welcome to minnesota legislative report our region's longest-running public affairs program lawmakers from northeastern minnesota are joining us today for a recap of the week's activities at the state capitol this is your opportunity to call or email your legislative questions and have them answered live on the air minnesota legislative report starts now hello and welcome to minnesota legislative report i'm your host tony cerdich with just weeks left in the session lawmakers came to an agreement this week on some major stumbling blocks including funding for the state's unemployment insurance system and covid pay for frontline workers and while progress has been made on these issues there are still a number of proposals that may be addressed before the legislature adjourns later this month today's show is an opportunity for viewers to ask questions to the lawmakers who represent you please call the number on your screen or email your questions to us at ask at wdse.org we have a great lineup to answer those questions this evening first representative julie sensted is here she's a dfeller from hibbing representing house district 6a welcome representative sandstone thank you representative nathan nelson is republican from hinckley representing house district 11b welcome representative nelson and representative rob eklund is a dfler from international falls representing house district 3a welcome representative eklund all right thanks thanks for being here everybody uh first question represent eklund we're coming to you at the beginning of every show this year we're just getting to know our legislators a little better why did you run for office the very first time you ran well uh tony my community's been so good to me so i wanted to get back so that's the main reason i got involved and i've always been active politically anyway and i felt that this was a good way to to give back to my community sounds great sam nelson uh probably a little bit like uh representative eckland it was something that i've been involved in the township and other areas and i'd had uh been through morrow minnesota agriculture and rural leadership and also in farm bureau and we'd do a day on the hill and things like that and i thought you know someday i'm going to do this and i'd have you know it probably happened sooner than i thought it would but uh it was just a way of giving back to the community and being a part of it and you know being able to hear that voice and be able to be their voice in saint paul great representative so we had a long-standing uh tradition of great representation on the iron range and when carly moline stepped down it left a hole and i wondered you know who who was going to be the next person who could bring that voice who could represent the area with the same strength that we've had and i thought i have something to say something to offer and and my community had been so great to me so like representative eckland it was time to step up and and offer to serve that's great all three of you have and you're stepping up this evening to answer questions from viewers at home uh the first question alluded to in the introduction uh finally the unemployment insurance and frontline worker bill was passed and signed into law this has been a hangover issue from last year we're going to start with you representative sanchez we've generally been talking about what was in the bill but if you could touch a little bit on that and why did it take this long so two issues at stake one was the unemployment trust fund paying that back and the other piece was getting some money out to our front line workers i actually was on a bill to to have the unemployment trust fund a standalone bill it is critical that that fund got uh replenished in order to prevent uh taxation for our business communities at a very high rate and again just not knowing what the economy was going to look like in the future i didn't want to take the gamble on what it was going to be tied to at the same time we had made a promise to all of minnesotans the frontline workers that they were going to have some kind of recognition for their service so um in the end those two issues were linked together and we got it done which is great holding out in this in this case actually served minnesota better instead of 250 million we have 500 million for our front line workers and we're paying the trust uh trust fund back in full so our our small businesses don't have to worry about that additional taxation that will be replenished and taken care of and our frontline workers more than just health care workers are going to see now real money in their pockets great representative nelson your thoughts on finally passing this legislation i think it's something that we've you know unfortunately it took until uh what eleven i guess it wasn't eleven o'clock it was kind of the eleventh hour um maybe past the eleventh hour but it was uh you know friday afternoon we got that passed and it was something that um you know i think we had hoped uh very early in the session to get it done to give some surety to our business community um you know these these are many of them are people that have uh you know gone out on the limb they've made sure that there's been jobs for their community they've gone through a lot of uncertainty in the last two years just like you know much like our frontline workers you know they've they've been uh there as well and you know have balanced the challenges of trying to balance the schedule uh making sure that you know if you've got a quarantine you know making sure people are there trying to make supplies are there and you know it's just it's been another weight on them and it's you know fortunately we've gotten this done um for those that you know some of them wrote checks the end of last week that maybe they didn't know but you know we'd been promising to get this done they probably sent you know some of them sent it in maybe some uh have waited and you know they're not gonna be penalized if they did not send that in so um that's that's a good news i think is that you know if you didn't if you didn't and you were hopeful and you didn't pay your unemployment by yesterday um you're okay you're you're not going to be uh penalized for that great representative eckland uh these two were holdover issues from last year the legislature was supposed to uh look at and have a suggestion for the front plan frontline workers over the summer and fall there's a special committee this you unemployment insurance issue was with us now that it's done do you see it as momentum maybe to find other agreement or is this something that we're seeing waiting until the last minute that we might foresee all the other issues uh taking until the last minute again what are your thoughts on that i'm i'm hopeful for momentum we'll see but i think representation said especially old no i don't interact with representative nelson as much but i'm generally an optimist and trying to get these things done and so i'm hopeful i'm hopeful there's a momentum but by the same token we did make a promise to the frontline workers so so i'm i'm personally i'm glad that we held out to get it done for both