Hear from some of our favorite advocacy organizations what happened at the 2026 Minnesota legislative session, and what we’re carrying forward into next year!
Links
- The 2026 Urbanist Legislative Agenda
- Streets.mn summer picnic
- Our Streets legislative summary
- Move Minnesota legislative summary
- BikeMN
- Sustain Saint Paul
- Other orgs that weren’t available for the episode
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, edited, and transcribed by Ian R Buck with editing assistance from Stina Neel. Many thanks to Joe Harrington, Nas Nourkadi, CJ Lindor, and Jacob Hooper 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
[00:00:02] Ian: 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. At long last, our 2026 legislative session wrap up episode. First up, let’s chat with Joe Harrington with Our Streets.
[00:00:25] Joe: Hey Ian, great to see you as always. I’m the policy manager at Our Streets, so among many other things, I get to lead our legislative work and work alongside a lot of our partners, both inside and outside the capital and in the communities where we work. So grateful to kind of bring those two worlds together.
[00:00:43] Ian: Yeah! All right, so 2026 legislative session briefly remind us like what what Our Streets was going for this year.
[00:00:51] Joe: Yeah, I think, I mean, generally speaking, it’s good to put it all in context. I mean, this was the first session that the legislature came back together and again had a divided house and a one-seat majority for the DFL in the Senate. First time coming back since the assassination of Melissa Hortman and her husband. Also the attempted assassination of Senator Hoffman, the Annunciation shooting, Operation Metro Surge, and really big impacts from, especially in human services, from the “big, beautiful bill.” You know, if you can call it that, “big ugly bill.” So there were a lot of kind of emerging and I would say very urgent crises that the legislature had to contend with this year. Transportation had a role to play in that. A lot of the same communities that have been facing federal action are also living under conditions that are caused by other decisions that we’ve made in our public policy past. So there were a few things that did move like a bonding bill, for example, that I’ll talk about in a moment. But for the most part, a lot of policy conversations which generally happen in the year without a budget, the even years, they didn’t really move super far. So there wasn’t a whole lot of active movement there. And as a brief refresher, we were able to pass certain elements in the Senate bill in 2025, including highway purposes, which is a longstanding goal of advocates to basically redefine or clarify the definition of a highway to have more flexible funding for biking, walking, rolling, and transit along those roads. And that takes everything from I-94 down to Snelling Avenue or Central Avenue like a neighborhood thoroughfare or suburban thoroughfare, or even a greater Minnesota Main Street. So we’re building on that momentum. We’re building on momentum of getting better project development processes and public engagement on major projects like I-94 and 252. And we came into that session trying to build on that energy. So our “fix it first, fix it right” package, which would really tamp down on highway expansions and prioritize smart maintenance across the state. That was heard twice in the house and once in the Senate. And we feel great about having that conversation really kick off. And we have a huge maintenance backlog. It’s almost $17 billion by the mid-2030s. So we have a huge problem. And functionally, what we’re doing is asking taxpayers to pay for two states’ worth of roads here in Minnesota. A good maintenance program that actually focuses on the foundation of the road, so what’s underneath, will over time shrink our maintenance gap and build really good family supporting jobs across the state. A really intentional maintenance program is a jobs program. So we’re excited to have that conversation continue next year and are grateful to Erin Koegel from Spring Lake Park who retired from the legislature this year for leading that conversation with Senator Doron Clark as well. We’re also really excited to see some of the language around “fix it right,” which is kind of our follow-on to that bill. That would really think about how we incorporate multimodal planning into MnDOT’s project development process. It’s much easier to really, again, do that on the front end and think about how you can integrate multimodal elements and even study a reduced size of the road when you build it back. Something simpler and better set up to meet the traffic needs in an area. There were a few other active conversations this year that kind of built on ’25 and prepared for next year in 2027. That included some efforts to really reimagine how Metro sales tax dollars for transit are spent encouraging the Met Council to really build a broader vision for transit and include land use and efficiency for the transit system and riders so they can enjoy a system that’s possible not only possible but preferred so eventually kind of giving people a really competitive transportation choice that’s more affordable and accessible and safer. Yeah, it’s grateful Katie Jones, Representative Katie Jones, convened a conversation on that among advocates and it’s rare you have some legislators including Representative Larry Kraft and Representative Samantha Sencer-Mura who really wanted to get in the weeds with us as advocates and they convened the series of conversations there so exciting to see that develop next year. One last note that’s kind of a lot of the core policies that we worked on. There was a lot of defensive work on the vehicle miles traveled law. I do want to think about how that relates next year and our legislative planning but I would definitely be remiss if I didn’t talk about automated vehicles in this conversation.
[00:05:08] Ian: Yeah, I saw a lot about that on your blog.
[00:05:11] Joe: Yeah, it’s an interesting and very emerging conversation that I don’t think most advocates were prepared for this session. We were a little bit ahead of the curve with our partnerships with labor. We’ve really done a lot of intentional work there and I think our work and their work kind of grows from shared solidarity of trying to improve the lives of people who’ve been really negatively impacted by the transportation system. You know, again, just to put it in a perspective, automated vehicles really just add an automated layer onto the already problematic kind of overbuilt car oriented system that we have. They don’t necessarily solve an articulated problem so you’ll hear people talk about safety, you’ll hear people talk about accessibility. I think both of those things, again, the smartest approaches to combat safety is they already exist and we choose not to prioritize them. Same with accessibility.
[00:06:02] Ian: So let’s take a step back for just a second. Why was this a conversation at the state level this year? Who brought it to the table? Are we talking about automated vehicles in general or is this specifically in commercial context? Does this affect what individual people would be able to own in terms of an automated, fully autonomous vehicle, etc? What are we talking here?
