Dan Sparks, State Senator

This week, two Albert Lea residents joined me at the Capitol for a joint House-Senate hearing on unemployment benefits. In 2007, I carried a bill that asked the state to implement a new unemployment insurance computer system that would cut down on fraud and save the state money. Since it was implemented in October, however, complaints of problems accessing staff, filing paperwork and collecting unemployment benefits have been on the rise.

Bob Haas and Michelle Breamer from Albert Lea&8217;s Workforce Development Center came to the Capitol to talk about their experience with the state&8217;s new system. After hearing testimony from them and other workers across the state, the department assured us that they are taking steps to hire more staff and increase efficiency with the computer system. Our committees will continue to keep tabs on this problem and make sure these issues do not continue.

Problems with unemployment claims are the last thing Minnesotans need right now, especially in light of some of the other news released this week.

On Tuesday, Minnesota&8217;s nonpartisan state economist made a very troubling announcement about the state&8217;s economy. After hearing 2,300 jobs were lost and unemployment grew to 4.9 percent in December, he declared the state to be in a recession. There&8217;s no other way to describe the economic picture, he said, given that the state is now consistently lagging behind national job-growth numbers, a place Minnesota hasn&8217;t been in more than three decades.

Also this week, the nonpartisan research staff in the House and Senate released property tax expectations for 2008. Their calculations predict property taxes will rise $596 million statewide this year &8212; that&8217;s $1,100 a minute. That means since 2003, the average homeowner in Minnesota has seen a $2,000 jump in property taxes.

This is a lot of bad news to hit at once, and rehashing it in this column isn&8217;t meant to depress you on a Sunday morning. It&8217;s just meant to draw attention to what&8217;s going on in our state. There are plenty of reasons for the bad economic news, but what you deserve right now is for lawmakers to focus on solutions.

My concern is this: We have a governor who claims that the current budget shortfall of $357 million isn&8217;t that big of a deal. His reaction to the recession outlook was that the state economist &8212; someone who has been doing this work for decades &8212; may be too pessimistic. And instead of supporting a bonding bill this week that would help spur local economies throughout the state &8212; places like Albert Lea, that was denied a request to help finish cleaning up North Edgewater Park &8212; he proposed a bill that focuses mostly on borrowing a lot of money to fix roads and bridges. An admirable goal, but not when you&8217;re doing it by pushing the financial burden onto our grandchildren and ignoring the fact that the money won&8217;t be around to spend on next year&8217;s transportation needs.

I&8217;m not interested in placing blame on the governor. I am interested in calling attention to the issues that currently affect our state and the people of Freeborn, Fillmore and Mower counties. All we&8217;re asking is for a discussion about how to get Minnesota back on track, and we can&8217;t begin that until everyone is honest about where we stand and where we are headed.

Dan Sparks, DFL-Austin, is the state senator for District 27.