Star Tribune
Walz says he’s willing to say ‘no’ to legislative allies
I asked Gov. Tim Walz the tough question first: Knowing now that the state’s budget office sees a potential deficit two years out, does he regret spending so much in the budget he and legislators crafted last spring?
“No, no,” he said. “Those were investments in the future.”
Some of those investments may take awhile to pay off, he added. And some people, he said, may not recognize the savings and new spending ability they have from measures like the child tax credit, elimination of Social Security taxes for most and provision of free school lunches for all.
We met in his office with Matt Varilek, commissioner of the Department of Employment and Economic Development, in late January as the warm spell arrived. I’d been more critical than any other voice in the Star Tribune of the governor and his fellow Democrats who control the Legislature for deciding to spend or refund the entire $17 billion revenue surplus the state government had going into the 2024-25 biennium, which began last July.
By November, my caution appeared to be warranted. That’s when the state budget office warned a deficit may appear in the 2026-27 biennium, one big enough to consume the excess revenue that’s again accumulating.
That office will provide another forecast later this month. Because the U.S. and state economies are strong, there’s a chance the state’s revenue will keep growing to a level that, when legislators craft the 2026-27 budget early next year, they will be able to cover a structural shortfall, Walz said. However, he’ll have to put the kibosh on lawmakers who want to raise spending in the legislative session that begins Monday. It will be Walz’s sixth session since being elected governor in 2018.
“I’m under no illusion. I think this is going to be one of the more challenging sessions that I’ve had as governor because you’ve got to say no to your friends,” Walz said.
He’s fine with that.
“We did a lot last year,” he said. “I was saying right afterwards, ‘Look, we’ve got enough on our plate. We don’t need to expand anymore.'”
The expansion of state government in 2023 was the largest in the lifetime of most Minnesotans. It happened for three reasons.
First, the pandemic shocked the economy into greater efficiency, weeding out marginal businesses, sending more people into retirement and giving more opportunity for lower-income workers to rise.
Second, Minnesota’s progressive tax system was structured to capture the jump in Minnesotans’ income and U.S. corporate income that resulted from the efficiency shock. The state’s tax collection, which typically rose in single-digit percentages over biennial terms, was 29% higher in 2022 than in 2020.
Third, legislators in spring 2021, still wary about the pandemic, took a cautious approach to the 2022-23 budget and left some of that new money unspent. In spring 2022, Republicans and Democrats couldn’t agree on how to spend or return the new revenue. After Democrats won control of the Legislature in fall 2022, the surplus was so large that — even with some one-time rebates, the child-tax credit and Social Security-related cut — they were able to lift the 2024-25 budget by 36% compared to 2022-23.
As state government hires more workers this year, it is intensifying competition for Minnesota’s private employers when the workforce is constrained by the exit of baby boomers and by ultra-low population growth. On top of that, lawmakers created new worker benefits that will also push up labor costs for businesses.
The most controversial is paid family and medical leave for all workers in Minnesota, set to begin two years from now. For businesses that already offer generous leave options to workers, a decision looms about whether to join the state-administered program that most of the state’s private employers will rely on. Walz said he’s been talking a lot with business owners and executives about the leave program to assure them on its implementation.
“At this point, I’m feeling pretty comfortable,” he said. “But we are going to be judged not on all this background work, but on the first day paid leave comes online. Is somebody able to make a claim? Is it fraud proof? Do they get their money in their bank account?”
Varilek, who leads the agency that will run the paid leave program, each week provides Walz a rundown on systems and hiring for it. DEED also runs the state’s unemployment insurance and will link that system technologically with paid leave. “We’ll be able to use essentially the same wage reporting for a leave system that folks are already familiar with,” Varilek said.
The best thing Walz did in 2023, in my view, was issue an executive order last fall to eliminate college education as a requirement for most of the jobs the state has on offer. Too many employers, I believe, overlook talented people by requiring credentials or experience that may not necessarily reveal what they can bring to a job.
As a former high school teacher and veteran of the Army National Guard, Walz said he’s seen plenty of people start a job, prove their competency and rise up. “The idea is to get in and be able to do the job,” the governor said.
The worst thing I think he did, though, was to sign a bill that made it tougher for people to become a Minnesota public school teacher without an education degree. “Seem contradictory to you?” he asked. He then spoke about realizing that, since his teaching license had lapsed, it would be harder for him when he leaves office to return to the high school in Mankato where he taught than to join a college faculty.
“Teaching fourth-grade science is hard. You’ve got to have skills,” he said. “But if there are people who are saying ‘I want to give it a try,’ then we need to think about how we streamline that without weakening our standards. I think it’s a fair point. It’s one that I do struggle with.”