[00:06:34] Joe: Yeah, I appreciate you pulling that back a bit getting to the higher level because I think there’s still a lot of conversations in general in the public that have yet to happen. This is a big part of that. The conversation really kicked off because December 1st Waymo announced that they were going to begin testing in Minneapolis. That testing period still has a human driver in the vehicle but they’re doing what they call “mapping.” So they’re trying to understand using the technology on those vehicles, the automated driving system itself, trying to look around, understand the context and eventually set themselves up for driving autonomously is their hope. I think that December 1st came out of the blue for many folks and there had been, you know, again, Waymo is a large company, parent company is Google, and there hasn’t really been a good faith conversation with the public on, “is this something we really want? Is this something we really need and what problems does it solve?” And that’s something that I think I’m really appreciative that some of the state legislators that we work with, including Senator Dibble, Senator McEwen, Senator Maye Quade, on the House side, a representative Sencer-Mura, really did a good job asking those important questions. How is this going to impact workers primarily because this is an existential level threat to many drivers who keep us safe on the roads every day, including transit operators, truck drivers, rideshare drivers, and others, thinking about impacts to traffic safety, thinking about impacts to our infrastructure itself. There’s a lot of these automated vehicles spend a lot of time circulating empty, “deadheading,” so there’s a kind of a conflict there between our desire to reduce vehicle miles traveled and having these vehicles circulate empty. So all these questions and many more to a really top of mind as the legislature came back into session this year, and I think we had the opportunity as advocates and as partners to the labor movement to really think critically on, is this something we need or is it a distraction from the underlying problems and solutions that we’re all working towards? I’m definitely more in the latter camp and Our Streets is against automated vehicles deployment, but when we talk about the automated vehicle systems that they were working to regulate, it was more larger kind of commercial networks of automated vehicles, like Waymo, who would own a fleet of vehicles that would be circulating. There are automated driving systems in the works for personal vehicles. Tesla is an example of this, and on the safety side, they have found that those systems are a lot less safe than, you know, your kind of conventional driver at the current moment with Tesla. So that’s kind of how this all kicked off, and you know, essentially the state has a new type of vehicle that they need to regulate and they need to do it quickly. That was kind of the argument that Waymo is lobbyists. They hired a very expensive lobbying shop to represent them at the capital and put a lot of resources into getting their kind of argument in front of legislators and really capitalizing on excitement around the new technology that ultimately didn’t materialize. Pretty even deadlock in the house, nothing was able to move forward. In the Senate, Senator Dibble brought a much more thoughtful package to regulating the vehicles that didn’t come from the company itself and addressed some of the really big questions on liability and how it’s going to impact transportation systems and safety and local impacts. So it’s great to see that conversation begin. It’s going to continue next year and really the priorities for all of us should be protecting workers, protecting those who use our roads and streets in a variety of ways, especially those who bike, walk, roll, and use transit because, you know, even if you have an automated driver, that’s still more exposure for pedestrians, for cyclists, for those who are using any type of mobility assistance device and for transit riders who are always a pedestrian at some point of their trip. We’re coming into another session this year. It’s certainly on MnDOT’s mind. They’ve spent a lot of money on ad campaigns on Instagram and Facebook to try and raise the profile and excitement around this without actually having a conversation with Minnesotans and engaging folks on whether or not we want it.
[00:10:35] Ian: So right now, the conversation has started. None of those bills actually passed this year, neither the industry version nor Senator Dibble’s version. What is the legal landscape of autonomous vehicles operating without either of those bills being in place? Like, is it legal for them to drive on public roads at all right now or is it like an Air Bud situation? Like, nobody said it was illegal, therefore it’s legal.
[00:11:01] Joe: Yeah, great question. I would classify it probably as a murky gray area.
[00:11:08] Ian: That’s what we love to hear in law.
[00:11:11] Joe: Yeah, no kidding. You know, it goes down to, you know, a few things. I mean, one, a lot of our statute, especially that has to do with kind of road safety and rules of the road and so on. Reference “the driver.” And it’s not clear how you would approach that if it’s not actually being driven by a person. It’s actually interesting. The term “natural person” is now what they’re using in the language in some of these bills. So I think there’s a big open question there and there’s other bigger issues around liability safety. Like, as far as the law itself is concerned, it’s a gray area. So it would be a risk for the company to do so. And, you know, this is not a new trend, but companies like Waymo often will kind of hold these things over legislators and say, “if you don’t pass a law, we’re going to just operate anyway,” which is just not good practice. But it’s kind of an empty thread in a lot of ways. They’re trying to do the same with the city of Minneapolis now saying that they’ll start operating in the fall. So it’s a way that they can kind of strong-arm folks into creating regulation on their timeline, as opposed to having a thoughtful and thorough public discussion and building public policy that reflects the public interest. A couple other things. You know, someone who I really respect and admire Jim Erkel, he always has a saying, “the next session starts as soon as the legislature says, “sine die, adjourn.” I think that’s definitely true. And this year we’re really thinking about and building towards 2027. There’s a couple of active conversations that are part of that. One, we’re continuing to see major federal impacts on large infrastructure mega projects in Minnesota. There’s other major impacts on environmental review. And we’re in the weeds of that with partners trying to answer the question, what happens when the federal government backs away from Minnesota values like environmental justice, equity, class, race, climate change, public health, and so on. And I think there’s a really big open question there around how MnDOT has approached that and the Met Council on the Blue Line. MnDOT and Met Council are both kind of walking back our state values that are articulated in planning documents and laws and statutes and other kind of, I guess, public apologies or speeches that both the legislators but also the governor and their administration have made. It’s very troubling to see that because again, we’re a state that has been under attack from the administration and we want to ensure that we’re insulating our biggest projects and investments so they actually benefit people. And when we remove language from environmental reviews, it’s more than a cosmetic change. It changes what’s legally analyzed. So we’re seeing that on Blue Line, we’re really seeing it on I-94 and 252 and on those two projects. It really makes the most sense to pause them, really think carefully about the way that we’re actually upholding our state values as opposed to eliminating that language and thus those protections from those projects. That’s super important both in general to uphold our values but also on these particular projects to make sure that a good project emerges that actually makes the lives and the mobility of people better and make sure again that only systems that benefit Minnesotans should be allowed to operate here. So appreciate the conversation today and look forward to in a few months talking more about what lies ahead in 2027.
