Minnesota’s 2025 legislative session was chaotic from start to finish. Let’s chat with our favorite advocacy organizations about what we accomplished this year, and what was left on the table.
Links
- Refresh your memory of what we were trying to accomplish this year in our Legislative Agenda episode.
- Sierra Club
- BikeMN
- Neighbors for More Neighbors
- Our Streets
Attributions
Our theme song is Tanz den Dobberstein, and our interstitial song is Puck’s Blues. Both tracks used by permission of their creator, Erik Brandt. Find out more about his band, The Urban Hillbilly Quartet, on their website.
This episode was hosted and edited by Ian R Buck, and was transcribed by Stina Neel. Many thanks to Lincoln Wells, Joe Harrington, Peter Wagenius, and Erik Noonan for coming on the show. We’re always looking to feature new voices on the show, so if you have ideas for future episodes, drop us a line at [email protected].
Transcript
[00:00:00] Ian: Hey everyone, Ian here. All of the conversations you’re going to hear in this episode were recorded in the days following the conclusion of the Minnesota State legislative session. The Saturday after the legislative session wrapped, uh, a gunman entered the homes of Speaker of the House, Melissa Hortman, and State Senator John Hoffman, and shot them and their spouses.
Melissa and her husband are dead, and as of the time that I’m recording this, John Hoffman and his wife are still alive. Uh, I will not be able to provide breaking updates in, uh, in this episode. So I encourage you to look for other sources of news for that. Um, and our, our hearts go out to the families of all of the victims, so be aware of all of that as you listen to the rest of these conversations.
Welcome to the Streets.mn Podcast, the show where we highlight how transportation and land use can make our communities better places. Coming to you from beautiful uptown, Minneapolis, Minnesota. I am your host Ian R Buck. The legislative session is finally over. It was chaotic from start to end with a special session that ended at 2:00 AM in order to avoid a government shutdown.
We’ve got plenty to talk about with the transportation and land use organizations that we know and love. So let’s dive in. First up, we’re going to chat with Peter Wagenius, legislative and policy Director at Sierra Club North Star.
Man, they asked for more extensions than my high school students do. That was incredible.
[00:01:56] Peter: Yes. I, that’s a good way to think of it, except that when your students hand in their papers late, there’s no danger of a government shutdown. That’s the difference. Yeah. It’s like the nuclear bomb version of students getting their homework in late.
[00:02:11] Ian: Right, right. If, if the students turn in their homework late, then the school shuts down. Yeah. That’s pretty nice
[00:02:17] Peter: that that would be, that would be the analogy.
[00:02:19] Ian: Yes. Um, so Peter, when we recorded last, we were just at the point where it was like, okay, we have this split legislature. We had a couple of like special elections.
A couple of seats were like, you know, there, there was weirdness right at the beginning. And we kind of understood that we were going to have this power sharing agreement. House. The Senate has one, one more seat was DFL than GOP, but for, for those of us who haven’t lived through this before, like, what the heck does it mean to have a power sharing agreement?
And like, how does, how does that go?
[00:02:58] Peter: Yeah. Well, we were all experiencing it together in real time for the first time. Um, we have a hundred and we have 201 legislators totaled in the state of Minnesota. A hundred Republicans and 101 Democrats, it is literally impossible to be more closely divided. Unless you had a senator with a split personality, that is the only way you could have gotten more closely divided.
[00:03:22] Ian: Yeah. Well, or, or you could have the governor be from the other party than the one that has the one seat majority, I suppose.
[00:03:29] Peter: Yes. Good point. We could, we could, we could plot out a real nightmare in case we thought this wasn’t nightmarish enough between what I just said and what you just said. We could make this truly psychotic on a, on a statewide scale.
Well, typically when there’s a majority, the majority organizes everything. Right? Right. It’s not simply that the majority party controls votes on the floor. It’s that they have a majority in every single committee. Mm-hmm. And every single chair is the chair from that majority party. Right. So when they finally got done with their court orders, you know, Democrats won some Supreme Court orders, Republicans won others.
When they finally got that all worked out, what they came to. Was that, uh, the Republicans held onto the speakership, but the speakership isn’t that powerful when you don’t control the floor because the floor is where everything is equal, 67 to 67. But also every single committee had two co-chairs, a democratic chair and a Republican chair, and they would rotate.
Which party was in chair, chair of the committee, you know, with each meeting. Okay. Democrats would chair this meeting, Republicans would chair the next. But keep in mind, there were weeks before that took effect. Uh, there was a set of weeks where the Republicans had a false majority, and then the Supreme Court slapped them down and said, no, no, no, you, you don’t have real majority.
But then there was a period where they did have a temporary. One seat majority. And so while we were waiting for that special election result,
[00:04:58] Ian: was this in the Senate or was this in the house?
[00:05:01] Peter: This is in, this is in the house.
[00:05:02] Ian: This is in the house. Okay.
[00:05:04] Peter: This is in the house.
And for that period of time, wow. The Republicans really lorded it over everybody. The fact that they had a one vote majority on these committees. So there was a period where every committee was chaired by the Republicans and they launched forward every bill that they would dream of. Shut down blue line, drastically cut transit, uh, repeal or delay the climate impact of highways law, which is what we call the greenhouse gas VMT, uh, targets.
I mean, it was a bonanza of going backwards on transportation and land use policy, but everybody knew that that was only in effect in the committees.
[00:05:44] Ian: Mm-hmm.
[00:05:44] Peter: None of that would affect the floor action. They couldn’t actually turn any of those bad ideas into law because the Supreme Court said you need 68 votes.
And they didn’t have 68 votes, they had 67 votes. So they got to have a lot of fun being retrograde in the committees. But fortunately, none of that stuff immediately became law.
Right.
Uh, it’s safe to say though, that had, that had a big social psychological effect on everybody then. Then the point came when they actually had to divide up the chairmanships, the chairs, and rotate back and forth.
And from that very bizarre situation to develop omnibus bills. And the house omnibus bill developed jointly between the House and the Senate. Uh, was pretty terrible. The worst transportation bill we’ve seen in a long time. Yeah. It included drastic cuts to transit, walking and biking, and a three and a half year delay to the climate impact of highways law.
And, but before I get into that, let me, am I answering your question about process and how it worked?
[00:06:52] Ian: Yes, yes. And so, so essentially we didn’t have one senator who had a split personality. We had every single committee in the house had a split personality.
[00:07:01] Peter: Yes, you got it. So we made it an effort, uh, Sierra Club and our partners to convince house Democrats to vote against the transportation bill that was authored by the Democrats and Republicans together.