of them because we've our businesses and the ui trust fund need to be taken care of but we've done a lot in the past to forgive ppp loans and and that that sort of things for our businesses too and these front line workers i i think of the grocery store clerks that were there from day one when we were all buying our groceries not going what was happening before the sneeze sneeze guards and everything else were put up and and you know they're they're the real heroes that got us through this thing and they need to be taken care of great anybody else on on the issue of momentum or are we going to see this gridlock right until the end well i would hope that we have some momentum here because i think this has been i think both sides have really felt that this is a pressure that it needs to get done and there's been a few key pieces that haven't been negotiated out and i think maybe now maybe i'm hopeful maybe i'm too new and naive but uh you know i'm hoping that maybe now that this is behind us that it's not a wedge point between between the two sides that we can we can move forward i i know one of the areas that i want to see some relief done is on drought relief you know i you know we've been the uh last couple weeks we've had a lot of rain and so and cool and so you know as a farmer myself you know we're we're not in the fields yet our cattle are that much further from being on the pasture but yet um you know we've seen more hay sales in the last 30 days of people i've talked to because spring is being pushed that much further out and so while we're out of the drought the lingering effects from it are still there and i'm really hopeful that we can get that done and across the line because there are there are some people that were really affected by the drought last summer that you know they're we've promised them uh almost a similar amount of timeline you know since august we've been working on a drought package and we haven't got it done yet so that's something i'm really hopeful on really getting done soon great there's some said momentum um i would say in the house that there's a good appetite for moving forward and a momentum for that i'm not as confident that the senate has the same approach i think with this taken care of we'll see we'll see great now for frontline workers uh this package was passed there's a website that folks can go to it can somebody explain the process of if our viewers at home or a front-runner worker think that they qualify for this potential funding that the legislature passed does anybody know the process for that i haven't looked at it but i know the deed website is usually relatively easy to navigate and that's where they i'm i'm certain that's where they'd find the information and and i believe uh part of the package we pass is the employers are supposed to let their employees know if they're if they're eligible to so they'll have they'll have and have the information to get it to them great and so minnesota department of employment and economic development website uh is the place to go and uh talk to your employers as well i forget that everybody doesn't know their acronyms so i i'm the acronym police on this show so uh that's what i'm here for all righty so um so there was about a nine billion dollar surplus with this bill passed it's down to about six billion dollars um let's start in the middle now with representative nelson and we'll just kind of bounce around a surplus of money some of it one time meaning that it was either got from the federal government but it can't be counted on for future years but some of it ongoing surplus where do you see the likelihood or or where would you like to see that surplus being spent i think uh what i what i don't want to see out of the surplus that might be the easier thing to start with i want i don't want to start with new programs because i think one of the things i'm a little bit concerned of you know we've had about 73 billion dollars come in from the federal government and a lot of our surplus and the projected surplus is the increased tax revenue from that whether it's sales tax or some employment tax and so looking at that how long is this surplus going to be around is this just kind of a short-term thing so i don't want to do anything long-term on the budget that would you know really need to be funded or with a possible tax increase in the future because that's something i think we need to be careful of but at the same time i think there's areas that we've cut in whether it's maybe not our legislatures but it's been previous legislatures that haven't fully funded i think one thing is uh if you talk to uh commissioner steve hallen in pine county he's gonna remind you every anytime you talk to them about the probation workers they're in pine county we're rep uh reimbursed at a 28 of what the state say you know is supposed to and it's supposed to be a 50 so you know there's areas that they're not funding fully and i think those areas should be funded fully you know with where the state has you know committed to fund and so these areas are being made up with property taxes because this you know the county still has to run the probation so there you know i mean we've got a whole host of you know things that are very similar to this that i think really we need to look at where are we not funding currently whether it's our schools our probation or you know are things that the state has a commitment to that we're not doing right now that i think we need to look at with a budget surplus okay representation great question um i definitely think that we should be doing something with social security tax i think we're going to see some movement on that as well as property tax another piece is funding our counties appropriately i've got a bill in for county program aid increase when we don't fund the counties properly you're going to see an increase in property taxes i think everybody's seeing that currently and then of course as an educator education coming out of covet especially we are just seeing so many significant needs especially around mental health the bill that we passed out of the house just over three billion dollars was really built on listening to the stakeholders the parents the students the teachers the districts and listening to the needs that are out there in mental health was one of the most significant we're doing something to take care of the cross subsidy in special education and then also ell that will free up some money for the districts to put the appropriate staffing in front of our students to meet the students where they're at with the needs that they have i think that's a great place to start great and we will dig in deeper on the education issue as the hour goes on representative eckland i think we have to do meaning meaningful middle and low income tax relief the the wealthy and the rich have done quite well i mean they keep doing quite well so i don't think we need to worry about that but and uh representative sandstad hit on one of them she's got the county program aid bill i've got the um pilt uh reform bill and for payment in lieu of taxes payment and lower taxes the acronym people got me again anyway