[00:14:28] Ian: Oh gosh, “in a few months.” Yeah, it really isn’t that far away, is it? Here we are chatting with Nas Nourkadi from Move Minnesota. What’s your title again?
[00:14:45] Nas: I am now. It changes frequently. Right now it’s the Senior Policy Organizer, which I’m excited about. Okay, what did I love? I love seeing our partners and transit advocates show up because it did happen at the Capitol and advocate on behalf of their interests and some creative new ideas and bring back some old ones. What did I not like that happen? Once again, transit cuts return. They wanted to zero out the general fund of appropriations, which was about like 41.7 million dollars.
[00:15:16] Ian: And when you say they like that, that was like Walz’s…
[00:15:20] Nas: Oh, yes, the governor’s supplemental budget recommendations. It’s not a budget year, but obviously, you know, the talking point is that they’re reacting to the current fiscal and also social climate. So transportation is being sacrificed once again. And the thing about losing the last portion of dollars, it’s especially drastic, it’s so much harder to get the general fund appropriations reinstated once you zero out because now you’re basically proposing a new line item. So it’s a devastating final blow. So to everyone’s surprise that came back and we were able to avoid it. Yeah.
[00:15:58] Ian: Now, of course, like like the the rationale on the governor’s end for this was like, “well, we’ve got the three quarter cent sales tax, you know, that is that is going straight to transit.” And obviously, like, that’s not a good argument in the first place because the whole point of that sales tax was to allow us to expand the current offerings. But also like, I feel like it doesn’t address the fact that like, there are a lot of transit agencies outside of the Twin Cities, right? And those rely on the general fund, right?
[00:16:29] Nas: Yeah, yeah. So I’m pretty sure that that’s true. But I mean, it’s also true that like at the legislature, they’re not often there to advocate for themselves at all. So they’re kind of like the whims of like a series of institutions that make decisions for them when they don’t have a large advocacy presence. I mean, that’s one of the most difficult, speaking to the rationale you just brought up, I can absolutely understand how it looks. But the money that we got with the three quarter cent sales tax was like the bare minimum. We were in such a dire situation beforehand, like just to remind people, Metro Transit was operating in the red. Like this wasn’t some like like futuristic, We’re going to have flying buses in 10 years. This was just like an existential situation that we’re experiencing for our transportation needs.
[00:17:18] Ian: So many other like transit agencies throughout the country are still in a death spiral, right? We were one of the few who managed to get ourselves out of that by passing the three quarter cent sales tax.
[00:17:29] Nas: Yes. This wasn’t a kumbaya tax. This was survival.
[00:17:32] Ian: Yeah. So okay, so we didn’t zero out the transit line item for the general fund. Did it get reduced?
[00:17:42] Nas: It was untouched. There was no there was no line item that affected the overall transportation budget from the general fund.
[00:17:51] Ian: Good, good, good. I remember a surprise this year, which was that some Republican brought up like, “hey, should we consolidate all of the transit agencies in the Twin Cities?” Which is like, I feel like it’s something that I can see a Republican legislator from outside of the Twin Cities thinking, well, “this is really going to stick it to them. Like let’s hurt transit.” But it’s a topic that like I feel like has been in the back of the minds of many urbanists in the Twin Cities of like, “why do we have all these different transit agencies?” Yeah. What is Move Minnesota’s take on that?
[00:18:26] Nas: We were so we were actually the only there were about 20 testifiers and we were the only people I testified actually in support of consolidation. So, but with some caveats, I have two like major concerns and considerations that were prerequisites to actual full support. But I think it’s a good idea. Like it’s it’s not lost on me that we should have stronger regional coordination and our sales tax should be expanding our public transportation system for everybody. But I will say like if I recall correctly, the bill outlined a preliminary draft consolidation plan that needed to be created by the first, February first of next year. But that gives them like literally, I think it was like five months to have like made the plan come up with it and then presented to the legislature. But there were no means of approval no matter what they came up with they would have had to have done it. So any consequential implementation considerations that the bill like recognizes might happen have to be resolved in a real time alongside implementation. So, that was actually the kind of scary. So, these opt-out agencies showed up and were like, hey, you know, they had riders testify and I was really glad that they did this. Like, riders testified, people said like, “hey, this is how much these rocks mean to me. And I don’t want to lose their service.” And then meanwhile, legislators might say like “you wouldn’t lose your service. Don’t worry. We’re only going to like get rid of the most extremely high subsidy routes.” But it’s actually a little unsure what exactly would happen just because the plan gets immediately implemented. And it seemed like the Metropolitan Council could almost like veto the other people on the task force that had to come up with the plan like no matter what like it was almost if they had to consider them. The language wasn’t perfect.
[00:20:09] Ian: Right. And then the devil’s always in the details.
