Transportation (MN Governor's Race)

Transportation and transportation funding in Minnesota pertain to the systems that allow us to travel by car, bus, bike, rail, or boat. Funding comes from federal, state, and local taxes. Funding from local taxes stays in its jurisdiction. Federal and state funding is allocated through complex budgetary procedures. Often, the debate at the Capitol is how to divide these transportation dollars between urban and rural communities and between roads and transit.

According to a study by the University of Minnesota’s Center for Transportation Studies, overall the Metro district contributes about 48% of federal and state transportation revenues and receives about 51% of federal and state transportation expenditures. However, the metro receives 88% of all transit funding and 36% of all highway funding. In rural Minnesota, some districts receive more than they contribute, likely due to lower population density, and some contribute more than they receive.

The majority of funding comes from either the federal government (Federal Highway Administration and Federal Transit Administration) or the Minnesota state highway trunk fund. The state of Minnesota collects motor fuel tax, motor vehicle tax, and vehicle registration fees. 65% of this goes to the Minnesota state highway trunk fund and used for operation and construction. Transit funding comes from the General Fund and motor vehicle tax. The Minnesota Constitution dictates which funds must be used for specific purposes.

The Minnesota Transportation Finance Advisory Committee convened by Governor Dayton in 2012 determined that the state has a $21 billion dollar shortfall over the next 20 years, just to keep transportation systems at their current level of service. This is due to aging infrastructure, rising costs of labor and materials, and inflation. Yet, the federal gas tax, a large funding source, has not changed since 1993. The Minnesota gas tax last increased in 2012.

There tend to be two competing viewpoints on how to approach transportation needs: continue to divide the given funds among the various projects or grow the funds. The Minnesota Transportation Alliance pushed hard this past legislative session for a constitutional amendment, voted on by Minnesotans, that would allow all the sales tax on auto parts to be deposited into the Highway Trust Fund. Currently half of those funds are deposited there. The other half go to the General Fund which funds education and healthcare. Therefore, education and healthcare would take a hit. This is an example of redistributing current funds. This proposal passed the House, but made no progress in the Senate. The proposal to grow the funds involves increasing the gas tax to match modern day costs, needs, and inflation.

Here is where the candidates stand on transportation systems and funding:

Jeff Johnson (R): Candidate Johnson will put a moratorium on light rail spending and focus transit money on a first-class bus system. He will base transportation funding decisions on projects that relieve congestion and provide mobility to the citizens of Minnesota.

Erin Murphy (D): Candidate Murphy voted against H.F. No. 4437 (the constitutional amendment) and called on her fellow DFL candidates for governor to clearly oppose it. She is in favor of roads and bridges as well as mass transit like the Southwest Light Rail Transit program. She says that mass transit alleviates congestion and makes it easier for cars and semis to transport people and goods.

Tim Pawlenty (R): Candidate Pawlenty oversaw the biggest mass transit expansion in generations. He presided over the Hiawatha Line, now known as the Blue Line which connects Minneapolis to the airport and Mall of America. He also approved the Northstar Commuter train and the construction of the Green Line which connects St. Paul to Minneapolis. However, he also vetoed a $6.6 billion funding package for roads, bridges, and mass transit because it involved too much of a tax increase, which the House and Senate ultimately overrode. He also cut funding to the University Avenue light rail line.

Tim Walz (D): Candidate Walz will increase the gas tax to expand funding for transit and transportation in a way that is fair and equitable. He will expand the transit network in both the metro and rural Minnesota by expanding bus networks across the state, and investing in high speed commuter rails, light rails, and bus rapid transit projects. He will build a stronger partnership with employers and freight haulers to see how our transportation system can be more efficient for freight haulers. He will convene a One Minnesota task force on the future of transportation in our state considering increases in Minnesotans who choose to bike, walk, use ride sharing services, drive for such services, and the coming of autonomous vehicles.

Sexual Harassment & Assault (MN Governor's Race)

#MeToo began spreading virally on social media in October 2017 in order to spread awareness about the widespread prevalence of sexual harassment and assault. According to the Me Too website, 17,700,000 women have reported a sexual assault since 1998.