Mm-hmm. And that’s kind of unprecedented. I’m really proud of the fact that we got 49 out of 67 Democrats to vote against the transportation bill. It still passed because 18 outta the 67 did vote for it. But why did we go through all that effort? We went through that effort because we really wanted to send a message to the conference committee.
This is not bipartisan, this is just because the Republicans have that split personality. Um, and you don’t have to go along with this in the end. Mm-hmm. And I think that was why we were ultimately successful in, in preserving the climate impact of highways law, the greenhouse gas and vehicle miles traveled reduction targets,
[00:08:01] Ian: how did things look in the conference committee then?
Like, like the Senate? Yeah. Obviously they’re sending the normal delegation that they would when, whenever they have a democratic majority. How did they decide? How did the house decide? Like who gets to go to the conference committee?
[00:08:16] Peter: What typically happens is it’s always an even number, the Senate sends, if the Senate sends four, the House sends four.
If the Senate sends five, the House sends five, and you have an even number, an equal number of senators and, and representatives. Well, they couldn’t do that in the, I mean, the Senators sent, um, five members, four Democrats and a Republican. Okay. The, the House members couldn’t do that because the Democrats and Republicans had to be equal.
They sent two Democrats and two Republicans. So you had a total committee of nine people. So they had to adjust the rules to say, yeah, but in the end you need to have it signed off on functionally by everybody. Um, so when you got to the conference committee, this is how great and you’re smiling, it got got even weirder.
Typically, a conference committee, which is where the House and the Senate bill are reconciled. That is where we’re used to the idea of having two chairs rotate. Yeah. Okay. The Senate chair and the House chair. Okay. But in this case, they had to rotate amongst three people. They would switch House, Senate, House, Senate.
But every other time it would go to the House, there would be a sub switch where you would have to switch between the Republican and the Democrat. So think about it this way, the Senate Chair was Dibble and the house chairs were Koegel and Koznick. So it would go. Dibble, Koegel, Dibble, Koznick, Dibble, Koegel.
[00:09:36] Ian: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
[00:09:36] Peter: Dibble, Koznick, Dibble, Koegel Dibble, Koznick. Now, they didn’t actually end up meeting that many times, but I, I hope that gives you a flavor for just how insane this whole thing was. Uh, the, the speaker emerita, or co-speaker functionally in this case, Speaker Hortman, won a very important agreement.
She said, we’re, you know, we’re not gonna get everything done this year. This is really hard. Let’s do budget and not policy, which is really smart. For some reason that didn’t, uh, take hold with the transportation committee, at least not in the House, at least not initially the House transportation bill, which should have just been about, let’s just balance the budget here.
Let’s just do the work that we are required to do under the Constitution to end the session and avoid a government shutdown, but the Republicans aided by the counties, by the way, and we need to talk about this. Mm-hmm. Republicans aided by the counties really wanted to undermine or delay the Climate Impact of Highways law.
They hate the idea that current law acknowledges that the climate is real and that because the climate crisis is real, we need to not build highway projects that will, you know, exceed those greenhouse gas and vehicle miles reduction targets, and they succeeded in getting that delay into the House transportation bill, which again, has nothing to do with the budget.
So all of us in the advocacy community, we’re scratching our heads, what the hell is this thing doing in here? Right? Why is this here? It doesn’t have anything to do with balancing the budget. I mean, over the long term, the climate impact of highways law is gonna save us money, right? Because we’re gonna build a more efficient system.
So what is this doing in here? So, and it’s really difficult to get them to vote against their own chair because there’s this habit culture born out of the idea that you have a majority and when you’re in the majority, you support your chair, vote with your chair. ’cause they’re doing the best they can.
But we had to remind people, no, you don’t actually have a chair. You’re just acting like you do. You have a co-chair who had to negotiate with an abusive jerk. And I say that word deliberately, the House chair, the stories we heard about how he treated the Democrats were beyond unacceptable.
[00:11:45] Ian: Yeah.
[00:11:46] Peter: And was that we ended up that,
[00:11:47] Ian: was that Koznick, who was that?
[00:11:48] Peter: Koznick, okay. Yeah. Just terrible stories. We heard about how he behaved and we couldn’t pass a bill that rewards that kind of behavior. So that’s why I say we got 49 out of 67 Democrats to vote no. And crucially, we got six out of eight members of the House Transportation Committee to vote against the bill that had come out their committee.
That was great. That was Larry Kraft, Katie Jones, Kaela Berg, uh, Lucy Rehm. Samantha Senca-Mura I’m forgetting somebody. Brad Tabke, uh, excuse me, not Brad Tabke. But they sent a very strong message in the end, I think that had exactly the effect we wanted. And what happened is those members, including Koegel, including Tabke, worked together to make sure that the conference committee report looked nothing like that.
And so in the end, the House Democrats United and said, you’re not delaying the Climate Impact of Highways Law. When we passed this law in the first place in 2023, it was kind of under the radar. The consequence of that is we never really had to build a coalition to defend it, to explain it, to make the public case for it.
And in a strange way, I think we’ve made progress because we had a fight over it and we won. I think it’s gonna be much harder for them in the future to mess with this. I was gonna save the good news for the end. Can I tell you the good news?
[00:13:06] Ian: Yes, please.
[00:13:07] Peter: Okay. It’s not just that we preserve the Climate Impact of Highways law.
It’s that we got the Senate, and this is where I give the most credit to Joe Harrington. On the second part, the Senate Transportation bill included language to open up Trunk Highway dollars to be used for good things.
[00:13:26] Ian: Uh, so this was the clarifying what in the Constitution “highway purposes” means.
[00:13:33] Peter: You got it.
You got it. Okay. There, there is a view, an inaccurate view that the Constitution says you can only use steel concrete to make cars go. That’s not what it says. It says highway purpose and highway. Purpose could obviously include building infrastructure for bus rapid transit on highways, right? The people who hate transit don’t want it to mean that, but it can mean that, and under the Constitution, the legislature just needs to say statutorily.
That’s what it means because people have this idea in their heads that MnDot has a set of choices in front of them, build good projects or bad projects, and they don’t really. They have projects to perpetuate the existing system and perpetuate emissions as they are, or to increase them by making roads wider.
We need to make it legal for them to build good projects.
[00:14:23] Ian: So then what happened in the conference committee? Did, did they like drop both of those things and just focus on budget or like, like what was the end?
[00:14:31] Peter: Yes. Okay. You, you got it you got it Ian, you saw it coming. They basically in the end cancel each other out.
So the, the House tie is why the climate impact of highways was in trouble? Yes. The Senate won vote majority is the reason in the end they did cut transit funding. Okay. So, so can we talk about transit funding now?