but but uh and and for uh that's a big that's a big bill for especially northern minnesota because so many of our northern counties have so much tax forfeited land that they're that they're managing so if we get that one in and i believe it's both in the senate and the house tax tax bill so if we get a tax bill that'll be a big for uh big for all the folks in northern minnesota and what that does is it people the colonies and the municipalities can either hold their levees uh stable where they're at or maybe possibly drop them a point or two and that's that's where the real tax relief will come to some of the northern minnesota landowners great well all three of you brought up taxes and so let's let's touch on that for a while and represent sandstad you talked about the two issues that we get the most messages on on this show and that's social security taxes and property taxes so let's take them one at a time you talked about your hope and desire to see some tax relief for social security minnesota is one of a handful of states that taxes social security uh but not everybody pays it uh to a certain point what would you like to see in a proposal that would ultimately pass into law if if you can get it done this year i think the important thing to keep in mind when you're talking about social security tax and this surplus is that this surplus is about 50 percent one-time money so eliminating social security tax permanently might not be achievable this year i'm not sure that we've got enough coming in on an ongoing revenue to take care of that into perpetuity so at minimum we need to raise that cap so right now not everybody pays tax on social security i think it's i don't know if it's 70 75 000 um anybody above that is paying taxes so we we need to increase that minimally um if we can do better than that that's always a step in the right direction great nelson i think yeah whether it's raising the cap or completely eliminating it i'm i'm open for either one um i would i would lean towards you know eliminating it but at the same time i think more importantly is getting something done on it action on it now great sam eckland would this fall in your category of lower and middle-class tax relief and what are your thoughts on this yeah and and i'm actually on the bill to eliminate it but i don't think that's going to happen but uh what it is the house tax bill right now has if you're single and make 58 000 or if you're married and make 75 000 you won't pay any tax on social security and that bumps it up some from where it was at and and uh what would be really nice if the federal government would would uh not tax social security and then the state could just conform and then we'd we'd bill figure it out the other way but representative sandstad did hit it right it creates a big hole in the budget and it's not if we have a deficit but it's a matter when we have a deficit because that state that state government so when you create that hole by something that you've done prior then the next legislature is going to have a struggle to make up what's going on there so that sounds good all right well then the other issue we're going to tackle coming back the other way is property taxes and so we get a lot of questions especially from folks who are retired on a fixed income seeing the valuations increase which doesn't necessarily mean that property taxes increase but there is that potential and so where do you foresee the and what the state's role is in property tax relief this session representative we'll start with you well i've heard that there's been a proposal in the senate to put levy controls or levy limits on and as a former county commissioner i don't like that idea but other than that i'm not versed well enough in the property tax system to be able to come up with the answer but it's it's a challenge and and if you talk to the real estate realtors in the in the area they've done quite well and that's part that's a big part of the reason is uh uh you can't buy a piece of lakeshore property anymore in my district and when they do come for sale they they get they sell fast and they sell a high value and that's right now i think that's the biggest uh problem in driving up for the valuations but i don't know what to do about it that's right grab some nelson and uh i guess i'd like at representation i don't have enough expertise in the area to know the finite details of how it should be handled but at the same time you know real estate the sales have been high um i heard a report last evening i was visiting with someone that uh they said you know there was bidding wars on lake cabins i mean what would be considered a cabin that uh you know would sell for 120 000 over asking price and you know that was would have been a list price maybe five years ago and so it's you know doubled the price of it well now when somebody's whose home is next to it you know maybe they've lived there most of their lives they're retired i can understand they're being they're upset because their their values have increased dramatically now that doesn't correlate necessarily to an equal increase in taxes however um they're worried because they're many of them their incomes are fixed they're you know we just talked about social security well they can't you know some of them are looking at are we gonna have to get a part-time job people afford our home and you know that that's concerning so i do think that um you know that somehow we've got to be able to cap the maybe even freeze a property tax that maybe you get to a certain age maybe it has to be frozen i'm not i don't know the details of it i don't know if there's any bills that would do anything like that right now but um i think there should be something done you know especially you know make sure our seniors can stay in their homes that you know they're not priced out of a home because quite often they're in their home until they have to make that next move which is maybe you know assisted living or something like that and let's not force them into a position they're not ready for yet great or some sense dave so again not an expert on property taxes but i do know i put in a bill this year that actually excluded the the social security income for the purposes of calculating property tax for the express purpose of putting real money back in the hands of the people that need it most often are elderly and those on fixed incomes that's one way with that we can do this i think the other thing to to remind people about is that the state doesn't set the property taxes that's really a county issue we interface with them a little bit but it's market driven also i know it's a little bit of a complex situation our market is probably not going to stay where it is right now so we have to make those changes um accordingly and and hopefully not let them get too out of control the bill that i have at least would help our seniors and those on fixed incomes that's one way the other thing again is uh county programming i mentioned it earlier if you're able to fund your county programs appropriately then they don't have to revert to a levy of some sort to help fund their programs ultimately property taxes