your thoughts?

- Well, thank you, sir.

I think it's always interesting to hear folks, and maybe it's a little bit easier to lobby for, suggest changes to rules when you have complete and total control of government.

So I think that still needs to be a part of conversation.

And when you have, especially, it's one thing to have a majority of one of the chambers or the governor's office.

It's another thing to have complete and total control.

And that is when the responsibility of ensuring that the process is not tarnished is even more important.

So I look forward to having those conversations in the future and hope and trust that my friends, whoever they happen to be, that find themselves in the positions of leadership at the time are abiding by some of the sacred ideas and notions of representation, democracy in our state's constitution.

I'll say this.

I am not a believer in the saying that the ends justify the means when it comes at the expense of our democracy and transparency.

Last year, when we found ourselves with the same sort of government makeup that we had this year, there was no need for a glamorous end of session, because time was managed differently.

Bills came to the floor and through committee appropriately.

We had the chance to debate, have amendments.

And oh by the way, there was a good bipartisan effort to reach an agreement at the end of session.

Session did not have to end the way that it did.

There could have been a whole host of ways that we went about ending in a way which would've been much more respectful of our institution.

First and foremost, time and process could have been managed appropriately to avoid what happened at the very last minute session.

Number two, we could have reached an agreement before between Republicans and Democrats to have the sort of ending to session we're more accustomed to.

And number three, we could have gone into a special session if necessary.

And I think folks had to ask themselves was what we experienced and what the people of Minnesota witnessed just a couple of days ago worth it?

I don't think it ever will be.

And to your question, your Honor, I think we are gonna have very, we're gonna have to do a lot of repair to the damage that was done to relationships and legislative process in general.

Last but not least, I'll say this, back in February and even a little bit before then, Speaker Hortman said, "This session, not a whole lot has to occur.

Really, we just need a bonding bill."

And she even suggested we could probably end early.

I don't know what changed between her making that statement at the beginning of session and where we found ourselves at midnight, because clearly there was more that they were looking to get accomplished rather than just a bonding bill and maybe ending early.

So that being said, I'm an eternal optimist.

I hope a lot of lessons are learned from this, and that we move forward positively on behalf of the people of Minnesota and our colleagues.

- Let's go to the energy bill which received some press coverage.

"The Star Tribune" article today talked about permitting reform, but the article was spare in the details.

And I'm gonna start with you Senator Frentz, because I know that you've been kind of the lead on some of this.

When we talk about permitting reform, what does that mean?

And what were the specifics about that energy bill?

Because, as I said, it was a little different to glean from the press coverage as to exactly what the result was.

- Well first of all, this is something that has to be bipartisan.

Government has to continually ask itself, "Are we doing things the right way?

Are we doing things where the voice of the public is involved?

Are we having the right process to be efficient without rushing?"

And Minnesota's too slow in its permitting.

And in my opinion, in the energy jurisdiction which arguably was not updated in the last 40 years, there were inefficiencies which were in need of an upgrade.

I was amazed when we got into it that there were different voices who had different agendas.

Some were more interested in the speed, just simply saying, "You must permit this fast."

Others wanted input at certain points including labor, environment and that's fine.

But, we have to ask ourselves every day, "Is government doing this the best way, and can we do it better?"

And I think there is no reason for this not to be a template for other permitting reforms.

To your specific questions, Justice Anderson, we had 12 core recommendations that a stakeholder group put together for things that were common sense to the average Minnesotan, how agencies get involved, what the timelines themselves are, when it is necessary to have a Certificate of Need and when we already know we need it.

And I could go into detail, but the bottom line on that was it's better for those that use it.

As you know down here in southern Minnesota, some of the agriculture permitting and the Pollution Control Agency's a subject of constant talk.

And, you know, the average Minnesotan doesn't wanna look under the hood too deeply, but we're slower than other states, and that causes people to say, "Why are we slower?"

I think the package we got here is good, and I really do think it's bipartisan.

I think we had 36 or 37 votes coming off the floor.

But, at the end of the day, if we know we can improve the process and the regulatory environment, why wouldn't we?

And here's my prediction for all of you.

You know, most people kind of get energy.

They're like, we want to power our businesses and our homes, and we want the permitting to be relatively quick.

I think we got a great package and Representative Long and I proud to carry that together just as we did the 100% Bill.

My prediction is you will find a little more difficulty when we start talking about DNR and PCA permitting, because the passion that came out in energy is fine.

What we're gonna be talking about with natural resources and mining, water, air, those are gonna be major hills to climb.

And, you know, I hope we follow roughly the same playbook, but I will think it'll be even more difficult.

- Representative Robbins, let's go to you.

Talk about energy, permitting reform, other aspects of the energy bill that were of concern to you.