[00:14:49] Ian: Yeah, let’s do it.
[00:14:49] Peter: So Metro Transit is funded by two sources. It is funded by, uh, the metro area sales tax.
Yep. Paid only by people in the metro area or people making purchases in the metro area also,
[00:15:03] Ian: Which is new as of 2023 Also.
[00:15:05] Peter: As of 2023, first time in Minnesota history that the legislature directly raised revenue for transit.
[00:15:12] Ian: Mm-hmm.
[00:15:13] Peter: Never done that before. And the other source is the State General Fund.
Um, well, Governor Walz proposed in January eliminating a hundred percent of the general fund contribution to Met Council. Uh, it’s like 30, $31 million a year. And we immediately got 19 organizations to sign a letter saying, don’t do this. The point of what we passed in 2023 was not simply to avoid cuts to the transit system, it was to build out BRT throughout the metropolitan area.
Um, so when people say, oh, don’t worry, this cut isn’t going to, you know, cut, you know, fire bus drivers. Wow. That’s not the definition of success folks. The general fund funds transit. The general fund doesn’t fund roads nearly to the same extent, so they’re making it nearly impossible to do something equitable, uh, between modes.
This is where I really give the house credit. Koegel, Tabke assisted by Kraft and Jones, uh, negotiated for, um, because the governor is, is winning, the governor is winning, he’s getting rid of the general fund contribution to transit. So what they proposed instead is to backfill that money. To replace the money that was coming from the general fund with money coming from sales tax.
Because if you recall back in 2023, most of the money we raised goes to transit, walking and biking.
[00:16:40] Ian: Mm-hmm.
[00:16:40] Peter: But 17% went to the counties, which counties were theoretically gonna use for good things. Uhhuh to facilitate transit. The res did a smart thing by going to a source they know existed and saying, okay, we’re gonna shift 8.5%.
Half of the 17% that the county said we’re gonna shift it to Met, uh, to Met Council. Now, in the end, that was probably an overreach. They should have done a shift only as much as it was necessary to prevent funding cuts to Metro Transit. Mm-hmm. That, that’s actually more than $30 million. That’s closer to $45 million.
And that overreach was really well used by the counties to argue in a situation where everybody’s getting cut. Why does Met Council deserve an increase? That was a powerful argument. At the end of the day. The problem was these blue dog conservative Democrats, the same ones who, who say we need more subsidies for data centers and more subsidies for ethanol and more, more money for more roads and more roads and, and wanted to gut the energy. Uh, bill. Vetting community, solar, the same people who are a problem on any, everything related to the environment. Were not shockingly a problem on this as well. So the bottom line is things reverted to form. We were really frustrated with what came outta that tide situation in the house. But in the end, the house who were the most progressive people in, among the three bodies, governor, House and Senate, they stood up and they offered a good deal.
Assisted obviously by the Senate con. But those conservative blue dog Democrats in the Senate, if they can figure out a way to, to bleep something up, they’re gonna for the environment, they’re gonna do it. And they did it. So in the last, last moments of the session, uh, they ended up pulling that bill even though it was agreed to, even though it was signed by all the parties, the counties threw a nice big fit and they just chopped that part of the budget out, which would have prevented cuts to Metro Transit. Uh, and they did it so fast and so sloppily that actually the, the Republicans not only succeeded in preventing money from going to transit, the counties not only succeeded in preventing money to go to transit, they gave, they went back to the original bill and gave the Republicans a bunch of pork, like road projects, pork.
Hmm. So, so it’s not just that they cut BRT funding in the end, it’s that they gave a bunch of money to roads including like literal pork projects for Republican legislators.
[00:19:20] Ian: Hmm.
[00:19:20] Peter: So, uh, it was not a glorious end, even though we had a lot of very productive things about this session. Um, and, and I gotta say, I put this on Facebook and Twitter and X, I give a lot of credit to Koegel and Dibble and Jones for standing up at the end when the bill was coming for a final vote and just telling the truth and speaking the truth, and saying.
They balance the budget, the transportation portion of the budget, they balance the transportation portion of the budget on transit while leaving roads unaffected. That’s what they did.
[00:19:55] Ian: And I mean, that’s, uh, if there’s a lesson in here for any high schoolers who happen to be listening, uh, this is why you don’t wait until 2:00 AM to finish your homework, right?
Yeah. I I wonder how much the fact that, that everybody had to be awake until like 2:00 AM to finish all of this resulted in yanking transit out of the bill and not taking a careful look at like, oh, what? Like what else are we affecting here? Uh
[00:20:22] Peter: oh, Ian, I’m so glad you’re a teacher and because That’s exactly right.
Met Council is a problem here.
[00:20:28] Ian: Mm-hmm.
[00:20:29] Peter: It doesn’t help that Met Council, which is just a branch of the Walz administration. Right, right. People don’t fully understand that he appoints every single member. They never asked for more money. They never defended themselves and worse. They won’t put on the table a vision for what we would do with more money.
We’ve had this problem forever and people say, well, uh, uh, Peter, I, I’m not comfortable with the all the options for governance reform. Well, okay, then go to your Met Council member and get them to be visionary. I have no power. None of us have the power to make the Met Council be visionary. But I’m telling you, it is a problem when you’re at that end of session.
And both the conservative Blue Dog Democrats and the House Republicans are turning the Met Council and saying, you guys wouldn’t know what to do with the money if we gave it to you. And the answer is, they’re right. They’re right. Yeah, they’re right. Because the Met Council is still in a poverty mindset.
They’re still acting like they’re in a pre 2023 world, and they cannot put a vision on the table for what it would look like if they had more money. And so we. We gotta fix this, we gotta advocate for what we want and not just the low rent version of arterial BRT, like higher versions, electrified, dedicated lane.
[00:21:50] Ian: Mm-hmm.
[00:21:50] Peter: Mm-hmm. Um, it can’t just be LRT and arterial BRT with nothing in between. And like I said, we can’t force them to be visionary, but the fact that they’re not visionary is a huge part of the problem. For de, for making the Republican argument seem strong and for making the democratic argument seem weak.
I mean, I don’t know as a teacher figure out how to analogy for this, but the, the people who say our, our current governance system is fine. It’s fine for the governor to appoint every single member of the Metropolitan Council. Well keep in, keep this in mind. Remember we talked about in your last meeting how every other transit system in Minnesota, Duluth, St. Cloud, Mankato Moorhead, uh, Rochester, Winona. All of those transit systems are governed by local voters. They’re accountable only to local voters despite getting money from the state for their operations. Right. Met Transit is actually the opposite now. There are no state dollars coming from the general fund mm-hmm.