[00:20:12] Nas: Yes. Yes. And on the on the task force that had to make the implementation plan, where no transportation advocacy orgs, no spots for transit riders, or like any kind of community organization as designated appointees, which is it’s just like not low-key. It’s definitely a red flat. So that was the other thing that was like, yeah, that’s difficult as well. But I actually support the virtues of like a stronger consolidated transit force that serves everyone in this like Metro and extended area. I think that’s a great idea obviously.
[00:20:40] Ian: Right. So probably good that like the conversation has started. And now we can hash out like what those details need to be like, you know, do we do we require that they keep all existing routes in place for at least, you know, two years or whatever after consolidation? Yes. While- I’m not going to get into all the details of like what I think would be appropriate. But like that, you know, just like exactly that’s like the starting point of let’s let’s have this conversation.
[00:21:07] Nas: Exactly. And also like these opt out agencies have very unique services that people have become dependent on. Like Southwest Prime is one of the highest subsidy things ever. It’s basically like it’s almost like a ride share app. You order it. It’s extremely cheap.
[00:21:22] Ian: Yeah, it’s that balance of like, okay, having multiple agencies does mean that we have had innovations come out of some of those agencies, but also in ways that are like they act very territorial. Okay. So any other significant transit related stuff that happened this year?
[00:21:42] Nas: Yeah, there’s there’s definitely some things to mention. First on the funding aspect, which is important. We did Move Minnesota Action made a big push to get the the bonding asked, you know, written in paper, written in legislation, and it did exist, but it didn’t go anywhere. It did not get implemented, which is really difficult. We wanted it 75 million dollars to develop the H Line from from downtown Minneapolis, East Side State Paul. I think the legislation might have ended up just being a general bonding asked just to the Metropolitan Council, which is fine, but it didn’t get implemented. So it’s just like, there’s definitely neglect of transit. And I don’t want to sound insensitive. I know what’s at stake right now. I know what’s happening. I know the considerations that have to be implemented from things like AI job loss to an up to a federal occupation to our revenue projections to general affordability from like domestic and foreign policy, like people are fighting so many fronts. It’s difficult.
[00:22:40] Ian: Yeah, but that was that was true two years ago as well. And like we got so much done. Like it can happen. We can fight all these fights.
[00:22:52] Nas: Yes, exactly. It is it is clear to me that there are individuals that see transit solely as a social safety net. And not as like a beautiful way to live. And when they see that it’s just good enough, it doesn’t need to get modified or funded in any way. But it’s so much more than I mean, it works great when it’s a social safety net for people. But also at the same time, like we want to capture individuals who can drive who who have driven who actually don’t want to because the service is competitive enough for them to take transportation. These are the investments to take care of affordability, car costs or no secret. So it’s it’s difficult to make that sell. But also at the same time, I think it’s so necessary. So we really hope to come back stronger here at Move and also, you know, as a as a full transportation front at the legislature, alongside our partners in the future to like ensure bonding dollars to bus rapid transit to transportation operations in general whatever it may be. But I mean, I love representative Jones. And just speaking of her work, there are some creative solutions that she was bringing that weren’t necessarily like last minute funding moments. But I don’t know how familiar you are with her bill that we worked a lot on. It’s HF4449, nicknamed “transit for a resilient metro,” this is a bill that even the Republican caucus were like, “I think this is actually a pretty good idea.” They still said no to it because I mean, they didn’t let anything go through that one set like some strong KPI, key performance indicators for transportation, whether it was like making sure that they are mandated to increase speed and reliability that they can keep a hold of their operating costs that they have to increase service density, like the amount of people that live near BRT. This bill even allowed would allow the Metropolitan Council to buy and develop land around their their transit capital infrastructure projects. So you don’t get a light rail stock built and then our apartment gets built seven years later and things happen in tandem.
[00:24:56] Ian: The model from the 1800s of like land baron buys up a bunch of land because he knows that he’s about to build a street car line that goes out to the middle of nowhere. But it’s okay because he just built a bunch of things. But we’re going to get for the public good this time.
[00:25:13] Nas: I felt so embarrassed. I was scratching my head about this because I was like, “oh my god, we’re not already doing this. We are not doing these things at the same exact time.” The bill would ensure that when you’re tearing up the street and doing it in, you have to keep in mind the transit plans for that corridor. Like Lyndale gets torn up year and a half ago or whatever. Meanwhile, we’re having at the same time conversations about the future of Lyndale. Maybe we could save some money and do these at the same exact time. I’m looking forward to what we have to bring back next year. And we don’t have to go through every like the line items of each one of these, but we’re going to be bringing back commuter benefits next year. Like that’s something that we really want. We got it in writing Senator McEwen’s championing it. It’s like a great idea. Just to make transit as competitive as possible in tandem with making sure it’s fully funded is our priority. We’re also bringing back like speaking to the people who are most hurt and vulnerable right now. We have considerations for them. We want free fare pilots in areas that are also food insecure. Like we know free fare pilots work with getting people on there. But we also want to like ease other things like food insecurity and hunger is such a major crisis. And when you know transportation at the center of every single one of these issues, it’s like important for us to do that work as well. And then also last funding thing, we really want to get, I don’t know how familiar you all are with the details of the motor vehicle sales tax. But the way it’s actually written is is no more than 60% can go to highways and no less than 40% of it can go to transit. That’s the absolute maximum. You can have it 100 transit zero highways right now today. Effectively, it is 60% goes to highways and 40% sure that we have the bare minimum. If you even move it to a 50/50 split, it’s more than a hundred million dollars for transit
[00:26:55] Ian: And if you pair that with the efforts to clarify that highway dollars can be used for transit. Like things that are in a highway corridor, but we want to improve transit in that corridor.