- You know, I do not serve on the Energy Committee, so I am not as familiar with the details, but my broad concern is that we were very narrowly focused on permitting reform.

And there's a host of areas as Senator Frentz just articulated, that we really need permitting reform in.

Minnesota is not as competitive as our neighboring states.

And when businesses are looking to come to our state, that's one of the things they consider.

How long does it take to get from an investment to actually being productive?

And that is not great as we compare ourselves with other states around the country.

And so, if we wanna remain competitive and attract the workers and the investment we need, we have to address this on a broader spectrum.

So I hope we do get into that work, and I hope it includes all the voices that are interested in this, because we need Minnesota to grow.

And these areas, you know, we have the helium.

We have the copper nickel.

We have some of the most rich deposits of important minerals that the globe needs.

And we have high labor standards.

We have high environmental standards.

We should want to be leading the way in providing those opportunities to supply those products to the world.

So I hope we take a good look at it.

- Representative Long, energy.

- Sure.

Well, I think Senator Frentz did a good job of explaining the nuts and bolts of the bill.

It was really a follow on to the 100% Clean Energy Standard Bill that Senator Frentz and I carried last year.

And we know that to be able to deploy as much clean energy as possible, which is the cheapest energy we can build in Minnesota right now, wind and solar, that we're gonna need more transmission to do it.

So this is gonna save Minnesota rate payers money by being able to speed up the process to get transmission on the system and to be able to deploy clean energy that we can use to create jobs right here in the state of Minnesota.

So I think this is a great bill that had extremely broad support from the regulators to clean energy developers to utilities to environmental groups.

I'm glad to hear that you got some GOP votes in the Senate, Nick.

We got zero in the House.

And that included on the reforms that we had for the Pollution Control Agency and the DNR.

So to Representative Robbin's point, the bill that we passed out of the House had reforms that were beyond transmission, but we still got no votes for being able to move that forward, which I was disappointed in, 'cause I don't know how you can get much broader support than what we had for this bill.

But I do think that this is important work that had, outside of the capital, basically unanimous support.

And I think it really is a model for the country - Representative Long, I noted in the "Star Tribune" coverage of the energy bill that concerns were raised about base load power issues.

We had this discussion before.

This session isn't going to fix every issue that might exist, but this does remain a concern, because of the intermittency and lack of density to wind and solar which are sort of environmental group preferred alternatives.

Was there any progress made on base load power issues at all in this session?

Is that something we're going to deal with in some future session?

- Well what I'll say is that we know that you can get a very high concentration of wind and solar before you really start to need other sources to back it up.

And we can get to 80, 90, even 95% by some projection penetrations of wind, solar, batteries, other forms of energy before you're going to need to have some more stable power that can help what they call be affirmed dispatchable power to help make up that last five or 10%.

And there's a lot of options that are out there.

We have operating nuclear plants in Minnesota.

We have hydro that's coming in from Canada and other places.

And then, the utilities are looking at some other long duration battery storage that might be a backup option.

Hydrogen, there's quite a lot of options that we have and the utilities have until 2040, so another 16 years, to figure out what the technology is they're going to deploy.

But I think that folks tend to think that this is something you need at a much lower concentration of wind and solar and batteries.

And it really isn't until you get to that last five or so percent that you're going to need that.

And we're gonna figure it out.

I think we have the ingenuity in Minnesota to be able to do that and to do it at a way that's gonna help benefit Minnesota rate payers.

- Senator Duckworth, energy.

- Sure, I'll be brief.

I think you know Minnesotans expect us to, of course, be respectful of the environment and operate with clean energy as much as possible.

But they also know that we have to balance the realistic, and practical implications of providing power to the residents of our state with the infrastructure and technology we have at hand.

And also make sure that what we're doing is not only clean but reliable and affordable.

And if you look at the grid and its various sources of where it draws power from, you might be surprised to see where a bulk of that power is coming from.

And you might also be interested to learn about the reliability of other forms of energy.

And so, as we're making decisions regarding our state and what we're gonna go all in on, we have to make sure that if we're gonna double down on certain forms of energy, that they're gonna be reliable for folks and that are gonna be cost effective for them.

I think that's kind of been one of the bigger, larger issues.

And nuclear power has changed a lot over the years.

It's very safe.

It's very efficient.

And that's something that the state of Minnesota should at least continue to be educating itself about and be open to rather than just completely removing it from the table altogether and saying, "We're not gonna consider it as a source to power our state."

So I think those are some things that we need to continue to look into.

Folks are right.

There is some bipartisan agreement as it pertains to the permitting process, making it easier, making it much more timely.

And I think that those are things that we need to focus on as government in general.

