Eden Prairie News
By Tim Engstrom tengstrom@swpub.com
Sep 10, 2018
The issue of gun violence, particularly in schools, was front and center Wednesday, Sept. 5, at the League of Women Voters political forum for Districts 48A and 48B of the Minnesota House of Representatives.
House District 48A is northern Eden Prairie and southern Minnetonka. Laurie Pryor, DFL-Minnetonka, is the incumbent, and she faces Ellen Cousins, R-Minnetonka, in the Nov. 6 general election.
House District 48B is southern Eden Prairie. Jenifer Loon, R-Eden Prairie, is the incumbent, and she faces Carlie Kotyza-Witthuhn, DFL-Eden Prairie.
“We are stuck in a ‘Groundhog Day’ scenario when it comes to gun-violence prevention,” said Kotyza-Witthuhn.
She said she hears a lot from community members concerned about the safety of schoolchildren. She has concerns about the Republican Party preventing action because of the influences of the National Rifle Association. She said people are dying because of political complacency.
“I am a mom demanding action,” she said.
“Clearly, we all want a safer community,” Loon said. “As a mother, a wave of fear goes through me anytime I hear of gun violence in our country.”
She said she spent time working on school-safety issues as chair of the House Education Finance Committee. Loon said she has forwarded initiatives that help districts deal with mental health challenges. She said it was unfortunate two key bills — one closing the private-seller background check loophole and one allowing authorities to red flag potential shooters with access to firearms — failed to make it out of committee and to the House floor.
Pryor said she co-authored those two bills.
“I think they should have been heard in the committee,” she said.
She would have liked a floor vote so the public could see whether representatives favored or opposed them. Like others in the debate, the issue brought out her emotions.
“You hear our voices because we are talking about something so serious,” Pryor said. “You can’t be articulate and smooth because of what’s at stake.”
Cousins said she supports gun-safety education and gun owners implementing safety at home, such as gun safes and trigger locks. She would like to see the existing laws on the books enforced and wants lawmakers to look to the root-cause of gun violence — mental health — and put more mental health counselors in schools.
“Let’s stop the violence before it begins,” she said.
Loon said a school-safety package meant to aid school districts with safety upgrades was in the omnibus budget bill that Gov. Mark Dayton vetoed in May. Still, there remains a state program where districts can seek grants up to $500,000 for upgrades, she noted, and district taxpayers can approve safe-school levies.
Kotyza-Witthuhn said Minnesota is fourth-to-last among states in terms of its counselor-to-student ratio. (It is 723 to 1, according to the American School Counselor Association’s 2018 report.) She called on hiring more counselors and passing the red-flag law and the private-seller law.
Cousins said not all districts have outside resources, such as a foundation, to support school needs. She said Minnesota is 32nd in the nation for on-time graduation rates. (The ranking can depend on how this stat is measured or if multiple years are tallied, but the National Center for Education Statistics ranks Minnesota 35th for the 2015-16 school year, the most recent available, at 82.2 percent; Iowa ranks first).
She said students deserve the opportunity to graduate on time, no matter where they live.
Pryor called on the passing of the two gun-control bills. She said the red-flag measure just might have prevented the shooting in Parkland, Florida, in February because officials knew of the threat but did not remove firearms from the home. She also said she favors funding mental health services in the schools.
Affordable housing
Cousins said lawmakers need to make sure people can afford entry-level homes for the sake of families and the workforce. She wanted to remove regulations that are costly to builders.
“Builders can build homes for $20,000 less in Wisconsin than in Minnesota because of our regulations,” she said.
(The figure comes from a Star Tribune commentary in April by Peter Coyle, an attorney with Larkin Hoffman and a representative for BATC-Housing First Minnesota.)
Pryor said the Legislature is taking steps through tax credits and bonding but added it needs to be good partners with cities and counties to expand the amount of affordable housing available.