[00:27:11] Nas: Exactly. We’re coming back to support highway purposes as well. Both of these items, we’re not even increasing taxes to get more dollars for the transportation base. We are making smarter legislation based on people’s what people actually want. If you poll people about these things, you’ll find that people actually do think it’s a good idea. Like there are so many creative solutions to getting funding for transportation outside of just like fighting tooth and nail to survive the recommendations for obliterating transit funds. Like we don’t only have to be reactive and we’re going to make sure that we come back and do all these things. It’s so important that at the center of the conversation about public transportation are actually transit riders. People can reach out to us at any point in time and just be like, “hey, I think this would be a great idea.” And it’s like, yeah, what’s actually talk about it? I would love to hear that.
[00:28:07] Ian: Nice. All right, Nas, thanks for coming on the show with us.
[00:28:10] Nas: Thank you for having me. I really appreciate it.
[00:28:18] Ian: Before we continue, let’s take a quick break in the parklet. We have a couple of Streets.mn events that I want to tell you about. This Saturday, August 8th from noon to 3pm will be our annual summer picnic. We’ll be in the community room at the Galtier Tower apartments in Lowertown St. Paul. Entrees will be provided. Please bring a side or dessert to share. Check the link in the show notes for more details and to RSVP via Eventbrite so that we know how many people to expect. The second event will be particularly interesting to anyone listening to this episode. We’re teaming up with Our Streets to host a structured panel discussion and social hour focused on what if we elect transportation champions. The panel will be moderated by our very own Stina Neel, with guests from Sierra Club, BikeMN, Neighbors for More Neighbors, Sustain St. Paul and Our Streets. This is about as close to a live Streets.mn Podcast show as you can get. It will be the evening of September 17th at Arbeiter Brewing. More details to come, but it will be a ticketed event to cover space costs. Next up, let’s chat with CJ Lindor, Education and Policy Manager at BikeMN.
[00:29:37] CJ: This is the second year of the biennium, so we were carrying through a legislative agenda that we had introduced in the first year of the biennium. The agenda was kind of three legs, one being policies that we grouped together under the term, freedom to move, supporting safe and responsible choices around traffic. Another was around fiscal responsibility and transportation, looking at the inequitable ways that our transportation dollars have been used, less spending on car centric infrastructure and more spending on active transportation and including transit options. And then a third leg of our agenda was around kind of accountability for projects, so both in terms of like past legislation that has passed like the greenhouse gas reduction targets in the VMT, the vehicle mile traveled reduction targets, making sure that our state agencies are faithfully executing the directives that the legislature has passed, as well as accountability for projects. And there’s mechanisms that we proposed to to add some accountability, including an inspector general, which which ultimately is what the legislature decided to go with. Ian, can I say at the top too, the kind of the the direction that we got from legislative leadership, it wouldn’t be worth bringing forth legislation to the committee unless we expected it to have bipartisan support. And so certainly, you know, part of what we did going into the session was to to set up meetings and to reach out to legislators on both sides and to present our agenda to ask for feedback, to ask for support. And based on that, that that pretty naturally narrowed down what we could actually focus on for this session.
[00:31:38] Ian: Yeah, so were you looking for like, we want to have at least one sponsor from both the DFL side and the GOP side?
[00:31:48] CJ: Ideally, we would have had, yes, a sponsor or somebody who signed on as an author, a co-author from each of the parties, the major parties, that didn’t necessarily guarantee passage in committee.
[00:32:00] Ian: Okay, so you mentioned let’s start with some like good news. You said inspector general, that is the direction that the legislation that decided to go with. What did we end up with there?
[00:32:14] CJ: So, you know, we were looking at an inspector general specifically for transportation and the legislature as a whole was broadly interested in kind of this theme of waste, fraud, and abuse and coming out from different places, but arriving at a concurrence that some additional oversight would be wanted and welcomed. The legislature did approve a new office of inspector general that would have oversight over all of the state agencies, which I will include not only transportation and the Department of Health and Agriculture and as well as like public safety and that came about independently. It was not through transportation, it was not our suggested language that ultimately got used for that, but because it was very much aligned with what we were suggesting, we’re like, “great, you’ve come up with the same solution and you’ve got a language that you like. We’ll be happy to support and applaud that.” I will say to though, from conversations with agency staff as well as some legislators that there is a degree of skepticism about how effective that office will be. We’ll be probably prepared to offer improvements if and when we see a need, if something isn’t working the way that we had imagined.
[00:33:39] Ian: Any other, what other fun stuff do we have to talk about?