great and and the legislature historically has had county program aid and local government aid which goes to cities and townships correct wonderful all righty well keep those questions coming in either by phone or by email we've got a bunch of them and we'll do another one right now and we'll start with you representative sandstead can you tell us where paid family leave act is at and whether you support it or oppose it i can't tell you specifically where it's at i don't think it's moving right now um i have supported it yes right all right nelson um likewise i can't tell you where it's at and this is i don't fully support it you know i i it's um it's it's important to support families i i think that we all do here support families but how to how to make that work um you know if you have a stay-at-home mom already uh you know how do you how do you figure that in i don't you know and i don't know the specifics of the bill maybe there's already something there for that but it's it becomes a challenge and at the same time um you know the the world has changed a lot in the last uh 50 years where you know staying at home isn't maybe always an option or maybe there isn't a two-parent home so it does become a challenge and you know how do you make it work and how because we all we need a workforce that is able to be to work and so balancing everything out you know you can come into this position having one you know one thought and idea and um you know you start listening and challenging yourself of how do we make this work and uh it can really change your uh thought process on how how do we have to meet the challenges of today yeah russ and becklin you sit on the ways and means committee which sees most of the bills that come through the legislature can you talk a bit about and maybe you have an opportunity to explain a bit about what the bill is if you know and then whether you support it i i supported 100 percent actually it went through my committee last year and was part of the labor bill this year it's part of the workforce bill which is uh representative noor and um it we'll be hearing it on wednesday and uh when when we have the combined bill um and the reason i support it is number one the united states is one of the only industrial industrialized countries in the world that doesn't have some form of paid family medical leave and we're seeing what's going on in the economy right now the lack of workers we're at i think minnesota's unemployment rates at about 2.8 percent or something like that nationally we're at 3.2 and if if young families can't afford to be able to take time off to take care of an emergency we're going to see young families members not being able to take part in workforce so i think it's something that we definitely need to have in the state of minnesota and what is the act what actually would the legislation do i think if i remember i heard it so many times last year i should know it by heart but anyway i think it i think it if i remember right it provides up to 12 weeks of paid family medical leave but i'd have to look back at the bill to make sure and that's earned that's that's accrued i mean you have to work in order to earn that so not just hand it out and that's what i set up too so it would be based on time work and work in the industry and stuff like that wonderful good good all right more view questions coming in from viewers somebody wants to know are the covert restrictions that the states put in place over permanently right now are there any outstanding that any of you know about or is it pretty much all done i don't believe the state itself has any covert restrictions i think i think when we signed off last year on the governor's governor's emergency orders that they went away the governor still has some money left in the arpa to manage if we have outbreaks or where you know what but i think the only restrictions that are left now are recommendations from the states and what the municipalities decide to do if i'm not mistaken okay that sounds about right i i think that's right but i you know and i think that it really um it really needs to be a local decision uh you know if there's hot spots around the state or around the nation i think it needs to be you know locally that taken care of and um and so you know looking at the restrictions you know i think even the mass mandate on airplanes you know there's a court that struck it down and so you know currently that's not there but i think you know we've i read a report today that about 20 percent of people are still wearing it in the airports and airplanes and you know and that's that's a choice and that's where i think it should be it's uh you know whether it's for yourself or whether you i think it should be you should have the freedom to do that and i think also i don't think people should be making fun of one another because they choose one way or the other so i think everything we've heard so far is accurate there's nothing statewide that i'm aware of maybe important to note as part of the final negotiations for the ui and the front line workers 190 million was set aside for covid issues covid related issues should we see kind of an uptick again in our our numbers um and this would all go towards like testing uh locations different things like that if we need it but nothing happening right now statewide great and and that was giving the governor the authority if needed that's right to expend those dollars for those reasons that's right wonderful good good well now is the season where the legislature is passing what you call in the business omnibus bills which are basically larger budget bills sometimes containing some policy around different focus areas so there's a tax bill an education bill sometimes a few bills get merged together represent eckland you have a bill coming up later this week as a chair of a committee would you like to talk a bit about the bill that you're bringing to the house floor yeah the labor bill thanks to the labor bill i'm bringing this week is part of the workforce on this bill um probably the biggest thing that we're doing in it is federal conformity for osha standards and the department of labor industry has a terrific record of working with industries and with with employers on osha related claims and we're one of the lowest uh penalty states in the country but if we don't conform with the federal osha regulations they'll just take it over and then there will be no no more negotiating with employers they'll just get whatever the fine whatever the thing is for violations and and that's what it is so so it's uh it's probably one of the few times this year the chamber of commerce has been in line aligned with me on a on a viewpoint but they they like this one because it protects our employers it takes care of them and provides an outlet for them to be able to work with the agency to remedy whatever the problem is so that's probably the biggest portion of it and another one i'm real proud of because my committee is labor industry veterans and military affairs we're creating a veterans liaison at the department of labor and industry to coordinate some of the apprenticeship programs and other things