House GOP bonding bill cut

By Brad Swenson

Pioneer Staff Writer

The state building projects bill introduced last week in the Minnesota House is about $30 million light - all of them Bemidji-area projects.

The Legislature last year failed to pass a bonding bill for state building projects, putting it on the plate for this year’s session which also must craft a new two-year state budget.

But while Republican Gov. Tim Pawlenty and the DFL-controlled Senate basically started where they left off last year, the Republican-led House’s bill introduced Thursday is $35.3 million less than the bonding bill winning overwhelming support last session.

Missing from the House bill is $30.6 million in Bemidji-area projects, mostly involving Bemidji State University.

“It’s unfortunate that the House has taken such a political tone with their bonding bill,” Sen. Rod Skoe, DFL-Clearbrook, said Friday in an interview. “It’s clearly obvious that this is retribution for the election outcome--not a good outcome.”

The House’s $677.6 million bonding measure, which won approval 102-30 last spring, included $18 million for a hockey arena and events center at BSU, $10 million for academic expansions at BSU and Northwest Technical College, $1.3 million for a Paul Bunyan Trail expansion in Bemidji and $1.3 million for a visitors center at the Big Bog Recreation Center at Waskish.

Working on BSU’s $28 million in bonding requests was Rep. Doug Fuller, R-Bemidji, then vice chairman of the House Capital Investment Committee. But on Nov. 2, Fuller was defeated by DFLer Frank Moe of Bemidji, who now holds the seat.

The new, slimmer $642.3 million House bill introduced last week has none of those projects.

“We are all trying to work collaboratively and together to get something done this year,” Skoe said. “I think the people spoke in the election that they wanted results out of the Legislature. That’s going to require a bipartisan compromise and cooperative work.”

And still ignored is a major school project for the Red Lake Reservation, which is in both the governor’s and the Senate bill. The House had considered $16 million last year, but the final bill failed to include it.

Pawlenty this year is asking for $24.04 million for the Red Lake Middle School project, and the Senate has started with the $22.13 million it had included in last year’s measure.

Skoe and Rep. Brita Sailer, DFL-Park Rapids, along with House 2A Rep. Kent Eken, DFL-Twin Valley, met with Red Lake Nation officials Friday at which the district’s bonding issue was discussed.

While the Red Lake bonding, and the Big Bog center, are in Skoe’s and Sailer’s district, they both said the Bemidji projects are also important.

“We have always worked regionally on bonding projects,” Skoe said. “We again will work regionally on these projects. … We’re regional representatives here, we’re not just going up to our boundary because things that affect the area affect everybody, and we want to take a big picture view of that.”

Pawlenty’s bill includes only the Red Lake School in local projects, and none of the Bemidji or BSU requests in his $816 million proposal.

The Senate’s starting point, at $948.7 million, includes the Red Lake School funding and $10 million for BSU/NTC, but nothing for the events center. It includes $1.4 million for the Big Bog Center.

It also has $2.4 million for the Paul Bunyan Trail, but $1.5 million is for a trail connector at Baxter to the Oberstar Tunnel. It provides $500,000 for a Highway 197 underpass provided the city of Bemidji matches it, and $400,000 for riprap along the southeast shore of Lake Bemidji.

So, of the three bills introduced for bonding this year, none contain funding for BSU’s proposed hockey arena/events center.

“I personally feel that the campaign is over, and I’m down here and we ask why are we here,” Sailer said. “We need to do the people’s business. I just want to get moving forward with it, and I don’t want to see my district left out as some form of political gamesmanship. To me, that’s just no way to behave.”

Sailer too ousted a seated Republican, defeating Rep. Doug Lindgren, R-Bagley, in November.

The only local project in the House’s bill is $6 million for a regional jail at the Ah-Gwah-Ching Center campus, in the district represented by Rep. Larry Howes, R-Walker, now a member of the Capital Investment Committee.

Sailer said she’s already working with Howes cooperatively on several measures, and hopes that bonding is also a compromise.

“I would expect that if it has to be cut, they should be even all around, not just saying let’s just dump everything from this particular legislative district,” Sailer said.

Skoe told the Red Lake officials that the school bonding was only a phase of a several-year project to upgrade both the Middle School and High School. The Red Lake proposal gets a hearing Jan. 18 before the Senate Capital Investment Committee.

The Senate is expected to approve a bonding bill by late February, Skoe said, adding that he hopes the House will include more of the original projects. If estimates go, bonding bills have historically settled at near what the governor sets--usually between the two chambers.

With Pawlenty’s figure, “I think we’ll be able to restore some of the projects that the House reduced in their $642 million bill,” Skoe said.

He also noted that the Senate Capital Investment Committee chairman, Sen. Keith Langseth, DFL-Glyndon, worked cooperatively last year on Local Government Aid restoration legislation with Rep. Dan Dorman, R-Albert Lea, the new House Capital Investment Committee chairman.

“They had worked well on rural issues, and hopefully Rep. Dorman will work with Sen. Langseth to get some of these rural projects back in his bill,” Skoe said. “The margin is closer in the House and they need some Democrats to support the bonding bill. I would hope that there would be some initiative to put some of these important projects back in before the Democrats would give votes on the bonding bill.”