[00:33:41] CJ: In this past session, all right, we kind of had maybe two topics that consumed most of a bandwidth in transportation. One of those we were excited to talk about because it’s something that we brought forward as an issue that needs to be solved. That issue was around e-bikes and e-motos. So what we were proposing here to do was to clarify that two or three wheel vehicles that have a motor and don’t fit the definition for an electric assist e-bike because they’re too fast or too powerful or otherwise non-compliant should be regulated according to the vehicle type that they actually are. Well, we need to enforce the existing labeling and disclosure requirements that we have for retailers so that consumers know what products they are purchasing and what their rules for operation on those are and obviously that’s continuing to be a topic of conversation. Cut to the end where the legislature ultimately did not act on that bill and so nothing got solved. But in terms of the awareness of the issue, we’re pleased with how much more attention is being brought to that to the point where we’re seeing local police departments and sheriff’s offices and other public safety groups putting out public information announcements, PSAs, videos, fact sheets, things like that to try to increase and improve the public understanding about regulations and requirements for different vehicle types and actually a lot of the benefit from bringing the legislation is just the opportunity to talk about what is it already on the books in our transportation statutes because largely we have existing statutes that cover most of these vehicle types and what’s what’s really missing is a common understanding that’s shared by the public by retailers and manufacturers and industry as well as government so regulators and enforcement. That that common understanding is really what’s missing. So by in some ways by leaving the issue unresolved still needing to have some attention brought to it, it keeps open the door for continuing these kind of public education campaigns and continuing to bring to shine a spotlight on the issue of unregulated motor vehicles that are all over our streets and sidewalks. So one of the regulatory bodies that we’ve been calling on to step up and do more has been the Attorney General’s office. They regulate interstate commerce. They’re the ones who should be holding to account the retailers who are selling these devices. The retailers are required to provide disclosures to consumers about the product they’re purchasing, what it’s classified as, what regulations apply, where and how it can be used. Those disclosures are not happening as often or everywhere that they should be. The other requirement that the Attorney General’s office is responsible for enforcing compliance on has to do with labeling. Devices that meet the three-class system should be labeled as such and devices that don’t meet the three-class system for e-bikes also need to be labeled as such and of course that’s not happening either. So it’s not just the you know cops that are out on the streets and trails that we’re asking to do an enforcement. It’s actually upstream from that before these devices ever get into the hands of consumers. There are supposed to be laws and protections to make sure that people know what they’re getting and know what they need to do to use it legally. That was one where we did have bipartisan authors on it. It did get brought into committee. It advanced through committee on track. All session we were feeling pretty confident that this is going to be an example of successful bipartisan legislation that navigates a challenging legislative session. I guess that’s a couple things that happened late in session. One, very late in session in the last week before committee deadline. In the Senate there were some new pieces of legislation that got introduced that BikeMN opposed to regulate to add regulations just for e-bikes. One of those would have added a helmet requirement for riders under the age of 18 and the other one would have permitted local jurisdictions to create and enforce speed limit specific for e-bikes. That language went into conference committee and got combined with the E-moto clarification bill, which is not what we wished for. That certainly complicated things because now we have a piece of legislation that we helped to champion being weighted down with specific provisions that we didn’t support. The other thing that came up very late in session was that the off-highway motorcycle lobby group and constituency had concerns about the language changes because I mentioned off highway vehicles as one of the types of devices that e-motos might fit under. That opened up a separate debate that we weren’t really aware about related to quad vehicles, four by four, four wheel drive vehicles being used on off highway trails. I guess there’s a whole contentious issue about whether electrified quads should be allowed to operate on these trails that historically have been for for ATVs and dirt bikes. Because our bill touched on a statute that mentioned off highway vehicles and this was an issue that the environmental and natural resources committee was debating and not finding agreement on, the suggestion was that they would use the E-moto clarification bill as the vehicle to do policy changes related to off highway ATVs, which clearly was never the interest of the Bicycle Alliance of Minnesota. Because of the late stuff around helmet requirements and speed limits for e-bikes and because of this environmental committee concern about electric ATVs being linked to e-motos both of those at the very end of session were too much to resolve on short notice and so we agreed that it would be better to rather than try to rush something through or compromise it would benefit everybody to go to go back and revisit these issues and bring in kind of all the stakeholders including the off highway vehicle folks to figure out what is the best path forward for regulating these. And in the meantime-
[00:40:25] Ian: So those are conversations that BikeMN can have before next session right?
[00:40:29] CJ: Yeah 100%, 100%.
[00:40:31] Ian: There we go how about J-walking how did J-walking go?
[00:40:35] CJ: You know what I that was maybe one of my larger disappointments and I set myself up for that because I, based on the previous session we’d had really positive conversations we had not heard a lot of opposition or pushback from that and so I really went into the session feeling like this might be one of the easier places that we might find common agreement on this like this this seems like a common sense thing you know legislators on both sides from both parties would nod an agreement when we kind of describe the issue and propose how we were linking to decriminalize it. Because I set myself up with that belief that we were all on the same page that this was a problem that should be solved and there’s an easy solution it was extra disappointing when that didn’t happen I guess.
[00:41:24] Ian: Was this one of the things that got like winnowed out by just not having sponsors from both sides of the aisle?
[00:41:34] CJ: I mean essentially yes. So we did have a bill we did have an author from the previous session so it’s carried over it didn’t need any extra work however it didn’t make it into a committee agenda because we couldn’t get commitments that there would be bipartisan votes in which to pass it out of committee. And I think that was mostly coming from leadership in the individual conversations with legislators that we had we didn’t hear opposition to it but in committee there’s a lot of deference to the leadership and so because we didn’t win over the leadership we didn’t even bring it into committee it never got brought up. Real disappointing we’ll keep going with that but yeah I really thought that 26 was a year when we would be able to check this off the box and celebrate a success.
[00:42:23] Ian: All right so besides the inspector general any other successes anything else that like fully crossed the finish line?
[00:42:28] CJ: there were some other things that got done. They weren’t necessarily on the policy side but we did see some money going into transportation in ways that can benefit active transportation so we saw an unexpected bonding bill for safe routes to school that got an extra one million dollars into that program that was a welcomed accomplishment from this past session so there were you know there were some individual projects and some a couple trails that got pieces of funding or some corridors where they would they included upgrades to pedestrian or bike facilities as part of the project so there were some positive things that will get done and will have an impact for years to come. So it wasn’t it wasn’t like it was a total loss. On the policy side however none of the policies that we were hoping to see get changed did.
[00:43:20] Ian: Thanks for coming on the show.
[00:43:22] CJ: It’s a pleasure to talk to you as always thanks for doing the show thanks for doing the podcast really appreciate your work.
[00:43:36] Ian: yeah it’s always a pleasure. Here we are chatting with Jacob Hooper who is a staff member at Sustain St Paul. Remind me what your position is again?