Loon said there is a real lack of affordable housing and workforce housing and not merely in the urban areas. She said the 2018 bonding bill included $40 million for affordable housing measures and a tax credit to an affordable housing fund.
Kotyza-Witthuhn said the Eden Prairie slogan of “Live, Work, Dream.” shows it is important to the community. She said it is best to have blended affordability throughout the city and state and would work to preserve affordable housing.
Women’s health and rights
Pryor said she supports policies that keep rights in place and not adding unnecessary burdens. She said legislating these decisions is “controlling a woman’s being.”
Cousins said she places a high value for women being able to plan their families, avoid unplanned pregnancies and have access to affordable contraceptives.
Kotyza-Witthuhn said she is pro-choice and said women need to have full control over reproductive health.
Loon said they all share the same goal of access to health care and supports readily available contraceptives. People can tiptoe around the issue of abortion, but she feels the shared goal should be making it exceedingly rare.
Funding special education
Cousins said special education is mandated heavily by the federal government but it isn’t paying its share.
“Unfortunately, our districts have to make up for that money,” she said.
Special education is rising, such as increases on the occurrence of autism, and districts need support.
Pryor said if the federal government is failing to fund its share of special education, districts are forced to take from their general funds and subsidize the costs, which is called a “cross-subsidy.” She said the districts need funds from the state government.
Loon said the state spends “a fair amount of money on special education.” She said the federal government is supposed to cover 40 percent, but it pays only 16. She said the state’s funding formula was reworked in 2013 or 2014 to address special education expenses but the costs continue to jump.
Kotyza-Witthuhn said the state needs to get creative to figure out what’s best for students and suggested outside help, such as tutoring services to provide more individual assistance.
Climate change
Kotyza-Witthuhn and Pryor said, yes, there is global climate change and said they believe in science and would look to experts to guide policies as leaders look at renewable energy resources.
Loon said they can find agreement on the need for clean air and clean water and using the University of Minnesota as a research institution for studying cleaner energies for the future.
Cousins said, “We can’t argue with the fact that our climate is changing. It’s a matter of what is causing the climate change.” She said if there are ways to get cleaner energy, the state needs to look at it.
Infrastructure
Loon said this includes buildings, sewers, bridges and roads and said the state needs to set expectations that state infrastructure is maintained well so it can last.
Kotyza-Witthuhn said she was disappointed there wasn’t more funding for transit in the bonding bill and said investments need to be made in infrastructure.
Cousins said the state needs to take care of infrastructure and keep the roads safe. She mentioned the Interstate 35W bridge collapse of 2007 as a reason to not let things go unattended.
Pryor said state leaders cannot “kick the can down the road” and need to fund replacements when they need funding so it doesn’t cost more over time. Because the state didn’t fund roads, it now plays catch-up.
Omnibus bills
Kotyza-Witthuhn said lawmakers need to follow the state Constitution and pass single-subject bills. Large bills avoid the public eye and when submitted near the session end, allows no time for legislators to study what’s in them.
She said the budget omnibus bill was “longer than the first three Harry Potter books combined.”
Loon said is not a great way to govern and has been done by both sides. She said she is working across the aisle to set reforms and adhere to them.
“Legislators are not any more fond of these bills than the public is,” she said.
Pryor said the large bills were the hardest aspect of the last session. She said there was no time to read a 994-page document.
“So I voted no to that bill. I voted no to the process that produced it,” she said.
Cousins said such bills are too large to digest.
“We need to make sure these bills will not just be vetoed, and we can get things done.”
The rest
In other topics, they described how they would collaborate with the opposing party, how they value education, how they favor expanding mental health services, how they were concerned about the opioid-addiction crisis and how proposed mining in the Boundary Waters was a difficult issue. They differed on light rail — DFL in favor, R opposed — but it was more of a Metropolitan Council issue, they noted.
The nonpartisan and volunteer-run League of Women Voters Minnetonka, Eden Prairie, Hopkins held the forum. The moderator was Debby McNeil of LWV Edina.