that are available so we have a conduit with minnesota department of veterans affairs to get some of our people when they come out of the military to be able to get right into the trades if that's something they're looking to do that's great we're going to come over to you represent sand state you brought up education before us i'd like to spend a little bit of time talking about that and you serve on the committee and or a school teacher to boot there's certainly large differences between the house bill that is being proposed in the senate bill being proposed uh where do you see there being the ability to compromise i know you talked a bit about what was in the house proposal uh but why do you see the benefit of it and if you could maybe forecast where you hope to see education funding coming out at the end of this session there is a significant difference between the house bill and the senate bill right now we pushed out over a three billion dollar bill in the house and i think the senate was around 30 million so significant differences again from the house position we listened to stakeholders when we built our bill we heard significant needs both academic mental health funding and at the end of the day we have a lot of work to do i think when the bill comes back it's going to look significantly different than when we sent it out my hope is that we are able to keep the pieces for the cross subsidy in special education and ell as those impact school districts tremendously their funding and ell if you could english is a second language basically english language learners is what it stands for and in different districts those just take up a significant amount of the district and unfortunately when it comes to the special ed cross subsidy the state is left really holding the bag on that because the federal government has not lived up to their 40 percent so at the end of the day we have to take care of that um probably nearest and dearest to my heart is the mental health issues that we're seeing in our students and our staff it's both we we have just tremendous needs coming from really the kindergarten level all the way up to our seniors like never before so we need to be putting the school psychologists the school nurses the mental health workers the counselors in front of those students and making them available to our students in real time without having to jump through hoops i want to really see that get taken care of districts also have some significant needs coming out of kovid there was a kind of a mass exodus of students going to either online school homeschooling whatever venue you know they chose but that decreased school funding that decreased the per pupil funding in our schools and one of the one of the things that i was trying to address in the omnibus bill is transportation sparsity so you s this is going to be very critical especially for like rural minnesota school districts that the the population may have decreased the student population may have decreased and the funding for that is per pupil so a district is now not getting what they used to get but the square mileage that they have to travel for the bus routes has not changed at all that doesn't change and so the bill that i've offered takes it from 18 to 40 percent increase in their funding which would be significant i mean i think about um and it's not just greater minnesota forest lake has a significant issue with this as well that would be one great thing that we could do to help our school districts and then we really have to get our teachers back in the classrooms we're seeing a mass exodus there and our support personnel our esps educational support or individuals the peras they're critical to the success of our students so we need to make sure that our districts have the money to get those people in front of the kids they need all the help we can give them right now great representative nelson where are you at on the education proposals that are out there what would you like to see them this season um one of the things i really would like to see is the the special education cross subsidy um i think every school i've heard from in my district and then more has has stated that that's a a huge need uh having that and then uh also as representative sandstein said uh you know with the students that have whether they've gone to homeschool or online school they've pulled out of our districts and so that you know we've we've been telling our superintendents and our school boards that we're going to keep them whole and i i don't believe this bill did that and that's that's something that i'm maybe i'm wrong on that but i i don't believe this bill did and i i think that's something that we we need to do we need to make them whole and uh like you said you know they're still covering the same the bus route still covers the same miles of bus it may have a few students less on it but it's significantly cut into their funding and and i think uh one more area is uh that i've heard a lot about is the short call substitutes you know those that are just filling in for the day allowing that to um have a little bit more flexibility on who is eligible to do so um it's you know it's a workforce issue just like uh any other part of the uh workforce in you know every industry is struggling with people and uh you know having uh opening up the door a little bit to uh who can be qualified to be a short call substitute i think is something that we need to address and and uh change that those statutes great represent macklin i my number one thing in the education well first off my wife is a teacher too so she says do all things julie tells you to for education so anyway they're pretty good friends but anyway so um i i think when when you have as a state you rake somewhere around 47th in the country for your mental health uh issues in your school systems that's that's wrong and you know a while back i had a zoom call with with some of the mental health providers in the schools and when they have four and 500 clients a piece we got a problem because the just i i just the paperwork alone has got to be ridiculous let alone where they're actually getting these students and and they also take care of the the staff as well i mean the the staff knows who they can go to talk to because these people have had the training anyway i don't even know if that counts as clients but that probably just counts as peer support but uh uh that's that's probably our biggest issue and then and then the crossover is is huge i've i've been hearing about that for two years so it's got i think representative nelson's right i don't know if we did quite enough in it but uh it's a start anyway so great and represent stansted as the teacher on the panel will give you the last word on education well i like i said i think in this situation the more we can do the better we're really coming out of a very difficult time and public education has has been challenging as the years have been going on and then to be faced with coved and all the issues both financial and emotional and mental health all those issues coming out of it we are in a position right now with the surplus that we have even