At the August 13 primary election, voters in district 61A (map below) will get to choose which of three DFL candidates will replace retiring Minnesota House Rep. Frank Hornstein. I spoke with all of the DFL candidates a few months ago on the Wedge LIVE podcast: Katie Jones, Isabel Rolfes, and Will Stancil.
But they’ve sharpened their messages since then, so it’s worth checking out the League of Women Voters forum from Wednesday night. Below are some highlights from the forum.
Affordable Housing
Isabel Rolfes: Pass the conversion tax credit for office spaces to be converted downtown. Expand the homeowner assistance credit for first time buyers. Collaborate with social services and the county. Make sure the legislature is doing whatever they can to deliver services. It’s not just apartments, not just houses, it’s all the services.
Katie Jones: “We need to build more housing. We need abundant housing in our state. And we need diverse housing types” for different types of families, lifestyles, and stages of life. Multigenerational housing options, senior homes, accessory dwelling units. The more flexibility in our buildings, the better we can care for our families. “Right before I jumped into this race I was part of a coalition of housing, labor and a number of other groups pushing so that we can build more housing.”
Will Stancil: “The affordable housing system in Minnesota is basically broken.” We spend massive amounts of money – as much as $800,000 for a one bedroom. “We build units that don’t have access to good jobs or good schools. My preferred approach… is to restore the system we had” in the 60s, 70s, and 80s. A regional system that “required suburban governments to guide land for their fair share of moderate and low-income housing.” This is the easiest way to build thousands of new units and meet demand.
Transportation
Isabel Rolfes: “Whether you’re a walker, biker, driver or you take transit, we have to be safe in all of these avenues. We have to make sure that our roads are set up safely for pedestrians” like on Lyndale with the new medians. We’ve seen crashes and deaths go down. We need to talk about that more. We need to bolster programs to make transit safe – transit safety officers. We need funding for pay and benefits for outreach workers who work with the unhoused around transit stops.
Katie Jones: “We all deserve safe and reliable ways to get around. A woman in Lowry Hill wants to make sure she can drive to Kowalski’s when she needs to get her groceries. I heard from a couple who moved here from Iowa at the caucuses, and they were saying they want to be able to walk in our neighborhoods. I met Bryce. He moves around in a wheelchair. He would use Metro Mobility, except for the fact there’s a 2 hour window when that service is supposed to arrive. Can you imagine it taking two hours just for your ride to arrive? That’s not acceptable. That’s why he likes to use our regular transit system. That’s why we must continue to invest in that system. This district has been a leader on transportation for many many years. As the hub of the transit system, we have to continue that leadership.”
Will Stancil: “I am a strong supporter of transit.” Would support greater investment in transit and safer transit. “In this district though, a key transit question has been Southwest Light Rail. Obviously this project has not gone entirely according to plan. There’s been major budget overruns. There have had to be some design changes… Right now we have a sever problem. Our transit planning is managed in part by the Met Council. I think that in order to have more effective transit planning in the Twin Cities area, the Met Council probably needs to be reformed in some way.”
Public Safety
Katie Jones: “Too many folks that I’ve been talking to have experienced carjackings, muggings. That’s just not right in our community. Addressing public safety is a multi-jurisdictional issue.” The state can provide funding to make sure our public safety system is fully funded. “Minneapolis is projected to have a $20 million budget deficit. We need to fund our city.” 20 years ago local government aid was cut for Minneapolis. “It’s time to restore that… because when Minneapolis thrives, the whole state thrives.” Beyond funding, we need to look at the laws affecting police accountability, building trust.
Will Stancil: “One of the most striking conversations I’ve had this entire campaign is with an advocate for police reform. He said ‘My vision is a system where a child can graduate from a Minneapolis high school and be proud to work at the Minneapolis Police Department.’ This is a person who’s advocated substantially for police reform. I know this is a contentious issue, but… there’s actually a lot of consensus about what we want from this.” Everyone wants responsive police to show up when you call, everyone acknowledges the need for reform and that it’s unacceptable to have to worry about carjacking and robberies. The state can provide funding for investigations, victim resources, and to “help change the cultural issues around police departments that are preventing us from hiring sufficient officers…”
Isabel Rolfes: “Last year [the state legislature] sent $30 million to the city and I’m wanting to do that again.” It’s no secret that people have different opinions on public safety. I want to value everybody’s opinions, which means I want to send funding to the city, but I also want to work with the POST (police officers standards training) board to work on their training processes to make sure that folks are safe on the streets whether they’re an officer or somebody calling for an officer. “I want to make sure we see more Uptown safety programs. The council passed an Uptown safety ambassador program, but it’s yet to be implemented…” If this fails to get implemented, “I want to send that money to the city so they can implement that program.”
Economic Revitalization
Isabel Rolfes: Our local businesses are struggling right now. I would make sure the Promise grants are implemented well and businesses can receive them. Make sure that any transit projects are tied to anti-displacement funding, funding for businesses that are dealing with construction. Make sure businesses and folks who live on corridors don’t get priced away. “The last thing we want to see is what happened on University Ave where gentrification came with the light rail and the people that needed transit most were no longer able to access housing close to it.” Signage at transit stops promoting local businesses. “I believe in a world where small businesses, transit companies, and Metro Transit, see each other as friends and not enemies.” More transit helps our small businesses. This requires collaboration and bringing people together who historically aren’t on the same team.