[00:43:43] Jacob: Hi Ian! I’m the director of operations and advocacy for Sustain St Paul.
[00:43:50] Ian: And Sustain St Paul is a part of the Yes to Homes coalition here in Minnesota so we’re going to be chatting about the the coalition’s efforts at the state legislature this year. What were the things that that were on our list of priorities at the beginning?
[00:44:06] Jacob: So the Yes to Homes coalition this year rallied around something called the Minnesota Starter Home Act which is essentially a combination of several previous years of other other separate bills so our strategy this year was to really combine a lot of those into one bill with some negotiation around not necessarily requiring cities to do every single one of those items but allowing them to choose from a menu this menu is built out of options.
[00:44:41] Ian: you have to reach a certain number of points but you you get to choose one of the points…
[00:44:47] Jacob: yes so one city might choose to do the the missing middle stuff and the parking stuff but not choose to do you know other elements; or or might choose to do this but not choose to do the lot size requirements or whatever. And various cities would also get credit for things that they had already done, right? So in the case of St Paul you know we’ve already done the missing middle stuff we’ve already ended parking minimums right and so we wouldn’t have to do that again. And so all of these have then been been combined and and chiefly the negotiation then over the year has been like how many how many of these would would a city be required to do how many points do they have to earn by doing these various things and and that’s that’s where the that’s what the shape of the negotiations really was was like throughout the year is “since you’re asking us to do all of these things you know to what extent do we have to do all of them?”
[00:45:41] Ian: okay and was that the only bill that the Yes to Homes coalition was focusing on?
[00:45:46] Jacob: that was the chief bill that the Yes to Homes coalition was focusing on there were other bills that a lot of groups involved with Yes to Homes have been working on as as mentioned there’s the single stair stuff, there’s land value tax, there were other things. At a certain point the homeowners association stuff got separated out and passed-
[00:46:05] Ian: okay that’s interesting because I was going to comment like the the homeowners association stuff seems like it would have the most broad appeal right? I was really curious to find out like how did this strategy of like pairing that up with other more polarizing things like parking minimums right how did that go? And it got separated out.
[00:46:23] Jacob: I’ll be clear that I wasn’t super involved in the HOA legislation so I don’t know all the specifics of exactly what elements of it succeeded right? And so I don’t know if everything that was in the Minnesota starter home act for the HOA reforms ended up moving through. But I know that that we took some action on HOAs this year. Yeah strategically there’s been a lot of discussions around exactly what you’re saying you know that that this is the core question here has been is it better to combine all these is it better to separate it out in previous years we’ve had them all separated out and it just didn’t really succeed so this year changed up the strategy combined it all and and try to use that as as one focal point for for leverage and negotiating. Which I do think did have some successes in terms of like being able to get for instance the League of Minnesota cities to to not oppose it you know that’s obviously…
[00:47:14] Ian: so I’m sensing that most of these things didn’t cross the finish line is that right?
[00:47:21] Jacob: yeah that’s correct.
[00:47:23] Ian: Did any of them actually get passed into law?
[00:47:26] Jacob: Well, like I said, there’s some HOA stuff moved otherwise it’s been a it’s been a tough year it’s been a tough legislative session for for housing advocates I think. It’s it’s been a tough though for everybody, there’s not a whole a lot of stuff that moved this year. I think that the incentives that the legislature are kind of such that why move a lot of stuff this year?
[00:47:49] Ian: Yeah, you said like trying the same strategy over and over again and expecting different results like you know that that can work when you suddenly have a DFL trifecta right? So yeah is that something is that what we’re like counting on for next year? Do we think that like we’ll be able to make movement you know what was there enough like interest on the DFL side for for these kinds of things that they could plausibly like make it through committee if we if we do indeed get a DFL trifecta?
[00:48:18] Jacob: I mean I hope so I certainly hope that the change of the math is going to be beneficial to us I think it’s a lot more likely to be beneficial to us than than not. I do want to slightly push back on the framing which is that it’s a it’s a bipartisan bill with both bipartisan and bipartisan opposition right? And you know admittedly I was a little frustrated, I think mostly Yes to Homes coalition was frustrated by some of the Republican support that we had that sort of melted away in committee for various reasons and we can talk about that too; but you know there have been some solid Republican champions on this bill I mean Spencer Igo has been out there beating the drum and appreciate his work on this and and on the same level there have been DFL politicians who have opposed it and have opposed it vocally and and caused real problems for the legislation on on committee. You know I want to I would be careful about you know just getting too excited about a trifecta and look at this as a DFL versus Republican totally thing, I mean obviously there’s some element of that I think there is more DFL support than Republican support but it’s not just an obvious partisan issue.
[00:49:37] Ian: What this is kind of illustrating for me is it’s more of a like this is an issue that is probably popular in dense urban areas and also in rural small town areas and are the are the suburbs are the suburban representatives the ones who are like giving us a lot of trouble?
[00:49:55] Jacob: yes and no I mean we’ve got suburban champions too. Right I mean Larry Kraft is kind of a – I mean it’s pretty close suburb – but yeah I mean that some there are some champions from certain suburbs and and like you know even at the local levels some suburbs in Minnesota have actually taken really great steps in terms of improving their density in their housing situations and some suburbs haven’t and so it’s just a little bit messier than that. Part of what I see is is a big generational divide younger legislators younger folks who are coming in seem to have a better understanding of the problem and older you know older generations- and this isn’t this is also not totally cut and dry, right? Some older legislators who totally understand it and some younger ones who totally don’t but-
[00:50:45] Ian: I think I’m trying to find a neat and tidy like narrative here where there probably isn’t a neat and tidy narrative.
