State Representative Tina Liebling - Capitol Update

04/22/2006

April 21, 2006

Dear Friends,

This has been a strange week at the Minnesota House. We are reaching the point in the Session when the most important bills should be reaching the House floor for debate and vote. Instead, the full House met several times this week only to find out from House Leadership that we would not be taking up the bills we expected after all. 

While this has been frustrating, on the bright side, the bonding conference committee was appointed this week.  I hope a final bonding bill will emerge soon with several Rochester projects included. Another positive development this week was the compromise reached on creating a statewide teacher’s health insurance pool.

I have been hearing from a number of Rochester residents on the D M & E Railroad issue, and I have included some of my thoughts below. I have truly appreciated hearing your views on issues. Your opinions are very important and I thank you for taking time to share them with me.

Warm regards,
Tina

Statewide Teacher’s Health Insurance

Public school teachers in some school districts in Minnesota are facing the loss of their health benefits. That’s because the cost of providing insurance to school employees has skyrocketed in recent years, particularly in small school districts. And the more taxpayer dollars that go to teacher health benefits, the fewer are left to spend in the classroom. It’s clear something has to be done to bring down the cost of insurance for schools.

This week, the House vote on a proposal to create a statewide health insurance pool for teachers. Pooling all the teachers in the state together for health insurance will spread risk among a much bigger population (around 200,000 individuals), allowing everyone to be covered and saving money for a lot of school districts. The pool will offer at least six different plans.  It will then be up to each district and its employees to bargain over which plans will be available in the district and how the costs will be shared between employers and employees.  Some larger districts that have been able to control insurance costs did not want to participate in the pool, so a compromise was reached allowing districts with more than 400 teachers to opt out.  The compromise passed the House with wide support as an amendment to the State Government Finance Omnibus Bill.  However, House Republican leadership then pulled the bill from the floor before the omnibus bill could be passed. 

D M & E Railroad

Many Rochester residents are by now well aware of the Dakota, Minnesota & Eastern (DM&E) Railroad’s proposal to upgrade the tracks from Eastern Wyoming to Winona, Minnesota, passing through Rochester to carry coal.  I share the concerns of many that this would at best be highly disruptive to our city and, at worst, could be disastrous if there were ever a major accident or toxic spill on the tracks.

Rochester residents have been contacting me recently to share their concerns about the DM&E project.  I fully support efforts to prevent these coal trains from running through Rochester.  While the federal government has more direct control over this issue than the state, I am working to see how I can have a constructive impact on the negotiations. I am working to build support around this issue and help other state leaders recognize that the potential negative and hazardous impacts of the coal trains on Rochester will in turn have a negative impact on the entire state.