To support it, and yet the state controls it.
[00:22:49] Ian: Mm-hmm.
[00:22:50] Peter: The argument for, for sole gubernatorial appointees of the Met Council has never been weaker. Because it’s not funded by the state. They, they, they look at the Met Council and metro area and says, you guys gotta pay for your own transit, but you don’t get to control it.
And to the, everybody in the rest of the state, they say the opposite. You get to control it even though we’re giving you the money.
[00:23:09] Ian: Yeah.
[00:23:09] Peter: That’s crazy.
[00:23:11] Ian: Okay, here’s my analogy for you. Everybody hates doing a group project when they’re in class, right? Would you rather do a group project where you get to choose all of your group members?
Or do you want the teacher to force you to be with that one kid who never pulls his own weight, who doesn’t do the work, and then takes credit for it at the end?
[00:23:33] Peter: I like, yes, Ian, you got it. Boom. That’s what we have.
[00:23:38] Ian: So speaking of the next couple of sessions, um, I know that we, we do like this Tick Tock cycle of like, okay, odd numbered years are the budget years, even numbered years are more legislative years.
Um. We elect representatives for like two years at a time, right? So are we, yep. Are we gonna have this same weird split in the house and the same one seat majority in the Senate for next, next year?
[00:24:05] Peter: Yes, we are. So, and that’s frustrating, but really people should think about what are we building towards in, in 2027?
Because again, they, they, they’re. Next year’s session is relatively low stakes because the budget lasts for two years. They don’t need to pass a budget next year. There are no, there are no must pass bills. Uh, the biggest danger we face is actually not 2026. The biggest danger is do they have to have another special session later this year to deal with cuts from the Trump administration.
So, oh geez. I hated to, I hated to have to say that out loud.
[00:24:43] Ian: Who gets to make that, that who, who, who calls them back into session for that? Is that a governor call?
[00:24:48] Peter: The governor may have to call them back in even later this summer if there’s a bunch of bad federal stuff that messes with state decisions.
So in, in that instance, we are still gonna have potentially must pass bills. Um, and we’ll just be in a survival mode. But I am, I am confident. I shouldn’t say comfident. I’m very hopeful that the next, if we can survive special sessions and Trump cuts that the next legislative election, which will be both House and Senate, can deliver us not just a DFL majority, but perhaps an environmental majority, which is DFL plus a couple in both the House and the Senate.
’cause you gotta make up for that handful of not environmental Democrats,
[00:25:35] Ian: right? You gotta make up for new hope.
[00:25:37] Peter: The pendulum is swinging in our direction. Uh, but, uh, but yeah, yeah, we, we will have to deal with this crazy setup, uh, for another session and whatever special sessions exist between now and the next general election.
[00:25:51] Ian: Yeah. Yeah. It’s like, it’s like being sent to summer school because somebody else failed a class.
[00:25:56] Peter: You’re bringing, you’re bringing the teacher thing, boom, boom, boom. You’re getting it all. Mm-hmm. They balance the budget on the backs of transit while leaving roads on effect. That is a key top line message for people to remember and repeat that to people because we want the legislatures to go into the next couple of sessions thinking, I gotta fix this.
[00:26:13] Ian: Yeah.
[00:26:14] Peter: They’re not gonna go into it thinking, I gotta fix this unless we remind them what the problem is and the same counties who now you could say, Hey, let’s give the counties a break. They were just trying to preserve their own funding. But remember, it’s not just that they wanted to preserve their funding.
They also wanted to delay the climate impact of highways law, and that tells you what their real agenda is.
[00:26:33] Ian: Yeah.
[00:26:33] Peter: More and more sprawl, uh, greater Minnesota transit will also drop by 22 million total in the next biennium. Um, they say in the out years, the two years after that, that funding will come back.
But we don’t actually know that active transportation got cut $11 million over the next two years. Theoretically, some of that comes back in the, in the, what they call the out years. Uh, so that’s, neither of those two things are good. They raise taxes on electric vehicles annual fees. It could have been even worse, but the countries did a good job of saying, Hey, maybe this should be based on the value of the vehicle, NLX, the train to Duluth.
Uh, half of the money for that disappeared in the regular session, but we were able to protect thanks to Jen McEwen, the senator from Duluth, who’s fantastic. We were able to protect the rest of that money. It’s important to keep some money in the, in the pot there, even if we think, we’re not sure if the federal government is gonna ever come through as long as Trump is president, because that’s the real problem here.
The problem isn’t Minnesota. Um, the problem is if, if they’re getting rid of federal funding, which we need, are we gonna have to wait out the Trump administration in the end? We might need to. Yeah, but keeping some money, you don’t wanna, you don’t wanna give them an ex, the federal government, an excuse not to do their jobs.
[00:27:50] Ian: Mm-hmm.
[00:27:51] Peter: So keeping $77 million, uh, in the budget is a, is an important victory. The fact that they kept half of that money in place, that’s a good thing. Blue Line is protected. Blue Line Bottineau, uh, extension to the Northwest, uh, you know, is staying, Metro Mobility certified. Customers will be able to ride transit for free.
That was a pilot program that’s now been extended. So, so that’s good. Uh, so there, there were some, there were, those are some of the i other items, uh, in this year’s budget. And in most cases, I’m describing things that would have been, they aren’t great, but they would’ve been a lot worse if we hadn’t seen what we did see, which is all the House Transportation Committee members and the Senate conferees uh, in the end fought a good fight. Stripped out of the final bill. A lot of bad stuff. And they nearly, if not for the Senate, blue Dogs, uh, could have actually prevented uh, transit cuts. But that’s kind of the total picture.
[00:28:55] Ian: Wow.
[00:28:56] Peter: Big session.
[00:28:57] Ian: Heck of a year. Crazy. Yeah. Oh, man. Yeah. Peter, uh, thanks for coming on and giving us such a, a thorough view of, of what the heck happened. I mean, obviously we, we focused on land use and transportation here, but, um, I imagine that this wild process had an effect on all kinds of different things. So, uh, when, when, oh, it did. As people are looking at other, you know, whatever other advocacy groups you’re interested in, you know, that are, that are doing stuff outside of, uh, climate action, you know.
Keep all of these things in mind.
[00:29:34] Peter: Oh yeah. People should, people are hearing this, should, should get involved in Sierra Club, in Move Minnesota in Our Streets, in the organizations, in Neighbors for More Neighbors, the organizations that are doing this work. But you, you just reminded me of one last thing, if you’ve got one moment.
