clay county commission

Nancy Edmonds Hanson

District 4’s legislative delegations joined the Clay County Commission Monday to reflect on wins and losses in the 2022 Minnesota Legislature.

Two agreed that this appearance before the county group was especially bittersweet. That’s because both State Sen. Kent Eken of Audubon, who has represented District 4 since 2010, and Rep. Paul Marquardt of Dilworth, first elected in 2000, have announced their retirements. District 4A Rep. Heather Keeler, who also spoke with the commission, is serving her first term in the House.

Eken expressed disappointment with the outcome of his final session. “We left a lot of money still lying on the table,” he said. “Politics came into that.” Though his colleagues in the DFL have been pushing for a special session to complete the work left undone when the Legislature adjourned in May, he conceded that Republicans’ refusal to come back to St. Paul is likely to continue: “They’re highly motivated to push these issues beyond the next election.”

Left undone were bills on education, transportation, public safety and judiciary, and health and human services. Marquardt noted that the state’s general fund balance, at $9.25 billion, and $1 billion from the federal American Rescue Plan, would have enabled many of both parties’ goals to be met.

“These are strange economic times,” he observed. He pointed out that Minnesota’s unemployment rate of 1.8% is not only the lowest in its history, but the lowest of any state in the nation since records began being kept in 1976. “There are two and one-half job openings for every unemployed worker in the state,” he said. “In the last recession, 2008-2010, there were nine workers per vacancy.”

The surplus forecast for the next three years, now at $12 billion, means that businesses are doing “very, very well as they come back after Covid,” he added. “Yet so many needs weren’t addressed.” He cited the $4 billion tax cut, $1 billion for education, $1 billion for health care and human services, and $450 for public safety, leaving $4 billion on the bottom line to help manage economic uncertainty.

Yet the three legislators pointed to other accomplishments, including statewide broadband service, drought relief and frontline worker pay. That issue, though, failed to serve Moorhead and Clay County well. “The requirements to qualify don’t work for us,” Keeler emphasized, “where many Minnesota people work across the river, for example, in health care that serves Minnesotans as well as North Dakotans.” She also pointed to child care workers as another group that failed to be included.

She said that during her first term she learned the necessity of speaking up with a bold voice. “You have to say, ‘That’s not going to work for us,’” she said. She is proudest, she added, of Minnesota support for the Fisher House being established by the Fargo Veterans Administration, where vets’ families can stay while their loved one is getting treatment. “It was hard to get state money allocated across the border,” she observed. “I’m proud we could get that funding out the door.”

Members of the commission thanked the legislators, especially the retiring Eken and Marquardt, for their willingness to listen and act on local concerns. Kevin Campbell noted that while he and Marquardt had butted heads on some issues, including Oakport flood protection and the Fargo Diversion, their disagreements had always been respectful.

Eken suggested – and the commission agreed – that they should get together after the election when the new political landscape is known. “Paul and I are legislators until Jan. 3,” he said. And even afterward, he promised, “We’re still going to be involved.”