If we've got regulations that are getting in the way of good work getting done, of course, not at the expense of safety, then we should be looking at how we can reform that and make sure that we're allowing our businesses and folks here in Minnesota to do what they need to do.

- Senator Frentz, I wanna give you a chance to back clean up here on this even though you discussed the issue earlier, because I did raise this question about base load power.

I know that you've been following this closely.

This remains a concern.

Other states have had issues with it.

I'll give you a last word on that, just a couple minutes on the base load power issue.

- Sure.

Well when I come on this show, I always look for this moment when I can say, and I mean this, I agree with everything everyone just said.

I think we want to play our role in climate change, and we want our energy to be clean, but it has to be reliable and affordable.

As far as the base load needs of the state, I think we have nuclear as part of our plan to get to 100% by 2040.

So to be clear, nuclear is expected to play a role.

My concern about the nuclear is the cost.

And back to Representative Long's point, we get a look at the cost per kilowatt hour as a part of Xcel Energy's fuel clause.

The cheapest is wind, $37 per kilowatt hour.

So we need to figure out how to make that dependable.

And to your point, Judge Anderson, keep in mind we're part of MISO, an 11 state grid, and the sun is usually shining somewhere, and the wind is usually blowing somewhere.

So we're dramatically improving reliability.

The key to that, in my opinion, and I have no engineering background whatsoever, I don't know if you all could tell that, but please don't spread that is the battery storage.

Where if we're able to do what some of the technology suggests and store for two days, just 48 hours, it's a groundbreaking, revolutionary change.

I think we're headed that way.

I also think, you know, to Senator Duckworth's point, we will not have the public come with us without a serious look at costs.

And, on nuclear, one point worth making is that they just opened the nation's most recent nuclear reactor of the legacy type in Georgia.

$30 billion.

It went way over.

Nuclear is allowed to compete as a carbon free source, not withstanding the waste, but it will not make it if it's more expensive.

And right now, that's a legitimate question.

It's why you see states that have no nuclear moratorium still not really building it.

So there.

- All right, let's go to the healthcare field.

And I wanna introduce the topic by going back to our very first program of the year.

We had some discussion about the issues surrounding the University of Minnesota, the teaching hospital.

The questions about rural healthcare are certainly of concern.

And let's start with you Senator Duckworth.

What did we see come out of this session relative to healthcare issues?

What's happening with the university and the teaching hospital?

And what other observations would you have about this session and healthcare?

- I'm gonna give you a kind of a disappointing answer, which is this, I'm not 110% sure of everything that actually passed and is gonna become law, 'cause I haven't had a chance to review it in its entirety.

And I don't say that to be, you know, partisan by any means.

I just simply haven't had the time to gather the awareness of what's ultimately encompassed in that 1,000-plus page bill.

What I can tell you for being on the Higher Education Committee is that the University of Minnesota has been working very earnestly to try to find a way to make sure that the teaching hospital, as you referenced it, remains here in our great state.

I think we all know and understand that we've got a shortage of certain professions.

Some of those include medical professionals.

And we need to make sure that we have the opportunity to train, educate and continue to fill that shortage here in the state of Minnesota.

We're very proud of all of our colleges and universities, but the University of Minnesota, I would say, especially.

And we don't wanna see a great asset and a great opportunity to educate folks here in Minnesota and retain those folks here in our state to be lost.

But we have to also be mindful of what kind of investment that might require from the state, or what kind of financial commitment the university, which ultimately our taxpayer dollars, would be committing to as well.

As far as healthcare codes in general, you probably made note of the fact that often what's referred to as the one payer healthcare system or essentially government-run mandated system was a topic of discussion.

I served on the Commerce Committee as well, and it didn't quite cross the finish line.

And I think the reason for that was people still don't truly understand what the all-encompassing cost of that program will be.

And quite frankly, some of the projections, I think, were so large that it caused folks to pump the brakes on it and maybe give some consideration to other alternatives or what that would look like in the future.

At the end of the day, what's most important is we keep healthcare, insurance and treatment as affordable as possible for people while providing them as much freedom and flexibility to make the choices they would like to make regarding their coverage, their insurance options.

We gotta keep those premiums as low as possible.

- Representative Long, your thoughts on the healthcare issues that we've been discussing.

- Sure.

Well, we made some really good progress on keeping healthcare affordable for Minnesotans this year, particularly with the bills that were passed.

And Senator Duckworth, every bill that was included in our last bill passed out of session was gone through the conference committee process.

And we announced publicly all the bills.

So you debated them all on the floor and saw them all as they went through the committee and conference process.

The one big bill that we passed was to help get $30 million more for EMS, which we know is particularly important to greater Minnesota.

