Minnesota House GOP and Senate DFL leaders need to take another swing at passing a bipartisan bonding bill and a comprehensive transportation bill and do it as soon as possible in a special session called by Gov. Mark Dayton.

Agreement on bonding between the House GOP and Senate DFL majorities came together in the waning minutes of the Legislature and it seems a miscommunication or misunderstanding derailed the bill.

It wasn’t perfect and it wasn’t pretty, but it would have provided a lot of needed funding for maintaining infrastructure around the state, including funding critical road and bridge work.

The Mankato region would benefit from passage of the failed bonding bill in a number of significant ways. The St. Peter Security Hospital needs about $70 million for an upgrade that would, in part, make the environment for workers and patients safer in a place that has been rife with horrific violent incidents.

The failed bonding bill also included money for completing Highway 14 as a four-lane road from Rochester to New Ulm. The bill allocated money for buying needed right-of-way along the route for about $85 million. The purchase of the right-of-way is critical to any expansion project, and there were not state funds previously dedicated for this purpose.

The bill also included bonding for the Corridors of Commerce program of almost $200 million. That would likely provide much of the yearly funding Highway 14 needs to make a push to complete the road that has for decades been delayed.

But many other projects in Mankato — the Minnesota State University’s clinical sciences building and South Central College’s classroom upgrades — would also receive funding.

The bill also would fund many small-town, outstate water treatment plant upgrades that are badly needed to ensure residents have clean water. So there was something to help every Minnesotan in the bonding bill.

Gov. Dayton would do well to call a special session to get agreement on a separate long-term transportation funding bill as well. Incorporating the transportation funding in the bonding bill will only serve to give a false sense of security that we’ve solved our road maintenance and expansion program that is costing us $3.75 million a month in inflationary costs.

And we agree with the GOP-leaning Minnesota Chamber of Commerce that metro transit funding must be part of a comprehensive transportation bill.

The bonding and transportation bills are critical. Projects are needed and interest rates are at the lowest level in history. There may never be a better time to invest in Minnesota’s infrastructure, so we should make those critical and urgent investments without hesitation.

 

— Mankato Free Press, May 24