I mentioned it last week but I thought it might be interesting to note who is saying what about the budget for the Office of Broadband Development and the Minnesota Broadband Fund. (6/26/2015 Addition: Reactions are still coming out. Rather than create a new post, I will add here and Retweet. I’ll add to the top.)
New! From the Owatonna People’s Press…
The scorecard for outstate Minnesota provided by the Minnesota Legislature and Gov. Mark Dayton can be summarized as significantly under a .500 win-loss record.
That came on the hope that outstate Minnesota would for once have a winning record. The results are disappointing at best and confounding at worst. That’s because outstate Republicans who helped the party win the majority in the House touted their goals to shore up the needs of a long neglected outstate.
Wins stacked up like this: More money for nursing homes ($138 million), relief for farmers facing bird flu losses, and maybe a smattering of other things so insignificant that don’t register on anyone’s radar.
Losses that impact greater Minnesota most included: Broadband grant funding that was cut $10 million from last year’s $20 million, no tax bill that would have provided farmers property tax relief, no transportation bill that would have shored up crumbling roads in outstate Minnesota, no increase in local government aid to small towns, no funding for workforce housing tax credits.
New! From Duluth News Tribune…
State Rep. Tom Hackbarth fooled many Minnesotans in 2014. In his June 22 editorial (“A Lawmaker’s Response: ‘Growlers’ overlook provisions good for Duluth, Greater Minnesota”) he is trying to fool us again.
Greater Minnesota organizations and newspapers, even those with strong GOP leanings, have pointed out that the GOP broke its promise to help Greater Minnesota in 2015. A review of Hackbarth’s discussion shows why.
The GOP tried to end the Greater Minnesota broadband program completely, and reluctantly agreed to a program that provides half of last year’s funding and one-third of Gov. Mark Dayton’s budget recommendation.
From the Office of Broadband Development (via newsletter) …
During the special session, the Legislature included funding for the Border to Border Infrastructure grant program in the amount of $10,588,000. The Office will be using its experience administering the 2014 program to fine tune the grant process and anticipates the application will be available in July with a submission deadline in September. More details soon!
From the Albert Lea Tribune…
City officials and Greater Minnesota lobbyists are frustrated with what they say was a legislative session that didn’t live up to the hype. ‘This certainly wasn’t the session for Greater Minnesota,’ Austin City Administrator Craig Clark said. … Lawmakers allocated $10 million for broadband funding this year, short of Gov. Mark Dayton’s request for $30 million and much smaller than the $100 million Greater Minnesota officials requested. That funding doesn’t match the $20 million legislators gave to broadband funding last year, and Greater Minnesota lobbyists say the lack of broadband funding is hurting outstate communities with business opportunities from expanding. ‘Minnesota did not become a great state by nursing the status quo,’ Heidi Omerza, president of the Coalition for Greater Minnesota Cities, said. ‘We’re still patiently waiting for broadband to come to fruition.
From the Grand Rapids Herald (Also posted in Duluth Tribune)…
“From our perspective, 2015 was a great disappointment,” the coalition’s Bradley Peterson told reporters during a Thursday conference call.
Worst, he said, was failure to increase Local Government Aid the state pays to cities. Also, he and others in his organization said, too little was put into broadband expansion in rural Minnesota: $11 million instead of $100 million the coalition sought.
Without state broadband help, there will be serious small-town consequences, said coalition President Heidi Omerza, an Ely City Council member.
Eyeing a projected surplus that swelled to nearly $2 billion, advocates like the Coalition of Greater Minnesota Cities and allied groups came into session in January with an ambitious agenda — inflationary increases in state aid to local governments, big new spending boosts to expand rural broadband access, workforce-geared housing development in small towns and cities, a transportation spending package and property tax relief.
“Very little ended up being done on that agenda,” said Bradley Peterson, senior lobbyist for the Coalition. Specifically:
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The state Office of Broadband Development got $11 million to expand access, from a request for more than $100 million.