[00:50:50] Jacob: Yeah I wish there was a super neat and tidy narrative but but there’s really not. What I will say about like the suburban opposition right is that what you do see is organized opposition from various city coalitions right? So there was a lot of there was a significant amount of effort put in this year from the Yes to Homes coalition in terms of negotiating with the League of Minnesota Cities who generally there was a lot of effort put into negotiating with them this year with Yes to Homes to work on what they thought might be implementable and that revolves around that that menu of options that I talked about the number of points the number of things that they would be asked to do and and whether they could choose and shape exactly how they took these steps to make Minnesota a little bit easier to develop in. And you know after all that work the League of Minnesota cities did did eventually decide to stay neutral and and come out with a statement that they thought that the Minnesota Starter Homes Act is “implementable,” which is actually a pretty big win for the coalition but disappointingly they’re not the only League in town. There’s also the League of Greater Minnesota Cities and League of Metropolitan Cities a million different leagues and you knock down one another one steps up and and um takes up the mantle… And you know these these leagues they are coalitions but I don’t know that they necessarily speak for every individual city. Their job is to advocate for the power of cities and and that’s what they do. But you know the some cities like St. Paul have already done a lot of this work cities like unfortunately Minnetonka or Lakeville are very skeptical of of the state telling them that they need to make it easier to build housing.
[00:52:42] Ian: speaking of the coalitions that’s an element of city politics that is kind of like almost invisible to most voters right? Like nobody nobody’s really aware of like oh hey my city might be a part of this coalition that is advocating for stuff that like I don’t really want. Should I be pushing like should this be a campaign issue for candidates in my city to be like “we want to remove ourselves from this coalition that’s you know that’s not advocating for our best interests as citizens it’s it’s advocating for the best interest of like the city as an entity to retain its power but in you know in some cases like we don’t want our city to retain that kind of power.”
[00:53:31] Jacob: Kind of two comments on that the first is is you know just being part of the one of these various leagues did not necessarily like sign you on to doing all this stuff I mean a lot of these cities are doing the work to oppose housing reform on a kind of an individual basis and they just sort of happen to be coordinated through these these coalitions but like the mayor of Minnetonka or Lakeville does not need the League of Minnesota cities to tell them to call their representative and complain that “this bill is gonna ruin my life.” And then that’s how they’re working right? It’s that it’s individual mayors, it’s individual city leaders are calling their representatives and saying “you’re you’re encroaching on my power and I don’t like it.” And so that’s you know that’s, they can do that as as individuals too. And a lot of that does happen to your point though more, behind closed doors. I mean the most of these localities are not going out there and saying, “we’re so excited we stopped a housing bill,” right they’re they’re making calls to their legislators. You get mayors it’s Minnetonka or Edina, they’ll they’ll show up to these various committee meetings and and to be clear here that I think I think the act would have passed if it ever hit the floor. Part of the problem here is that there are there are several cities who are doing good work right? And they are using their power in in good ways but because so much of the state is not, all of the housing pressures then fall on on those places that are are trying to make those good changes. It looks like it’s gonna take a little bit more work to get us to the spot where where we can make sure that every city is is doing its fair share in this very difficult problem. I mean our state is is short a hundred thousand homes. I think generally people aren’t buying their first home nowadays until 40 years old. It’s a real it’s a real problem that needs addressing. People are spending more and more percentage of their income on housing needs. This state just has to build more houses.
[00:55:49] Ian: Okay so outside of the Yes to Homes coalition was there was there anything any interesting movement on land value tax or single stair or any of the other stuff that we briefly mentioned?
[00:56:00] Jacob: Not really we didn’t expect a ton this was sort of a building year for those things anyway. To the extent that interesting stuff for instance has happened on land value tax, it has been in in the the kind of coalition building sense. Which has been going pretty well I think we got, we might have like eight or ten organizations now signed into that coalition. And so that’s really cool but in addition the the thing with land value tax is the the eye has always actually been on on 2027 for that one because there’s a – it’s not just the the DFL trifecta I think that’s what people would think when I say that – it’s actually a lot of turnover in leadership on various committees I think it’s going to be very helpful to land value tax. There’s again kind of generational thing land value tax like the Minnesota Starter Home Act I think is going to shape up to be a relatively bipartisan bill.
[00:57:00] Ian: all right anything else that we uh that you wanted to make sure that we touch on today before we say goodbye?
[00:57:08] Jacob: Let’s build more homes! We we need to make it easier to build more homes. Also an important part of this bill is like making it easier to build more homes is an important part of solving the problem of affordability of homes in this state. I think there are people who think that we can just kind of endlessly throw money at the problem of of subsidizing the demand but the the fact is we’re we’re short homes and we’re short homes of all kinds we’re short affordable homes we’re short market rate homes we’re short apartments we’re short single-family homes we’re short duplexes we’re short homes. We gotta build more and we gotta find ways to do it.
[00:57:44] Ian: yep yep well Jacob thank you for the work that you’re doing in that realm and and thanks for coming on the show.
[00:57:49] Jacob: happy to be here, thanks Ian.
[00:57:55] Ian: 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 Eric Brandt and the urban hillbilly quartet this episode was hosted and transcribed by me, Ian R. Buck and was edited by myself and Stina Neel. We’re always looking to feature new voices on the Streets.mn Podcast, so if you have ideas for future episodes drop us a line at [[email protected]]. Streets.mn is a community publication and relies on contributions from audience members like you; if you can make a one-time or recurring donation you can find more information about doing so at [https://streets.mn/donate]. Find other listeners and discuss this episode on your favorite social media platform using the hashtag #StreetsMNPodcast. Until next time, take care.