And I'm glad that we were able to come together on bipartisan basis to do that.

We also tackled medical debt and tried to make sure that we were helping those who were experiencing medical debt in particular.

And I was the chief author of the Minnesota Care Public Option that Senator Duckworth referred to and the House.

And that bill is really trying to figure out how we can help Minnesotans who are still struggling with our current healthcare system.

In particular, that's a lot of folks who are still uninsured or on the individual market.

And for the folks who are on the individual market, the majority of them buy bronze plans, which is sort of the lowest-tier plan you can buy.

And the average deductible for those folks is about $7,000.

So that means they're really just paying for catastrophic coverage.

And that means that they're often delaying care, not seeking care, going into debt.

And these are folks who are really struggling in our current healthcare system.

We're already spending 100s of millions of dollars to prop up that market.

Right now we're doing it through something called reinsurance.

And we're looking for a better way to do that.

And we think that we have a better way in letting those folks buy into Minnesota Care, which is a bipartisan program that's been around the state for decades and provides excellent healthcare.

We still have authorized a waiver, and I expect that'll go forward from the governor's agencies this summer.

And then, we can come back in the future years and compare the costs if we get approved by the federal government to move forward with the other alternatives.

But, I'm confident that the costs are gonna be similar or lower to what we're paying for in reinsurance right now.

And it's actually gonna mean that rather than giving people these catastrophic plans, we're gonna buy them healthcare that they can use.

- Representative Robbins, healthcare issues.

- So I also serve on the Higher Ed Committee, and I know that it's very important for the University of Minnesota to maintain a really strong teaching hospital.

I support the academic health mission of the university, but I have a lot of concerns about how they're handling this.

So university originally owned the hospital system, and they couldn't make it work financially, so they brought in Fairview.

And now Fairview is struggling.

And this is just really an expensive model.

So Fairview brought in Sanford to try to be a partner to help financially.

The university tanked that relationship.

And now we're back to the university and Fairview trying to figure it out.

And I'm sure they're waiting right now for the new president to come and allow her to have some input on this.

But this ultimately will be paid for by taxpayers.

And what's really frustrating is there are three hospital systems that they want to buy back from the Fairview joint venture.

But their plan is just to tear them down and build a brand new big hospital in a few years.

So why we would put state tax dollars into buying these hospitals that everybody knows are gonna be torn down for a new hospital, it's just really not a very good plan.

I've asked the university for a comprehensive plan, looking at the hospitals that exist, what they really want in the future, and how we can package this as a comprehensive plan for the future and build it out gradually.

And they've never provided that.

And what's really unfortunate is taxpayers will be on the hook for all of this.

So I hope the new president will come in, and she's got healthcare experience.

I hope she will provide a lot of leadership for a real strong strategic plan.

And we really have to understand the cost of that and whether other partners are even interested in joining us.

But this will be a long-term problem for the taxpayers.

And the other thing the university has to look at, as I've said many times, is we have three medical schools for a state that really probably can't support three medical schools.

There's one at the University of Minnesota Twin Cities, one in Duluth, and now we are starting one in the St.

Cloud campus.

And I get we wanna treat rural hospitals and provide opportunity for rural doctors, but I think we could probably do that through two medical schools, not three.

And that, again, is just adding cost to the taxpayer and lack of efficiency.

So there's a lot of issues that I hope the new president will take a look at.

And I hope they will involve the legislature.

Everything to date has been, "Oh, we'll negotiate.

We'll tell you what the final dollar amount is."

And really taxpayers are the ones paying for that, so they should be involving the legislature more in these discussions.

And finally, if I can just say my biggest disappointment on healthcare this session is I worked very hard with a bipartisan group of members to try and save our safety net hospitals.

HCMC is in big trouble, as is North Memorial Robbinsdale, which is a nonprofit hospital.

Together, they serve the vast majority of the Medicaid, Medicare patients in our metro area.

And we were working on a deal to help them get some sustainable funding and also that would for North Memorial draw down federal money that we are currently leaving on the table for Medicaid and Medicare patient populations.

And that did not make it.

And I really, I don't know how they're gonna survive through next session.

So it's a big disappointment for me.

And there was bipartisan support for trying to get something done.

- Senator Frentz, healthcare.

- Everybody wants to go to heaven.

Nobody wants to die.

We have the same problem we did 20 years ago.

Americans are making difficult choices.

And I wanna go back to my compliment to Senator Duckworth from before we went on the air.

These are personal matters, saving lives, healthcare, quality of life, life expectancy, but it comes down to dollars and cents, and we have to make some choices.

The overall cost of the healthcare system is high, but we do things we weren't even dreaming of 50 years ago.

You know, we have a car accident victim say 60 miles south of here, your Honor, in Wyndham, they get a helicopter.