In Minnesota, 2 lawmakers were forced to resign over sexual misconduct allegations: United States Senator Al Franken and State Representative Tony Cornish. In the wake of the movement, many new laws were proposed in Minnesota and a couple made it into law. In May a bill sailed through the legislature with unanimous support which set a time frame of 60 days for testing future rape kits due to thousands of untested rape kits sitting on law enforcement shelves. Another bill Dayton signed required sex trafficking prevention training for hotel and motel employees. Additionally, the House updated its sexual harassment policy, but the Senate did not. Bills that didn’t make it through include one that would lower the threshold for workers to sue their employer over sexual harassment, one that would outlaw butt-grabbing, and one that would outlaw cops having sex with prisoners and teachers having sex with students who are over 18.

In July, the Star Tribune reviewed 1,000 sexual assault cases from a 2 year period and found that police never assigned an investigator in nearly 25% of them, no potential witnesses were interviewed in half of them, 75% of cases were never forwarded to prosecutors for criminal charges, and fewer than 10% of cases resulted in a conviction. 

Campus sexual assault is especially pervasive. Among undergraduates, 23.1% of females and 5.4% of males experience rape or sexual assault. Yet, 80% of female students do not report their assault to law enforcement. Among cases reported to law enforcement, less than 10% of cases result in criminal charges against the perpetrator. Given this, survivor-activists argue that colleges are often a victim’s best route for justice because the accommodations and interventions a college is legally required to provide can make the difference between a student staying enrolled or dropping out including issuing a no contact directive, providing extensions and counseling, and ensuring you can continue your education without further discrimination or assault. Activists oppose bills that send all cases to the police and call campus sexual assault a civil rights issue that campuses have a legal responsibility to handle. Any school receiving federal funding is obligated under Title IX to investigate and respond to allegations of sexual assault regardless of whether a police report has been made because sexual assault can deny someone equal access to education that they are entitled to under Title IX.

Here is where the candidates stand on sexual violence:

Jeff Johnson (R): Candidate Johnson as no public stance on this from what I could find and he didn’t comment on the Star Tribune report mentioned above when asked for comment. All other major candidates did.

Erin Murphy (D): Candidate Murphy, the only female candidate I am covering, is the only candidate to address this issue on her website. She supports and has authored affirmative consent legislation under which universities must constitute consent as a fully informed “yes” given without the influence of drugs, alcohol or intimidation. She will make sure that health insurance covers the cost of health costs that come with an assault, or that the state will. She will be proactive in addressing sexual harassment and assault by providing age appropriate K-12 curriculum that teaches personal boundaries, bodily autonomy, and respect. She wants to create a task force that will evaluate how effective Minnesota is at investigating sexual assault cases, and she wants to see a standard adopted that will lead to an investigator assigned to every case.

Tim Pawlenty (R): Candidate Pawlenty says, “Law enforcement agencies and prosecutors need to focus on better investigation and prosecution of these violent offenders. The POST Board should develop statewide standards for sexual assault investigations. ... We need to ensure that justice is delivered for victims of sexual assault."

Tim Walz (D): Candidate Walz wants to see state legislation "to ensure law enforcement has the skills and resources to avoid re-traumatization and effectively see investigations through to prosecution." Walz is a co-sponsor of the Abby Honold Act which reforms how investigators are trained.

Reproductive Rights (MN Governor's Race)

In Minnesota, much like the rest of the country, abortion rates have seen a steady decline since being legalized in 1973. There has been a slight uptick in Minnesota over the past 2 years. Non-residents coming to Minnesota for abortions accounted for 65% of the increase, largely due to the increasingly restrictive abortion legislation in Iowa and Wisconsin. Planned Parenthood performed 61% of the abortions in the state last year, although only 3% of Planned Parenthood’s services involve abortion. 95% of Minnesota counties have no clinics that provide abortions.

In Minnesota, the most common reason women cite for having an abortion is not wanting a child at this time or economic reasons. Most abortions occur among women who haven’t used contraception. 43% of women receiving an abortion last year qualified for Medical Assistance due to low incomes. More than 40% of women who had abortions last year had previously had one. Abortions in Minnesota represent around 1% of abortions nationally.