if it's one-time money to actually do something about the issues we're hearing about and the one thing i'm very very proud about is i really truly believe the house addressed the issues that we heard from the stakeholder groups the 30 million dollar bill coming out of the senate really focused only on academics only on certain letters programming it's a it's a reading program literacy kind of thing and those are important pieces but it's it's just really a drop in an ocean of need right now great oh well keep those calls and emails coming in we're going to do a couple of more here right away represent nelson we're going to start with you uh the caller wants to know two questions if you can each answer this uh would you support cutting government by one-third and do you support term limits you know it's uh i'll go with the first one or the second one first the term limits um kind of uh before i was elected you know and it's you gotta be careful because then oh before you were elected you supported him well it's also once once you um once i've gotten in there and you start to learn the intricacies of it you start to realize that you know as legislators yeah there's bills that we introduce there's votes we take there's you know relationships that we build but when you start seeing how saint paul or dc really works um we're just kind of the conduit that makes you know votes yes or no or does the bill you know there's a lot of people there that are really the movers and shakers and they're unelected and they're they're not really even hired by the government you know it's your special interest groups your lobbyists things like that and so um you know while while it sounds good to have term limits i think you've got to be careful on on really supporting that idea too because it does take some institutional knowledge to know how to get something done and and i think it's i think it's somewhat reasonable but at the same time i think you know if you've been around for 10 12 years you've really started to get a feel for how to get things done i think there's also a little bit of a you should have a little bit of a personal term limit of knowing that when to step back and to say that this is enough and so i i kind of support term limits but it's not a solid support of it uh on the the first question you had was uh would you support cutting government by one-third cutting government by one-third where do you want to cut you know i mean it's i think i think all of us have this idea of well well we want to cut there but all of a sudden you're standing in line at the license bureau for two hours instead of the 45 minutes you normally do well where do we want to cut i think i think all of us have this idea that we want a a smaller or maybe not all of us but you know we want a smaller more lean government but then when our streets aren't getting fixed when our roads aren't getting plowed when when we're standing in line at the dmv or you know where where do we want to cut because all of a sudden when it inconveniences us that's when we're really frustrated with it and you know maybe there's things that maybe they could be uh subcontracted out instead of the state mowing the ditches maybe maybe they need to put it out for a bit i don't know you know there there's definitely things that we can talk about but and i i think that we've got to be careful on growing government because that does i think it is something we seriously need to to watch but at the same time who are we going to cut first because i can guarantee you the minute we cut it we're going to get calls from our neighbors saying why is my job being cut and we didn't realize that their job was going to be cut so um you know a third is uh you know where do you start but at the same time i do think that you know growing government is is something that we've got to be very careful of because i don't i don't think that we were really designed to be a something that's provided the needs for everybody that wasn't really i don't think what our founding fathers really envisioned but i think it's something we've we've grown towards and i i think we've got to be careful of that great representative one third cut to government and term limits so the third cut again is kind of a nebulous number again where do you start i do think that it's important when you are in a leadership position or an elected position that you're always mindful of what you're doing i think you know the other side of this equation is it's easy to say cut but when you're looking at the size budget that the state of minnesota deals with now on a you know biennial basis we're not dealing with the same size budget when we were established as a state it has grown significantly those those needs are out there i actually hear quite a bit about the possibility of going from a part-time to a full-time legislature which kind of flies in the face of you know cutting government but we're bumping up against that how do we actually conduct the work efficiently and mindfully with the size budget that we have in a limit of 120 120 days in a two-year period so really tough to do that and as far as term limits i'm kind of in the same camp as representative nelson when i started i i said yes absolutely i think that's a great idea until you're in it and you realize that everything that we do is based on relationships and in order to get things done you have to have built relationships and relationships are built slowly and especially when you're looking again like covet i'm thinking about our freshman class that came in they haven't had that opportunity to really establish themselves with members of the other side of the aisle to work together and so it does take time relationship building for any of us takes time term limits depending on what they are you may or you may not ever get there i mean if you think about this is my sixth year this is my sixth year in the legislature and i feel like i'm just getting my toe dipped into it still you know there's still a lot of growing to do i definitely feel like i'm on a better footing than i did my first year obviously but it does take time very difficult to do term limits might be might be better at a federal level or congressional level but again there too that's relationship building as well if if you're going to do it with integrity with the way you know we are supposed to be interacting and working together for consensus or just working together across the aisle to get things done we're not going to agree on everything but we can do some great there's some eckland do you need the questions for people it's a good thing i never advocated for term limits anyway so i don't have to have these guys answered but you know it they're they're both right it takes a while it takes a while to just to figure out how things work both representative nelson and i came in in special elections so so we were both kind of thrown to the wolves to start with because i remember my my orientation was 45 minutes and they said here you go and yours is probably about the same thing uh so it just it does take a while to to learn how to do things and you know two years uh well it's almost four years going