Maybe one more student analogy is it does take a lot of effort to play this defense.
[00:29:53] Ian: Mm.
[00:29:53] Peter: And it’s really hard to keep an eye on forward progress, uh, during all that. But again, that example of opening up Trunk Highway dollars, even though we didn’t pass that, that is, and building a coalition to defend the Climate Impact of Highways law, that kind of thing does matter.
I wish all of the Democratic legislators would appreciate that whenever we have to play defense that is preventing us from playing offense. Do you know what I mean? Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. The stronger they can be to never let a bill land on the House floor, like the house transportation bill. We end up spending a lot of time pushing back on that.
And even when we’re successful, it’s preventing us from making the case to the broader universe about what the next big thing is we get to do,
[00:30:39] Ian: right?
[00:30:39] Peter: So I’m hopeful that this experience will mean it won’t be like this next year, and we will spend the next year building towards victories in 2027 and be well coordinated between our allies, our champions in the Senate, in in the House and Senate, including Dibble, Kraft Jones. Koegel, Tabke, all the people who stepped up. The more we can all spend time building towards the future the better.
[00:31:03] Ian: That’s a wonderful, wonderful thought to end on, Peter.
[00:31:06] Peter: Sounds great.
[00:31:07] Ian: Thank you for coming on the show.
[00:31:09] Peter: Thank you, Ian.
[00:31:16] Ian: Before we hear from our next guest, let’s take a quick break in the parklet. Streets.MN is starting up our summertime fundraising drive with a goal to raise $3,500 by the end of June. We’ve got a really unique publication going here. Nobody else is covering state level land use and transportation issues the way that we are.
And on top of that, we’re still the community amenity that we always have been, where anybody can submit articles, podcasts, and videos to add to the conversation. If you want to help us continue doing this valuable work, you can do so at Streets.mn/Donate, and I hear that there’ll be a merchandise store online soon.
So keep an eye on the website this month for more about that. Now we have Lincoln Wells volunteer with Neighbors for More Neighbors.
[00:32:14] Lincoln: Okay. Well, uh, on the housing front, I guess I’ll just start by saying that we did not get much done this session, which was, uh, a great disappointment to, you know, the organization that I volunteer for, Neighbors For More Neighbors and the rest of the organizations in the coalition. I guess I’ve been kind of thinking about how, how to talk about this and I think that really the, the best way to, to broach like what’s going on with housing in Minnesota is just starting with Minnesota is still growing in population pretty substantially.
Mm-hmm. Um, like between 2010 and 2020, we gained like. 400,000 new residents and people are gonna continue to want to move here. And people that live here are gonna continue to want to have children that are gonna add to the population. And I guess there’s kind of two ways that I, I think about the housing situation in Minnesota.
Um, one is you could just look at the, the housing market data. Um, you know, it, it’s a good rough estimate to say that most individuals should not be spending more than 30% of their budget mm-hmm. On, on housing. So either like rent or, or their mortgage or whatever. Um, if you spend more than that, it really makes it hard for you to, to save, um, to, to spend on like childcare or to save for emergencies, things like that.
Um. And, and currently there’s about 600,000 Minnesotans that spend more than 30% of their income on housing, which is pretty substantial. Mm-hmm. Um, it means that a lot of Minnesotans are, are facing a lot of financial stress because of the housing situation. To, to alleviate that, the, the best estimates are that we need to be adding about a hundred thousand housing units to the state to bring down this cost pressure that most, that like the median Minnesotan household is facing.
[00:33:57] Ian: So is that a hundred thousand in in total, or is that a hundred thousand per year?
[00:34:02] Lincoln: No, no, uh, it right now it would be in total. Okay. Um, obviously as the population continues to increase, you would have to be adding more to, to accommodate that.
But the other, the other way to think about housing in the state and the current situation is just to ask Minnesotans like, what do you think of, of what’s going on in the housing market? So for the past few years, Neighbors for More Neighbors has been doing some pretty substantial polling, um, just to like get an indication of, of what do uh, Minnesotans, think of the current housing situation in the state and then like what kind of policies might they, might they be in support of, right. Um, and you know, this is almost kind of like the best part of the year for me is when these, this poll date is released. And this is like all the, the cross tabs and everything is available on our website, which is moreneighbors.org, um, if people want to dig in.
But it, it, it just like consistently shows that almost all Minnesotans like agree that there’s a problem. Um, it’s like 80% of say that the cost of homes is a problem mm-hmm. In the state. Um,
[00:34:59] Ian: and remind me is, was this a survey that was conducted by Neighbors, or was this Yeah. Conducted by, okay.
[00:35:06] Lincoln: Yes. Yeah, so, uh, Neighbors, uh, finances it, and then we use like, you know, uh, pulling tools and, uh mm-hmm.
Yeah. We contract some of this stuff out, but
[00:35:13] Ian: Gotcha.
[00:35:14] Lincoln: It’s like 68% of Minnesotan support, ADU building, uh, accessory, goaling units being built. Mm-hmm. Um, in Minnesota, 68% support the building of duplexes, triplexes, and town homes. 78% allowing homes near, uh, like shopping centers, light rails along like, um, you know, business corridors.
Sure. Mm-hmm. Uh, what, what we talk about is like
[00:35:35] Ian: transit oriented residential
[00:35:37] Lincoln: Yeah. Transit oriented development or, um, like residential housing in commercially zoned areas. Mm-hmm. Things like that.
[00:35:43] Ian: We didn’t have any like, budget specific things from the housing perspective. Was that correct? It was all legislative stuff.
[00:35:51] Lincoln: So for the most part, um, one small thing that did actually get passed this year was, um, some funding was set aside to create like a HOA on ombudsman type to help like resolve between HOAs and Yeah. Yeah, yeah. And, uh. And like local residents that live in new choice. Mm-hmm. Like that’s, uh, kind of peripheral to what we’re doing.
And I’m, I would just say that that’s probably not gonna add much new housing, uh, on its own.
[00:36:15] Ian: Right.
[00:36:15] Lincoln: Um, but it is like, yeah. So like some funding was set aside for that.
[00:36:18] Ian: Yeah. I, I would, I would predict that that is going to be a state level office that is going to get way more requests for its services than they have capacity for.
[00:36:28] Lincoln: Yeah. Senator Port. And Rep Howard on the DFL side of things. And then like Rep Igo and Nash on, on the GOP side of things as well as many others, like really supported these bills, came out bi partisanly and like held press conferences and, and pushed these bills through the, the house and Senate housing committees without much pushback.
[00:36:48] Ian: Right?