Minnesota abortion laws are much less restrictive than other states. For the most part, the restrictions we do have were proposed and signed into law by Governor Tim Pawlenty.

In 2003, Pawlenty proposed and signed the Women’s Right to Know Act which requires physicians to provide women with information on abortion alternatives at least 24 hours before the procedure. This includes a list of adoption centers, detailed information about fetal development, and risks associated with abortion. During the first full year, 15,859 women were given the information, and 13,788 went through with the abortion.

In 2005, Pawlenty proposed and signed the Unborn Child Pain Prevention Act, which made Minnesota the first state to mandate that women considering an abortion receive information about fetal pain. Currently, there is no legitimate scientific information that confirms that a fetus feels pain. Yet, this law requires that women be offered pain-reducing medication for their fetus and women have to sign a form either requesting or denying the medication.

In 2006, Pawlenty proposed and signed the Positive Alternatives to Abortion Act, which provides funds to non-profits which provide pregnancy, parenting, and family support activities and services. The Minnesota Department of Health notes that abortions have declined since the first year of the program.

Another factor to consider when considering reproductive rights, is women’s health. Maternal deaths are increasing across the country. According the World Health Organization, the United States is the only developed country where maternal deaths are on the rise. Unsafe abortions are one of the three leading causes of maternal mortality.

In 2011, Texas slashed family planning funding by 66%. As a result, 82 family planning clinics closed, ⅓ of which were Planned Parenthood clinics (which offer a myriad of health care options including safe, legal abortion), cutting the number of women the state could serve in half. Low income women were especially at a loss to affordable birth control and had more babies. And alarmingly, pregnancy-related deaths nearly doubled, with 72 in 2010 and 148 in 2012.

Criminalizing abortion and anti-abortion laws don’t reduce the number of abortions. According to a study published in May of 2016, “In countries where abortion is completely illegal or permitted only to save the life of the pregnant woman, the most recent data places the average annual abortion rate at 37 per 1,000 women aged 15 to 44. In countries where abortion is legal in most cases, the rate is 34 per 1,000 women.” Latin America has some of the most intensive anti-abortion laws in the world and the highest abortion rate at 32%.

Contraception and sex education do prevent abortion. In Eastern Europe, abortion rates have fallen from 88 out of 1,000 women to 42 out of 1,000 women over the past 25 years due to a rise in contraception popularity and accessibility. Colorado began offering free birth control to anyone who wanted it in 2009, and over the first 5 years of the program, saw unintended pregnancies drop by 40% and abortion fall by 42%. It also reduced teen pregnancies. The fact that contraception decreases abortion rates has been proven time after time after time.

Additionally, policies that make healthcare and childcare more affordable, contraception more accessible, and policies that support a living wage and a reduction in poverty reduce the number of abortions. Recall the 43% of Minnesota women having abortions last year qualified for Medical Assistance due to low incomes.

Here is where the candidates stand of reproductive rights:

Jeff Johnson (R): Candidate Johnson says there is no more important issue than protecting innocent life. He says it is a moral issue. Additionally, he cites recent breakthroughs in science and technology that have made it clear that we must protect the life of the unborn. He is pro-life and believes in the sanctity of human life from conception until natural death.

Erin Murphy (D): Candidate Murphy will pursue reproductive justice for women of color, trans folk, and women living in low-wealth and rural communities, ensuring that where there is choice, there is also access to contraception, women’s health clinics, and abortion services. She has authored a contraception equity bill that would require Minnesota health plans to provide prescription drug coverage to cover contraception without charging a copay.

Tim Pawlenty (R): Candidate Pawlenty was called the most pro-life candidate in the 2012 presidential race by the National Review, a conservative magazine. As governor of Minnesota, he proposed and signed into law the Women’s Right to Know Act, the Positive Alternatives to Abortion Act, and the Unborn Child Pain Prevention Act. He says that the only exception he can really reconcile or justify is the life of the mother.

Tim Walz (D): Candidate Walz will stand with organizations that support women’s health. He believes in a woman’s right to choose and has a 100% voting record with Planned Parenthood.