They go to Mayo Clinic in Rochester where they have world class healthcare.

That is a miracle of sorts for that family.

And that life is often saved, costs a lot of money.

We're either gonna reduce the number of people that are covered, or we're gonna reduce the essential benefits that are provided, or we're gonna reduce the reimbursement rate to doctors, clinics and hospitals, or it is a mathematical certainty we are not gonna reduce the overall cost of healthcare.

I voted for reinsurance in my freshman year.

I understand it as a way the state puts taxpayer dollars into help reduce the cost that people pay.

As you know, I represent a rural district where farmers are disproportionately represented in the individual market.

They are getting clobbered with the expense of it.

And yet to Representative Robbins point, we have hospitals primarily in rural areas that are on the ropes financially.

My good friends in Winona are losing a million dollars a year.

I have two big hospitals in my district, Mayo and St. Peter.

St. Peter is in serious financial constraints.

And they're gonna be asking us pretty soon, "Do you want us to remain open?"

And so, we're gonna have to face the fact that this takes resources.

I'm not suggesting that the public option is the only way, but the public option allows some of those people in the individual market to have massive savings on their monthly premiums.

In the same way, I think the public is gonna have to be persuaded that it's in their financial interest to be covered, to have that peace of mind that they have health insurance for them and their loved ones.

We're gonna have to put our money where our mouth is.

And this is a bipartisan comment, so buckle up.

I think both parties lack some political will to say, "It is time for tough choices."

Our friends in Canada and Great Britain have universal healthcare.

They get that feeling that everyone's covered, but they make tough choices.

You can wait 10 months for a knee surgery.

Some cancer treatment in Canada is not provided.

I'm not suggesting that we take our vast American medical resources and say we're not gonna provide it.

But you're going to have to ask those tough questions, or you're not gonna make meaningful fundamental change.

I support the public option, not because it's a cure all, but because it would allow us to see how it works and allow those Minnesotans who have a little less to get a break on their monthly premiums.

Tune into a future "Your Legislators" episode to find out exactly where that particular bill is headed.

I can tell you I got a closeup look at it the last week or so, and we all know where it ended up.

- Representative Robbins, I wanna go to you.

You sit on the Higher Education Committee, and although this isn't a budget year, there were discussions about higher education issues.

Maybe you could walk us through some those discussions and what if anything occurred on in this session?

- You know, I commend Chair Pelowski.

He's now retiring, but he has been a terrific chair.

This is my first term on the Higher Ed Committee, and I've learned a lot from him.

And his mantra always was, "Grab 'em by the budgets and don't let go."

And he is very committed to ensuring that the dollars we spend in higher ed are used well.

I think the biggest win in higher ed this year is that we took some of the money from the North Star Promise Act, which is the free college program that's going to start next fall and used it to make sure that our foster students from the Fostering Independence grad program were fully provided for.

That program is a bridge to help students who have been in the foster care system as minors to be able to go to college.

And it was oversubscribed, and students were on a waiting list.

And these kids have been through so much, and this was a great win for the foster care students in our system.

I have long advocated that we need to take a hard look at our campus-wide system for efficiencies.

There are 52 campuses in the Minnesota State system.

I don't think that we can sustain them at the current level.

It's just unaffordable for the taxpayers, and we've had 12 to 13 years of declining enrollment.

And so, we have to take a hard look at that.

And if the numbers aren't there, we have to provide some efficiencies in the system so that we can provide world class education, maybe at a smaller number of institutions.

That does not make me a popular person, but I just think that's the economic reality.

And then, I was disappointed.

Our target in the Higher Ed Committee this year was $500,000, which is very small.

The University of Minnesota had requested $45 million as a supplemental request, which obviously there was no money for that.

And there won't be money coming in the future.

We are looking at deficits, because of the overspending in the first session of this biennium.

So the University of Minnesota is really struggling.

They are saying they will have to raise tuition 4.5% next year.

It's a tough pill to swallow for Minnesota taxpayers who want their kids to be educated here in the state.

So there's a lot we have to do on that.

I think there's a lot of efficiencies we could find in the system, that there's a lot of bureaucratic central office employment at the university that I think is a struggle.

I think we're gonna see costs rise.

There was language provided to unionize the student workers at the University of Minnesota.

I think that will only increase cost pressures there.

So I think we have some real work to do.

But I am optimistic that we have a world class education system here, and it's one of the strengths of our economy and of our ability to attract new people to our state.

So I really wanna see our higher ed systems succeed, but I think we need to take a hard look at efficiencies.

- Representative Long, higher education.

- Sure.

Well, we certainly have had struggles with enrollment in recent years, but we have good news.