on when they when they handed me the gavel for the veterans committee chair i was scared to death because i hadn't been there that long and all sudden it was the chair and you really you really got to learn fast and you grow fast so i i absolutely am not in favor of term limits but i i think representative nelson hit it right on head you got to have in your own mind how long you think is right to be there too because i tell people i don't want to be one of those daughtering old oh well i won't say what i say and you know anyway wandering around the halls down there i i want to be able to enjoy my retirement as well too um cutting government by a third uh it won't work but i i think what the the person asking the question needs to know is we have a way of self-correcting the budget too and thankfully the state has to have a balanced budget every year so when we when we do go into a uh deficit type government again that's the way you can correct that start correcting on the budget and and people will see that that's how we can fix things great thanks uh this one's up in the air forever wants to start taking it first another caller from mackinnon is asking are undocumented immigrants responsible for my high property taxes mine just went up 40 percent i know we talked about property taxes before but this is a more specific question who'd like to tackle that first i would say i have a hard time connecting those dots at all i don't see that as being the case at all okay yeah i don't i don't see how it could be you know i mean if they're undocumented they're very likely not buying property if they are then they're using some false documents and you know most of the undocumented people that are here uh they also probably don't have the means to be able to purchase the property i mean many of them are escaping you know i mean they're coming to this country for a reason the hope and opportunity is why many of them are here and uh you know many of them are escaping from horrendous situations and don't have the means to purchase property so i mean you can always never say never but i would very strongly doubt that uh it's a due to undocumented okay then i'd say the same thing the the results of the higher property valuations going on is because because of covid because of the pandemic people have found out that they can work from home and all sudden these properties that may not have been looked as valuable for work properties work from home properties 10 years ago also they're very valuable because of broadband and other things that are available to build work from up here great another question from a viewer and we haven't talked about this in a couple of weeks does anybody have an update on the growler cap at local breweries anybody know where that's at in the legislative process i know there was a proposal out there are we just still kind of sitting sitting out there with no solution on that i believe there's a solution being on ways and means you hear these bills where these two don't get a chance to hear them yet they probably haven't even seen the briefs yet but uh wednesday wednesday it'll be in the workforce bill and i i believe we have a have a um it passed out away as mean so we have an agreement so and then part of the agreement is then the liquor laws will not change for five years that's part of the agreement so that we can and that's that might be something that could be challenged but that's the agreement they have between all parties and then we'll see if we got it set right okay another viewer is talking about the budget surplus as it relates to health care really addressing the shortage of medical care workers that the pandemic has exacerbated and so wondering if we can make more spaces available to train nurses at community colleges scholarships better subsidization for folks that are going into this especially in greater minnesota can do any of you know if there are any proposals out there your thoughts and feelings about making sure that we uh take after and look after our workforce as it relates to medical professionals i'm guessing nurses pcas personal care attendants and the likes see i i get i have to arrest myself on acronyms sometimes there is some something in the hhs bill for personal care attendant and cna increases in wages um but that's the hhs bill and that's coming up and and hhs scares me so we're going to hear it on tuesday and we'll see some of that stuff in there other than that i don't know too much more about it and that's the health and human services bill any other thoughts on this you know i i know it's something that that needs to be addressed and um i know for you know what i'm hearing locally is there were people that you know exited early you know they um you know kova kova changed the minds you know the thought process on people too you know maybe they went too instead of uh you know having a contract with the the hospital they had been with some of them took early retirement and now they're doing some uh freelance work you know they will take a three-month job and brainerd or something because you know they got a you know a contract to do so and they've you know you kind of choose when and when they work and you know that's that's fine if you want to do that however there's the rest of you know the neighborhood that still needs medical care and you know just like every other industry you know we're looking for workers we need skilled workers and you know nursing is no different and i think you know going back to the training of it that's that's something that's important too and we've seen there was a report in the star tribune i think it was this last week you know how students aren't going to college or there's less of them going to college and so i think that's something that you know we need to be concerned about that you know our our college levels aren't there but yet uh at pine tech and community college in pine city i've got a bonding proposal there because their their class size have been growing it's been bucking the trend and you know they've they've got a nursing program and it's generally full and so they've they're really capped out at their capacity so there are areas that are you know our students are going to we there are opportunities that we do need to expand and you know making sure that the training is there for those that do want to enter that field and part of it it's just making sure our schools are have the capability and you know maybe it isn't the university of minnesota maybe it's a community college now and so i think there's there's got to be some looking at where where are we going where are we where do we need to have the funds go to have that proper training support for current and future healthcare workers so that's a great question and i think it can be addressed both at a higher ed level and and a k-12 you know level in the higher education bill we we are always trying to make pathways available not necessarily to the health care industry but what we do need to do and what we are also doing is fully funding our two-year programs and trying to do more with our state college systems four-year colleges a lot of the programming is