Anti-police brutality activists interrupted a Minneapolis City Council meeting Thursday to call for Police Chief Brian O’Hara’s firing, saying his department failed a Black man who begged police for help for months, to no avail, before he was finally shot in the neck by his white neighbor.
John Sawchak, 54, is charged with shooting Davis Moturi, 34, even though three warrants had been issued for his arrest in connection with threats to Moturi and other neighbors.
Activists showed up at the council meeting and asked for time to talk about the case. Instead, the council recessed and activists took the podium and castigated the city for failing Black people, even as state and federal officials are forcing the police department into court-sanctioned monitoring because of past civil rights violations.
Nekima Levy Armstrong, founder of the Racial Justice Network, said O’Hara needs to be held accountable.
“This is not the first time instance where the community has raised concerns about his poor judgment, poor leadership, blaming the community and excuses. It’s completely unacceptable for him to get away with it,” she said. “How many Black people’s doors have they kicked in for less?”
On Thursday the council voted to request the city auditor review the city’s involvement in and response to the matters between Moturi and Sawchak.
Mayor Jacob Frey released a statement in response saying he supports the council’s call for an independent review of the case, but O’Hara “will continue to be the Minneapolis police chief.”
Protesters also questioned why the public hadn’t heard from Community Safety Commissioner Toddrick Barnette, who called a news conference within hours to say he’s not going to fire O’Hara and the city leadership supports him.
A Girl Scout from Troop 58068 told the Woodbury City Council recently that they should allow backyard chickens in the city: They cheer people up, she said.
It turned out that chickens were on an upcoming agenda and, perhaps pushed a bit by the scout’s lobbying, the Woodbury City Council at their next meeting passed a new ordinance allowing for backyard hens.
The new ordinance went into effect on Oct. 23, the night of the council meeting, and will allow people who live on property zoned R-2, a “rural estate” district, to have backyard chickens. A typical city lot is zoned R-4 and those areas still cannot have chickens, the council said.
The city has received requests “here and there” for the last several years about backyard chickens, City Council Member Andrea Date said.
Backyard chickens come have home to roost — and never leave — in a host of other Minnesota cities that allow them, from Hopkins to Thief River Falls. It’s long been allowed in both St. Paul and Minneapolis, and new cities started approving backyard coops during the pandemic, when interest spiked.
In Woodbury, it wasn’t until the question was included on the city’s biannual survey that city staff knew how people felt. The survey found less support for chickens on a typical city lot — just 13% of respondents said they strongly approve of the idea while 43% percent strongly disapproved — but a majority approved of backyard chickens on lots of 1 acre or more.
The city’s rules until recently only allowed chickens on “rural estate” properties of five or more acres.
The new ordinance allows up to six hens, but no roosters, on property less than four acres that meets the zoning requirements. Larger properties can have an additional two chickens per acre above four acres. The ordinance also sets a height limit for chicken coops of 7 feet. No license or permit is required in Woodbury for backyard chickens.
Star Tribune
Anonymous donor pays overdue bill for Fergus Falls home where town’s first Black resident lived
A $10,000 overdue special assessment bill threatening tax forfeiture of a historic Fergus Falls home was paid off this week thanks to an anonymous donor.
Prince Albert Honeycutt lived at 612 Summit Avenue East, renamed Honeycutt Memorial Drive in 2021. Not only was Honeycutt the town’s first Black resident — settling there in 1872 from Tennessee — he was the state’s first Black professional baseball player, first Black firefighter and first Black mayoral candidate.
He was an early pioneer and prominent businessman who owned a barbershop in town. Missy Hermes, with the Otter Tail County Historical Society, said Honeycutt and his wife were likely the first Black people in Minnesota to testify in a capital murder trial of a man who was convicted and hanged in Fergus Falls.
“In other places, you would never have a Black person testifying against a white person, especially a woman, too, before women could vote even,” Hermes said. “Obviously he was respected enough.”
Nancy Ann and Prince Albert Honeycutt with their children inside the now-historic Honeycutt house in 1914. Photo from the collections of the Otter Tail County Historical Society.
When dozens of people from Kentucky moved to Fergus Falls in April 1898, known as “the first 85,” Honeycutt helped integrate them into the community.
He died in 1924 at age 71 and is buried in Oak Grove Cemetery in Fergus Falls.
Up until 2016, several owners lived in the Honeycutt home. But the city bought and sold the house to nonprofit Flowingbrook Ministry for $1 to take over the tax-exempt property and operate the ministry.
Ministry founder Lynette Higgins-Orr, who previously lived in Fergus Falls, moved to Florida several years ago and little activity has been going on in the historic home since. But she said there are plans to make it into a museum.