For the first time enrollment was up this past year, and I think that's because of the investments that we have made in the last two sessions in higher education.

We know that we invested significantly, historic investments across both the Min State and University of Minnesota systems.

And we also launched the North Star Promise Act as Representative Robbins mentioned, which is going to provide scholarships to individuals under $80,000 in family income.

And that'll help projected between 15,000 and 20,000 students.

So I think we're seeing a turn in the tide for enrollment in our public universities.

And I think that that's in no small part due to the investments that we were able to make this session, which I think we have reason to be extremely proud of.

- Senator Duckworth, higher education.

- Sure.

Again, haven't had the opportunity to see the final language.

And Representative Long, I can take yet your word that it is the same language as the conference committee reports that passed the House and the Senate, which shows we can, and were getting work done.

Pretty sure that bill took all of 20 or 30 minutes last Sunday in the Senate.

But there are other bills included in that thing that never even met the Senate floor.

So I'm gonna be cautiously optimistic that there are no changes.

And here's what I can tell you about that version of the bill as it relates to what it contained here in the Senate and what I think we need to be looking at in terms of a higher education in general.

First and foremost, we need to do more when it comes to campus safety.

I think all of us probably heard late last month about the incident where two, or excuse me, three female University of Minnesota students were all robbed, two at gunpoint within a 24 hour period near the University of Minnesota.

That does not give comfort to students nor parents when it comes to our colleges and universities here in the state, so we have to do work there.

Not blaming anybody.

I think that's a chance for us to in a bipartisan manner, make sure we're keeping folks safe at our colleges and universities.

Second, whether a student attends a public college or university or a private college or university, they should all deserve and have an equal shot at the same sort of financial benefits that students and families are eligible for here in the state of Minnesota.

I think students should be treated equally when it comes to their ability to benefit from some sort of financial aid or help.

Last but not least, when it comes to tuition, when we passed the bill last year, it was supposed to include a tuition freeze for the University of Minnesota.

Lo and behold, the very month after we finished session, they had to announce they were increasing tuition.

And now, in the headlines you've probably seen that the University of Minnesota is looking at increasing its by the largest amount in nearly 15 years.

So between the last two years, our students and families at the University of Minnesota are looking at a roughly eight to 9% increase in tuition.

So there is a disconnect between us saying that we're doing all these things to help make college affordable when in reality tuition continues to skyrocket.

And we had that conversation last year.

We said, "If you put this program into place, that's great, but it's only gonna help a very limited number of students and families.

And it's gonna come at the expense of more students and families having to pay even more in tuition."

And now here we are with almost a 10% overall increase in tuition over the last two years.

More importantly, the University of Minnesota, amongst all of its campuses came to us and said, "We need about a half a billion dollars for our critical infrastructure needs and for the safety and wellbeing of our students."

Minnesota State Colleges and universities came to us and said, "They also need about a half a billion."

So across all of our campuses here in the state of Minnesota, on behalf of our students and their education, they're telling us we have a billion dollars worth of critical infrastructure needs.

We did not deliver on that last year or this year.

Instead, we're spending about three quarters of a billion dollars on a huge government building that no one asked for.

So we have to reevaluate our priorities when it comes to our students, their higher education and making it affordable for families.

- Senator Frentz, higher education.

- Well first of all, I think it's a tougher subject when you're asking about the benefits of higher education, which include quality of life, the economy, which benefits from an educated workforce and all the things that flow from that.

Because, you're not talking about a six month or 12 month horizon.

You're talking about decades, a generation and how do we do that?

And I think it's difficult work.

I'm proud of Minnesota's higher education system.

I'm proud of the university.

I'm obviously proud of Min State.

I agree with Representative Robbins.

I think you have to ask tough questions.

Again, these are taxpayer dollars.

They want us to look closely.

Is it true that we need all those campuses?

Maybe it is.

I'm not on higher ed, but I have some questions about campuses with declining enrollment and either our hope to reverse those trends.

And we did in general terms, reverse it Representative Long.

But individual campuses are just that, individual.

And I think we have to ask tough questions.

Proud of Minnesota State, Mankato.

It's no secret their enrollment has doubled.

I do find some of the things that they've done at the leadership level to be a template that I wish other campuses would follow.

That includes a welcoming atmosphere and some of the regional stuff, including agribusiness where it sort of fits down here.

And I think what I'd say is we have an obligation to figure this out, 'cause we're competing with every other state in the country and frankly around the world.

And if we want to keep kicking butt, which in many ways we have, we're gonna have to do some things that require us to balance the fiscal needs of the state with the higher ed benefits.

Finally, I'm gonna get in trouble locally if I don't mention that both the men's and women's basketball teams at Minnesota State were national champions.