determined at a again the college level not at a legislative or state level and so when there is an appetite to bring a programming in it's our job as legislators to make sure that funding is there for them and that's what we're trying to do in our higher education bill the other thing that i'm seeing a change in and i'm really excited about this is in the at the high school level and i'm going to use virginia as an example they're in academies or they're going towards an academies model high school and so they're giving students exposure to different areas of the workforce healthcare being one of them and giving them credits as well so hopefully by the time a student graduates from high school they could be a cna they could go from high school into the workforce directly with a skill set that is desperately needed and those are all i think all of those options should be on the table and i'm pretty excited to see what comes next great well we've got a ton of questions and we're not going to get to them all but here's the next one so the governor gave his state of the state address a week ago today and he traveled the state he's trying to sell his walls checks or rebating some money giving checks back to citizens for some of the surplus didn't get included in either house or senate proposal yet but being around politics i know that governors tend to get some of what they want at the end of the day as that the legislature still has to negotiate with the governor what are your feelings on giving back rebate checks as a portion of dealing with the surplus representative we'll start with you i really am not a fan of it i understand but i lived through the years of jesse ventura where we saw some of this and i can't even remember what it was used for i think i bought diapers honestly for my kids i don't know it just is it isn't going to make a long-term impact a significant change i do believe in doing something to give back i think a better way of doing that would be i have a polar vortex bill for instance which will give credits or a refund for those that were impacted by the polar vortex and maybe you're a part of the municipal utility and there's a whole string of other types of things like that where you can give back and make a change without having to just cut a check at the end of the day i don't think anybody's going to remember where that check went or how how they used it 10 years from now and i think with the needs that are out there we could do something that would have a little bit more of a lasting impact great nelson i think it's uh it would be a real similar answer i'm not a real fond of the the balls checks and i wasn't uh that was about the four-year time period i was not living in minnesota when uh when the jesse checks were were going around and and i think that it's it seems a little bit gimmicky and i think uh as representative sandstein says i think there's probably better ways that we can address the you know the needs of minnesotans and and uh you know representative eckland talked about you know having some meaningful um tax cuts for the the low and middle class and i i think those are areas that i i think really need to look at um i think that's where people would really feel it uh you know i mean a thousand dollars for uh you know somebody that's in the lower or middle income is completely different than uh somebody in a higher tax bracket and it's uh i think it's important to remember that and i i think let's let's make sure that our funds that we return are are meaningful great privacy macklin so i did a town hall in january before the session and that was one of the questions and i said absolutely not i'm not in favor of that at all and i use the same example example on the jesse checks i do remember what i bought i bought a snowmobile trailer that got stolen that's why i remember what i bought but but you know i i negotiated or helped negotiate several contracts when i worked at my former employment and whenever we got a signing bonus something was being bought and so when i look at these things i think i look at it as something being bought and i think we could do something more meaningful with that with that money then and i know it i know it's appealing and i know whatever 350 or 500 whatever it is that's appealing and then you could go do something but i think you've seen over the last two years we've had a lot of extra money that the government's put out into the economy already and with uh with the stuff that came from the from the federal government and maybe that it's gotten a little bit too hot because of that too okay we might have time for one more question and it may be a little bit of left field pardon the pun but i know the house representatives is making progress on sports betting and it might be an issue that will come before the entire house chamber now admittedly probably not going to pass into law this year but it's gaining momentum as an issue in minnesota and an issue in other states i just want to hear real quickly your thoughts and feelings about legalizing sports betting in minnesota we'll start with you representative clinton and work our way back it's probably time especially when all our surrounding states have it and i have i have two uh uh native uh populations in my in my district so i'm real tuned to them with their with their casinos so a few years ago i was unpacked garofalo's bill to legalize that and i got a call from the chair and said you better take your name off that bill and i and then then and they explained why and i said okay and i went and told representative that i had to take my name off but it's probably time i heard an ad on the way down about come to come to danbury you can bet on sports so um probably likewise it's probably time we do i have i've got a little bit of you know pause you know coming to it but at the same time i think uh you know one of the things different about sports betting is you know if you place a bet you've got a game that happens and so you know there's also it's a little bit of a slow release if you will um it isn't you know sitting at the you know the counter with pull tabs or uh you know at the casino i think there's that it's a little bit so it's a little bit harder to get into a a problem not that you can't but it's a slow release so maybe i'll make it quick for me i'm undecided on this one right now i hear from constituents that they want it and yet i have concerns about the addiction piece of it um so we'll just see how it plays out this year great day and what we expect that to hear you guys will be hearing it on the floor so there'll be some debate this year yet are we assuming i believe we're going to see it on the floor at some point in time i think we'll see it this year likely whether it'll pass i don't know okay wonderful well we are out of time and i'd like to thank representative rob eckland representative nathan nelson and representative julie sanstead for joining me today tune in again next sunday may 8th for another edition of minnesota legislative report where we will welcome more lawmakers from northern minnesota to the program for the team at wdsc i'm tony serdich have a great evening you