[00:36:49] Lincoln: This is where we have our, our strongest support. Um, and like I, I really liked working with them. Um. And they’re, they’re really great champions for the type of, uh, policies that, that we think are important to increase the housing supply in the state. But these bills have to be heard in the state and local government subcommittees same as last year.
This is where we start hitting, um, the, the biggest pushback from the bills, right?
[00:37:12] Ian: Um, league of Minnesota Cities, I assume.
[00:37:14] Lincoln: Exactly. There was a hearing scheduled to hear those three bills. Um, but the hearing was eventually canceled, um, as the members of
[00:37:23] Ian: Oh, I remember that one. Yeah, I was, I was about to get onto a bus.
To go over to St. Paul. Exactly. Yeah.
[00:37:28] Lincoln: Yeah. It was kind of a last minute cancellation, which, um, broke a lot of the volunteers hearts that were like planning on attending that day. Yeah, yeah. Um, but the committee members made it clear that they would not support those bills behind, behind closed doors.
Mm-hmm. So the, the bills were pulled and they were, I will say significantly, significantly edited and revised down to include a couple of our much smaller priorities.
[00:37:55] Ian: Hmm.
[00:37:55] Lincoln: So these would include things like a unit of housing or like a home is being built somewhere within the state of Minnesota that for that one housing, that one home, you can only require one parking stall.
Reducing the amount of aesthetic mandates that municipalities could put on homes. The baby is of baby steps. So this package did get a hearing, but it was unfortunately voted down within the, state and local government committee. Yeah. So there was four DFL members and two Republican members that ended up voting against, against the package, which was pretty disheartening,
[00:38:32] Ian: huh huh.
[00:38:33] Lincoln: I’m not gonna say that these policies are like explicitly. Like class driven or racially driven, even though in the past, zoning has definitely been used to keep people of color out of white communities, but the outcome from their zoning practices mean that low income people and people of color just can’t live in these communities comfortably.
So like I think that that is like quite appalling and that’s like one reason why. Like the state needs to take action on this and why? Like the local municipalities can’t really be, be trusted with these issues.
[00:39:07] Ian: Right, right. I mean, if you, if you take a policy that like has its roots in racism Right. That like that Exactly. That, that, that was created for that reason, you definitely, like, you can’t extract yourself in the present from that responsibility. Right? Yeah. Like we have to be doing something about this. Yeah.
[00:39:28] Lincoln: The representatives say the local governments are taking great action to address housing unaffordability, uhhuh, and I think one, an example of what they could have pointed to was this ADU policy in Blaine.
Took forward like 4, 4, 5 years now, and they have received no applications to build ADUs. The earlier this spring, they received one, one application. This specific, ADU was being built by an individual who was an advocate for, um, like low income and, and houseless individuals.
[00:39:58] Ian: Hmm.
[00:39:59] Lincoln: And they wanted to build the A DU specifically to help a family.
Um, kind of take that first step. There was significant pushback from the local community. It was, uh, approved through, through their planning commission, and then it had to go to the local city council, um, for, for final like approval.
[00:40:17] Ian: Mm-hmm.
[00:40:18] Lincoln: And the local city council, even though this was approved by right and for the purposes of renting out the property, that was like in the original ordinance to allow ADUs, they voted against allowing this accessory dwelling unit.
And also implemented a one year bla ban on new applications for ADUs within Blaine, it, it disenfranchises low income and people of color that might have wanted to, to live in this community.
[00:40:43] Ian: Yeah.
[00:40:43] Lincoln: Like all these local jurisdictions, if given the opportunity, are just gonna do nothing and they will just pass the buck.
Right. And they’ll say the next community should do something. The next community should do something. When really what the, what needs to happen is the state needs to come in and say. Like, Hey, we are going to allow these types of homes by right across the state. We have supporters that are both on the DFL and GOP side of things.
And we also have opposition that is on the DFL side, and that is on the, the GOP side. It’s really up to the cities and the city lobbying groups for how hard they wanna fight us on these bills, um, and how much reputational damage they want to take um, in fighting us on these, the main takeaway that I have for your listeners, especially, I mean, especially if you live in greater Minnesota, if you live in.
Like the first ring suburbs or the exurbs of the Twin Cities, Duluth. Rochester, we would love to have you as a part of Neighbors For More Neighbors, like even our most dedicated volunteers. What we’re really asking of you is meet with us for an hour once a week, and then a couple times a year reach out to your state legislators and ask your neighbors to reach out to their state legislatures.
[00:41:47] Ian: Lincoln, thank you for, for coming on the show and.
[00:41:50] Lincoln: Thanks, Ian.
[00:41:50] Ian: Keep your head up man. We’ve, we’ve got next year.
Now let’s chat with Erik Noonan, communications guy at the Bicycle Alliance of Minnesota.
[00:42:04] Erik: It was weird ’cause this was supposed to be a bonding year and it was Right, right. Uh, but it also kind of ended up for us at least, uh, really being a, uh, policy year.
[00:42:14] Ian: Hmm.
[00:42:14] Erik: And also a tee into, um, what will be a policy year next year.
Yes. Uh, with a number of the things that we nearly got past and we’re hopeful we’ll be able to next year.
[00:42:25] Ian: Yeah. Um, and not that you didn’t have. Bonding stuff, right? Like Safe Rides to school needs, uh, needs funding and
[00:42:33] Erik: Correct, yeah. All kinds of stuff. Yeah. Yep. And, and even that, uh, it didn’t end up being funded through the bonding process.
Mm. It ended up being, uh, included in the omnibus, uh, transportation bill. Okay. Uh, because, um, thankfully, and we live in a state where, uh, very few politicians will say, at least on the record, that they’re opposed to kids getting to school safely on their own. And so that tends to be one that we’re able to, um, yeah.
Uh, find bipartisan support for. And so for that one, um, we were able to get that to, uh, $3 million, uh, per biennium. That is down from the historic high in 23. Mm-hmm. Where it was, you know, uh, tens of millions. Right. Uh,
[00:43:07] Ian: but we had a lot of highs in ’23 though.
[00:43:09] Erik: We, we did have a lot of highs in ’23, uh, the literal and figurative.
Um,
[00:43:13] Ian: I know that we were revisiting the e-bike rebate, did we change how that’s structured? Is it still, is it still being funded? What’s the story there?
[00:43:21] Erik: Uh, so it’s still being funded. Um, the funding was not stolen away. There was, uh, a lot more conversation around, um, uh, reallocation of this funding than we wanted to have to deal with.
