Opinion

The 2023 legislative session is entering its final weeks as debates and votes on the House Floor have been running deep into the night. Despite the late nights and little sleep, it remains an honor to represent you, your family, and our communities in St. Paul. As always, I do my best to make sure your priorities and values are heard loud and clear as we make decisions on public policy that will impact Minnesota for generations to come. Over the last two weeks, the House of Representatives and Senate each passed the initial versions of large, hundreds page long budget and policy bills. Now, work shifts to conference committees where differences in the two legislative bodies’ bills will be worked out and agreement will be reached. The bills will then come before the House of Representatives and Senate for final approval and then to Governor Walz for his signature.

Don’t just listen to what they say, watch what they do! Pete Stauber joined nearly all his Republican house colleagues in voting for a budget proposal which would cut funding for Veteran’s’ services by a whopping 22%!!!

On Wednesday evening, April 19,2023, the annual membership meeting was held at Two Harbors High School. At that meeting, a motion was introduced and passed overwhelmingly by the membership, to compel the Board of Directors to complete and approve a plan for redistricting by the end of their regularly scheduled May meeting.

Recently, I attended our local annual rural electric cooperative meeting. The purpose of the annual meeting is to gather together all of the member owners of the co-op to share important information about the status quo of our rural utility company. It is an open meeting with member owners encouraged to use the microphone and voice their concerns. What could have been an energizing, uplifting meeting, especially in light of the recent inflation reduction act provisions and financial support for transitioning to clean energy, unfortunately turned out to be quite a disappointment. Many of the voices that were loudest in the room were in opposition to the necessary changes we need our rural cooperatives to make to move away from costly and dirty, fossil fuel-based energy sources to clean affordable energy. Clean energy sources are wind, solar, and hydro power with battery storage to back up for the times when the sun isn’t shining and the wind isn’t blowing. I certainly wish that more voices had addressed the misinformation from the loud voices in the room.

Rep Skraba, As a freshman legislator, you are allowed some rookie mistakes. However, they shouldn’t include failing to read a piece of legislation and misrepresenting the particulars of that legislation to us, your constituents; these responsibilities are literally items number one and two in a legislator’s job description. Unfortunately, this is what you did in your April 21 Capitol Update when you claimed an omnibus bill contains a provision to halt all logging on state forest lands that have spruce or tamarack.

Senator Grant Hauschild, representing NE Minnesota District 3, has kept his promise of delivering for his constituents. He has been the chief author of 90 Senate bills designed to help our NE Minnesota families and communities, and he has co-authored 181 bills since the legislative session began on January 3rd, 2023: a truly incredible accomplishment!