So that proves that adequate funding for Mankato's campus essential to the state's future success.

- All I'll say about that as a Mankato resident for many years and somebody who pays attention to what goes on in Mankato, The thought that we have national champion athletic teams, for those of us who grew up in the '50s and '60s, yeah, that's a little surprising.

So congratulations to all concerned.

Senator Duckworth, I wanna move to you to talk about transportation and transportation related issues.

And, of course, we can't get too deeply into that without talking about what happened to the bonding bill or any potential bonding bill.

So that's a piece of this.

So I'm gonna give you a little opportunity to talk about what was accomplished with transportation issues and whether or not there is some possibility of a special session to deal with bonding issues.

The governor seemed to suggest no, but you never know about these things.

Let's start with you, Senator Duckworth.

We'll go around the table.

Transportation issues.

- Sure.

I don't think there's gonna be a special session for a bonding bill.

And to put things in in perspective, a rather large one was passed last year just for a frame of reference.

But, in terms of transportation and the work that was done there, again, assuming it's all reflected in the bill that was passed.

At least in the Senate, Senator Scott Dibble does a fairly good job of approaching it from a bipartisan standpoint.

He and Senator Jasinski have done a great job making sure that that bill reflects the practical needs of the state of Minnesota, our residents, balances it between the Twin cities suburbs and rural greater Minnesota.

You know, it is unfortunate that maybe there were some critical projects and limited number that would've benefited from some funding in a bonding bill.

We just never got to a point where we were seriously having a conversation about what it would look like and having enough time to get it passed.

So in terms of other projects in the transportation world that I think remain or still need to be resolved, I think our approach to the MET Council is a part of that.

I think light rail infrastructure is a part of that.

So there's still plenty of work that needs to be done as it relates to transportation.

But I will say, as in people may be surprised to hear this, many aspects of state government, there is often plenty of bipartisan agreement on a lot of things.

And when we focus on those, we tend to get bills passed, and we get 'em passed before the end of session.

And that's when we do great work for the people of Minnesota - Representative Long, transportation issues.

- Sure.

Well, we had a tremendous transportation budget last year when we were in our budget year, since we do two year budgeting at the state level.

It had historic investments for all modes of transit, great investments in our roads and bridges, our transit systems, walkability.

This year's budget was much more narrow tailored, since we had done such a big budget last year.

But I am very disappointed that we didn't get a bonding bill done this year.

And that is an area where there should be broad bipartisan agreement to get it done.

The leadership was not that far away on the number from the bonding bill, but what hung that up was extraneous policy demands.

The GOP leadership released in public what their demands were, and they were unrelated.

They were things like the Equal Rights Amendment, other bills that didn't have anything to do with what should be a really bipartisan process to be able to get bonding bills done.

And so, when you're tying infrastructure to other issues, then that's where it gets hung up.

And it was really disappointing to me that we weren't able to reach bipartisan agreement on getting a bonding bill done.

We did get a bill done last year, but we didn't get a bill done for the two years before that, so we had a really big backlog that we just barely dug out from last year.

And we were starting to try to catch up and look ahead at some of the needs of the state.

Our teams worked really hard traveling all over the state on a bipartisan basis to try to put this bill together.

And so, it was a big disappointment to me that we weren't able to get agreement.

And I think it was related to all of these demands that had nothing to do with the bipartisan infrastructure bill that we should have been focused on - Representative Robbins, transportation issues.

- You know, I think it's too bad we didn't get the bonding bill done.

There are needs all over the state.

In the House, what happened is the bonding bill came up, again, in the last half hour.

Again, I still don't know what was in that version of the bonding bill.

It wasn't available online.

It wasn't available on the floor.

We didn't even know what the price tag was.

And so, I really think, you know, with the DFL trifecta, it's a question of time management and managing the calendar.

They showed that they were able to do things along the way during session.

Like, we got the SRO Bill done.

We got the Net Operating Loss Bill done.

So when there's a will, there's a way.

And so I'm very disappointed.

The state is getting a $730 million state office building remodel that I see out my window right now.

And the communities in our state are getting nothing.

And they don't want their tax dollars going to remodel an office building that's, you know, open five months a year.

And it's just absurd.

So I'm very disappointed that more wasn't done.

I do think it was good some money was put into the Corridors of Commerce program, which I think is a good program.

I think that, you know, it's an unfortunate and unforced error that it didn't happen.

My understanding, and one of the senators can speak to it is that there were 34 votes on the board, and the board just didn't close on time.

It would've passed except for an error in the Senate.

So I just think, again, time management has been a fatal flaw of this session.

- Senator Frentz, transportation, and if you can respond to Representative Robbins question there, you're free to do so.

- Sure.