Mm. And so it’s gonna be a lottery this year? Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. And in addition to that, it’s gonna be a lot closer to what we originally envisioned this as, um, which was very much focused on. Uh, giving the, uh, the resources to the people who would otherwise not be able to afford. Mm-hmm. Um, you know, these transportation devices, uh, so the, the income threshold, um, is, is being changed.
It’s, uh, I believe it’s up to, uh, 78,000, um, household income now, or, and this is the, the new piece of this, uh, if, if you have a, um. You have proof of disability. So if you’ve been filing for disability with the state, again, this is going through, through the Department of Revenue. So they have some, some access to some tax documents.
Mm-hmm. Um, so if, if you’ve, uh, filed for disability two years in a row, uh, with the state.
[00:44:16] Ian: Oh, interesting. Okay.
[00:44:17] Erik: Uh, or can otherwise prove, uh, you know, disability, um, in, within this process, you can also apply for it, but the same amount of money, um, going out, uh, in total. However, uh, the, the amount per rebate is being reduced from a maximum of 1500 down to, um, 750.
Hmm. So more rebates, interesting rebates. Hopefully it’s reaching the people where that impact is going to be maximized. Yeah. Yeah. Uh, and, uh, we hope to see 1% of the state show up again if we’re, we’re being honest about that. But, uh, we’ll, we’ll definitely have, um, some more communication, um, running on that as we learn more about kind of when and where and how this year, what we accomplish in terms of kind of expanding the Overton window, kind of the what, what feels like. Within the realm of possibility, what conversations were being had that had never been had before. Mm-hmm. Um, and what we were going to be able to build upon in future years. Uh, that I think is what we’re gonna look back on 2025 as. Okay. And for the bicycle alliance, that’s a few things. There’s a number of bills that we really came very close to getting passed and not even just getting passed getting passed with like bipartisan support. Mm-hmm. So jaywalking was one that we talked about before, right? That passed the Senate Transportation Committee unanimously. The, uh, kinda co-chair of it, the Republican co-chair, um, said something to the effect of like, this just makes sense, uh, in, in a way that let’s go talk about something else because this should be a done deal.
Mm-hmm. And, uh, in the House we had bipartisan support and the House kind of got to this subject a little bit later than the Senate did the statewide, like police officers association Yeah. Came in and said, um. We don’t want this. The House, uh, Republicans basically got this letter from them and said, no, we’re, we’re not going to support this anymore.
Uh. And I guess our frustration from the Bicycle Alliance is that, you know, we really want data-driven policy and there is not data that we’re aware of. If the police officers association happens to have some, we would love to kind of read, uh, you know, all about that. But yeah. Um, to our knowledge, there’s, there’s no statistical reason for, for this to still exist.
It’s not improving public safety. And, uh, so that’s a conversation we’re hoping to have kind of throughout this year as we lead, you know, go into, uh, the ’26 legislative session.
Mm-hmm.
And again, kind of have that conversation that like, this is a thing that most of us are doing. Uh Right.
[00:46:32] Ian: And, you know, where you need to have that conversation for next year.
Yeah. Right.
[00:46:35] Erik: Yeah. Yeah.
Another kind of big push that we had had, and this was part of a broader conversation about, uh, you know, ensuring that, um. The state resources kinda get used correctly that there’s, uh, no fraud in that. Think we were hoping to have a conversation around that. Uh, for, for an Office of Inspector General at MnDOT.
You know, there’s a lot of statewide mandates around, uh, the way that roadway should be designed, the way that public, um, engagement should be happening to ensure that the most vulnerable road users, the people who are moving about outside of cars mm-hmm. Um. That their voices are heard within this process and that the end result of these, uh, transportation planning processes is, is a transportation system that does work for all users.
And we just have so many examples from around the state of that not happening. So again, this was one that we had bipartisan support for and as you were talking about with Neighbors For More Neighbors, is this kind of made it into committee and. Uh, it didn’t make it out. This is less about there not being a desire for it, um, and much more about just there were other priorities and there’s only so much time within our legislative session.
[00:47:39] Ian: Hmm mm-hmm.
[00:47:40] Erik: So some of the things that we, we came into this really hopeful that we would be able to kind of bundle into, um, small changes that we, we’d be able to bundle into, uh, the Transportation Omnibus bill, um, that are policy changes, uh, such as the other half of the Idaho stop or, um Sure. Uh, it’s basically kind of.
Changing the wording so that it’s a little bit more clear for the fact that, you know, at a red light, if you stop and you wait, Yeah. And you wait a reasonable amount of time Yeah. You can continue on a bicycle. Yeah. Um, you know, that can probably be made more clear ’cause Right. What is a reasonable amount of time.
[00:48:13] Ian: Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Yeah.
[00:48:14] Erik: And then one that, you know, it comes up every year. Um, helmet mandates. Uh, I think that there’s this,
[00:48:19] Ian: oh, who introduced that? Come on.
[00:48:20] Erik: Um, it, it is, it’s, it’s one, you know, the Bicycle Alliance we. You, you should wear a helmet when you’re on a bike. It, it, sure, yeah. But it it, in the event that you, you, um, you run your head into something, it’s probably gonna be better if it’s encased in some foam.
Uh, however, you know, the way to get more people wearing helmets. There’s really no data to support that, that the. Best way to do that is, is through enforcement. Mm-hmm. And there’s a lot of downsides to taking that approach. And, and thankfully we were kind of able to have that conversation, um, effectively yet again that this is one that, you know, we’re willing to explore in a, you know, less, uh, time sensitive, uh, uh, environment as the, the state legislative session.
And so this is one that’s going through some advisory committees to explore the idea. Is this something, would this. Both, um, in theory, but also in practice, make people safer If the way our approach to bicycle safety was through police enforcement, and again, this is not something that the Bicycle Alliance agrees with.
Mm-hmm. Uh, that that’s the best approach. We have quite a bit of data support that enforcement is, uh, actually, you know. Pretty counter to that in terms of, uh, uh, approaching safety. Yeah. We were able to avoid that one. And also bike licenses, which, uh, somebody always brings up. Um Yep. And then we have to have the conversation about, you know, this is, uh, cars don’t pay for their own infrastructure.
Kids aren’t gonna go and, you know, down to the DMV and get a license for their bike. Yeah. Um, yeah. And again, the enforcement aspect of that is just, you know, that’s not the best use of, uh, state resources mm-hmm. Or municipal resources. Again, the conversations that we were able to have around the idea of, um, you know. When we fund transportation as a state that we need to fund transportation. Yeah. And not just car infrastructure. Yep. Uh, we were able to have more conversations around this with more people than any year before. And that, uh, definitely speaks to the strength of the kinda transportation coalition of different nonprofits who are focused on, um, you know, making sure that these are conversations we’re able to have as a state and, uh, that we build a path towards, again, a real. Uh, financial backing for a transportation system that works for everyone.