Katie Jones: “Businesses are critical to our community. They make our district in particular special. I want to expand those opportunities. Grow our tax base. That will help stabilize our property taxes. We need to focus on Uptown and Downtown because they’re both hurting.” The 9 to 5 office culture is not going to be the same. “We don’t need a fix for the 9 to 5, we need a 24/7 solution. A thriving downtown has people. As I’ve been talking with members of the Downtown Council, they are really excited about adaptive re-use, conversions of office to residential.” That can’t happen everywhere, but where it can happen, we’re bringing more customers. Residents are a better customer base. That attracts business.
Speaking of Uptown’s struggles: When we put in the Green Line, the state invested in small business grants. “I want to continue that and bake that [small business assistance] into the municipal state aid that we use for every single commercial project in the state.”
Will Stancil: Not a business owner, so “I decided I could walk down Hennepin, walk down Lyndale, and just ask the businesses what they need, and what their obstacles were. It didn’t take very long because there’s not many left.”
Heard four things: 1) They need support during road construction; 2) Parking – “if there’s gonna be street changes that take away parking, they need to find a way to ensure customers can get to the businesses that are still safe coming here from out of state”; 3) Grants – changing grant programs so businesses can more easily access them; 4) Public safety – “Over and over I heard business owners tell me that they’d lost customers not necessarily because things were unsafe, but because they felt unsafe.”
Education – Curriculum, Funding, Policy
Will Stancil: “The main policy tool the legislature has is providing funding, supporting good teachers, setting standards. I don’t think the legislature should be greatly involved in setting curriculum. We have an opportunity to build a very strong public education system by supporting well-funded schools and programs that attract parents to public school districts.”
Katie Jones: Don’t think it makes sense to have more than 100 legislators dictating specific standards. “But there are a few things that I think it is upon the legislature to make sure that we’re protecting. Not too long ago in St. Louis Park, there were parents who objected to LGBTQ books being a part of the curriculum, based on religious grounds.” It’s a conflict between religious rights and LGBTQ rights. “But I think denying the existence of a whole group of people – there’s something fundamentally wrong about that.” We should be looking at laws and changing them to recognize the full worth and dignity of LGBTQ people in our community. Beyond that the legislature has a role to fund schools. MPS is hurting. $100 million deficit. “I’m committed to finding ways to make Minneapolis Public Schools whole.”
Isabel Rolfes: “The state did just pass health standards” for public schools. There will be a blanket statewide standard for sex ed. That’s incredibly important because in small jurisdictions this need is going unmet. “We know that certain types of health training doesn’t actually give the results that people think it does. Kids need to know what is going to happen to their bodies.” Abstinence-only won’t help anybody. On funding, the state has a phenomenal role in funding education – whether it’s general funding or specific issue areas. We need to pay teachers more. “The better our teachers are treated, the better our students will be treated because the teachers will have more time and bandwidth.” We need to fill the special education and English language learner cross-subsidies. Minneapolis has a diverse school district – filling the English learner subsidy would disproportionately benefit us. Find policy solutions – like the “ban on book bans” – by talking to teachers and people on the ground, not by guessing what schools need.
Climate
Katie Jones: Climate change is the biggest problem humanity has ever faced. You can’t escape it — a campaign volunteer left Arizona to escape the heat only to be met with Canadian wildfire smoke in Minnesota. “I have dedicated my career to working in climate. From working in buildings and energy — where I’ve passed laws in 7 different cities and 3 at the state — because we have to tackle this problem.” There’s also the issues of waste, land use, and transportation. There’s no sector that does not provide greenhouse gas emissions. “As an engineer I’ve actually done greenhouse gas inventories for the city of Minneapolis. I know the sources of our pollution. I’m going to be working to implement the 100% clean electricity law because there’s still issues that we need to tackle.” Move towards thermal and away from natural gas. Decarbonize transportation and our homes.
Isabel Rolfes: “We’ve set a lot of ambitious goals in the state of Minnesota. Clean energy by 2040.” We have to talk about implementation. “We’re going to tackle climate change by making sure that we have pathways for laborers to build this infrastructure.” Invite low income and BIPOC people to the table when we’re talking about climate change — folks who’ve been impacted by the pollution. Make sure the state’s weatherized. After this wet summer, a lot of things will need to be fixed. Invest in infrastructure ahead of time. “A lot more expensive to have to re-fix something than to invest in it to make sure that it’s going to be resilient in the first place.” Leverage federal IRA funds. Sustainable agricultural practices for small, family and large farmers. We need pathways for renters to have a say in how clean their homes are as well as homeowners — “if energy efficiency is low, renters pay a lot for utilities.”
Will Stancil: Minnesota has really great climate goals, all passed by the DFL. We need a plan. “There are a lot of technical hurdles left frankly to achieving net zero. We need a plan that tells us where they are, what policies need to be implemented, and in what timeframe to reach these goals.” We’ve made a lot of progress towards decarbonizing energy grid. We need to invest in getting past remaining obstacles. There are also other parts of the economy producing emissions: agriculture, industry, construction. We need to find ways to decarbonize those industries as well. “For a lot of people climate change is already here” — rainstorms, heat waves. In addition to cutting emissions, we need to provide weatherization strategies to survive our new climate.