Well first of all, I agree, transportation's in pretty good hands.

I think Jasinski and Dibble work well together.

We're gonna Ms. Frank Hornstein.

In my opinion, that expertise is valuable.

I hope the state is on a roughly appropriate course for transportation funding.

We can disagree about some things, but I think for transition itself, we need to stay the course, prepare for some transition to electric vehicles and how we're gonna pay for that and some other stuff.

On bonding, I would say there's no law against a caucus tying bonding to policy issues.

That happens in both parties.

We see that.

This year Republicans were interested in the ERA, some gun stuff at one point, dropping the Transportation, Housing and Labor Bill.

We did not get an agreement on that.

And to the long list of things where Nick Frentz and Tim Walz disagree, please add special session for bonding.

I would be open to that, and I think my caucus would be open to that if we're simply talking about bonding.

Whether that's feasible with the other three caucuses, I don't know.

But the fact most Minnesotans do understand, and to be clear, my impression is most Minnesotans do not know the name of their state senator, and they don't really care.

They do understand these projects get more expensive.

And they do know that this is money we're borrowing that's gotta be paid back with their hard-earned tax dollars.

And so one of the things I'm fond of saying in our caucus is, you want to put a no vote up on the board on bonding, you better think long and hard about working men and women and what they think of that.

And so, I do think there should be some pressure put on both parties and all the caucuses to say, "Really?

No bonding?

Are you sure?"

Because those projects are gonna get more expensive, and there will be more added to the queue.

And I actually don't have that long list of me disagreeing with Governor Walz.

But, if there was a list somewhere, I would say I think a special session should at least be discussed on that topic.

- We only have a couple minutes left, and we would be remiss given Pioneer Public television's audience if we didn't tell our viewers what if anything happened in the DNR area.

There's always a lot of interest on that question.

The closest thing we have to a greater Minnesota representative on this panel is probably you, Senator Frentz.

Let's start with you.

You get about 30 seconds, 45 seconds or so.

Talk about DNR issues.

We'll go around the table and wrap up.

Floor is yours.

- In 30 seconds, the money that was appropriated for some of the outdoor quality of life stuff last year will have lasting impacts, boat ramps, picnic shelters, improvements to DNR structure.

As far as permitting, DNR permitting policies will get a close look now with the Lislegard-Hauschild Amendment.

I think that's a good thing.

- Senator Duckworth, DNR issues.

- I think we're just gonna keep finding ways to make sure that we're ensuring the DNR is working seamlessly with the folks in their area that they impact the most.

I think sometimes people get a little bit frustrated with some of the regulations and things that they sometimes maybe don't see as common sense.

So if we continue to make progress there, I think we're gonna help the DNR and the people of Minnesota.

- Representative Long, DNR questions.

- I think Senator Frentz covered it well.

- Representative Robbins, your thoughts on DNR and DNR related issues.

- You know, I think the big victory this year was providing money for a barrier to stop the carp getting further upstream in the Mississippi.

I do think that was something that people have been working on for years, and I'm glad to see that got through, I believe.

I honestly haven't seen if it made it in the final version, but I think that did make it through.

- Representative Long, I want to go back to you just very quickly.

We had a little discussion about the possibility of special session on bonding.

Do you think that's a possibility?

- No, I don't.

I think the governor was pretty clear that there is not gonna be a special session.

And what I will say is that I think Representative Robbins was mixing up the bills.

I was talking about it, what's known as a general obligation bonding bill, which does require broad support and bipartisan votes as a two thirds majority.

We didn't get agreement on that, so we tried to do a very narrow tailored cash bonding bill, which only requires democratic votes.

And that was what didn't quite make it over the finish line at the end.

But, we weren't able to get an agreement with the minority at all on the general obligation bonding bill.

And I think that was what was a big disappointment, but I don't know what changes if we come back in special session.

We had weeks and weeks and weeks of negotiations on that bipartisan work on trying to get that done.

And it got tied up into extraneous policy provisions.

What I will disagree with my friend Senator Frentz on just one point is that when the Democrats were in the minority in the House, they made demands on the bonding bill that were related to the bonding bill.

So they had projects that were minority focused projects that they wanted to see get done.

But they didn't at that time make demands that were policy related and that were extraneous to the bonding bill because we knew that these projects are too important to Minnesotans.

And so, we wanted to focus on infrastructure and I'm disappointed we didn't do that.

- I wanna thank Assistant Majority Leader Nick Frentz, majority leader, Jamie Long, assistant minority leaders, Representative Robbins and Senator Duckworth for their participation in the program this evening.

I want to thank our viewers for joining us, and I remind you that we'll be back to you again in February of 2025 for another session of "Your Legislators."

Thank you and good evening.

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