[00:50:20] Ian: Sweet. Yeah.
Erik, thanks for coming on the show.
[00:50:24] Erik: Thanks for having me, Ian. Yeah,
[00:50:34] Ian: next up is Joe Harrington, policy manager at Our Streets.
[00:50:38] Joe: So we did see a lot of opportunities to kind of, um, push things forward. We were running with, um, what we call the Highway Justice Act this year. It was a, a, a bill that was really geared towards changing the way we finance plan and build highways to center communities and build partnerships with local governments.
And also to clarify that definition of highway purposes, because highways fit a variety of purposes and take very different forms from like Snelling Avenue or Central and Minneapolis and St. Paul, which are, you know, neighborhood thoroughfares. To, you know, major trunk highways to greater Minnesota main streets.
We wanna be able to spend that money to meet those context specific needs. So to be able to build transit, biking and walking infrastructure more appropriate. Um, so that’s kind of the three different pieces we were looking at, at a high level this year.
[00:51:23] Ian: You actually just opened my eyes to something that like.
Like whenever I’ve thought of the, the topic of, oh, we want to be able to use highway funds for doing transit stuff and you know, whatever else. I have always thought of it as like highway BRT projects type stuff. But you’re right, like Snelling Avenue, arcade Street, like there’s tons and tons of local streets that are technically like state or US highways and like if we could use some of those highway funds to like turn Snelling Avenue into a, you know, a BRT. Like, not just arterial BRT, but like a proper, you know, having, uh, you know, real guideway for the bus. Uh, gosh, that would be fantastic. What a, what a great way to like, transform the way that Snelling feels for all modes of transportation.
[00:52:21] Joe: Yeah, absolutely.
I mean, I went to Macalester, Snelling is deep in my heart, um, for a number of reasons. But thinking about a street like that, it, it serves so many different purposes. People, uh, do take the bus along it, people do bike across and along it, and we wanna make sure everyone can be safe and, uh, move in whatever way that they choose to move around their community.
Yeah, so kind of the flip side of this, the other, um, not just the way that we’re financing and, and building highway projects that meet multimodal needs, but we also looked at the way that highway projects are planned. And so we kind of, uh, created a couple of different policy levers to address that. One, uh, pillar of this Highway justice act that we were working around and organizing on was, um, community preferred alternatives.
So thinking about ways that we can. Better engage elected officials in the communities they represent in local context when they’re planning a project like I 94. And then to that same end, we looked at cumulative impacts of transportation. So in 2023, we passed a cumulative impacts law here in Minnesota.
That requires, um, when facilities like incinerators in power plants and factories are built, they consider the impacts to those around them cumulatively. So that means looking at other factors that make people, um, more prone to environmental justice harms in those communities and make sure they’re addressed in whatever investment’s happening.
Um, highways in our state have a much bigger impact on environmental justice than things like factories and incinerators because they’re in so many different types of context. Mm-hmm. And communities and the bill was basically trying to allow, build a process for environmental justice to be centered in highway planning.
Um, by creating, basically in a similar way that the VMT law works, making sure that if that project expands the highway in an environmental justice community, they mitigate those harms to the people who live there. The last piece that we were working on this year was me, basically a measure to get MnDOT more transparent and make sure that they publish information in a variety of different ways.
So creating a centralized. Portal that looks at all of their projects and their transportation spending by their goals. So that’s really an important way to kind of keep accountability and transparency. So unfortunately none of them passed into law. Mm-hmm. Although we’re super proud, again, in the Senate, we were able to, to work with, um, you know, Senator Dibble and a lot of the other, um, great senate staff and, uh, conference committee members, transportation committee members, and, um, highway purposes was one of the provisions that actually passed through the Senate on the bill.
Honestly, because of that, uh, F Line project, the argument around costs and efficiencies was really powerful this year where. You know, we’re in a pretty gloomy state budget outlook. Mm-hmm. And that was a really effective argument to bring people along and say, why would we leave money on the table on some of these major projects?
We can’t really plan transit over here and highways over here when they’re in the same settings in some of these cases. Right. We’ve gotta protect it. All road users, including those who bike, walk, roll, and take transit. I will say for some of these other provisions, um, in the Senate bill, we were also able to secure two provisions that really get at the heart of some of the issues that how MIN dot plans their major projects.
So a provision that changes the way that they build purpose and need documents. ’cause the way you define the problem will prescribe the solution specifically on I 94, 252, and Olson Memorial Highway. Um, Senate leaders put in, uh, language that basically established powers and bylaws for the policy advisory committees on those projects.
They actually set out powers for these, uh, committees to, you know, create better public meeting spaces, to have more opportunities to make formal requests of Minot through resolutions and other powers. Um, again, not ultimately signed into law, but it does really send a strong message to Minot that, you know, we have to do better in engaging communities and building partnerships with local governments on these major projects.
[00:56:05] Ian: One of the things that I admire about Our Streets is that like it’s very flashy to be like the group that like gets things across the finish line at the end that’s like, oh yeah, we, you know, we accomplished X, Y, and Z. This is now law. But Our Streets is always like pushing the Overton window, right? Like thinking really far ahead about like, what will we be able to accomplish in the future and how do we start that conversation now, which is like an equally uh, critical part of the puzzle as you know, the end result of getting it across the line. How are we feeling about next year?
[00:56:39] Joe: There’s, I’ve got mixed feelings. I think one, no one knew what would happen this year and a lot more moved than we were expecting. Um, so I think there are still some opportunities and I think looking at the fiscal element of highways is really important.
Kind of broadening language, like fix it first, kind of broadening language, like fix it first.
[00:56:56] Ian: Joe, any other final thoughts before we say goodbye?
[00:57:00] Joe: You know, I just, uh, I’m glad to be here. I, I also wear a streets.MN hat, and it’s my first time on the show, so, uh, very, uh, you know, appreciative of the space.
And, uh, thank you Ian. Uh, I appreciate it.
[00:57:11] Ian: Awesome. Thanks for coming on. And thank you for joining us for this episode of the streets.mn podcast. The show is released under a creative commons attribution, non-commercial, non derivative license. So feel free to republish the episode as long as you are not altering it and you are not profiting from it.
The music in this episode is by Erik Brandt in the Urban Hillbilly Quartet. This episode was hosted and edited by me, Ian R Buck, and was transcribed by Stina Neel. Find other listeners and discuss this episode on your favorite social media platform using the hashtag Streets podcast. Until next time, take care.