Republican Senator Dave Senjem from Rochester says he hopes by later this week to have a bonding bill for state public works projects ready for first review by Senate lawmakers of both parties. Senjem expects a bill in the 800-million-dollar range — about half of Governor Mark Dayton’s request — but says that’s all the state can afford, given other items on Republicans’ agenda including tax relief. Senjem says, “I don’t have that much money left to use from the standpoint of debt service on a bonding bill. So you play with the cards that you’re dealt, and those are the cards that I have.” He points out that with the 987-million-dollar bonding bill passed last session, 800 million this time around would be a record amount over the two-year cycle.
Expect funding for a new Minnesota veterans home in Senate Republicans’ bonding bill. Senator Senjem says he’d prefer *not* to take money from the Vikings Stadium Reserve Account, as some House Republicans suggest. “I think the Vikings money is for the Vikings stadium,” he says. “If we’ve got surplus there, we oughta buy down the debt on that stadium, retire that debt earlier.”
Senjem says the state should build only one new veterans home right now, and it’s lawmakers’ job to decide whether it’s in Bemidji, Montevideo or Preston. He says that’s “probably one of the hardest decisions within the framework of the bonding bill this year… but we’re faced with it and we’re gonna have to make it.”
More in this interview: