“How much patience do we have to have?” North Mankato Representative Clark Johnson asked, as lawmakers fumed about road projects in rural areas not included in MN-DOT’s 2018 “Corridors of Commerce” funding. Johnson tried to cut funding for an additional lane on I-94 between between Clearwater and Monticello — meeting stiff resistance from Saint Cloud Representative Jim Knoblach, who says that is “probably the busiest stretch of I-94 in the state. It’s just good prudent budgeting to spend 20 million dollars more to make these lanes permanent.”
Johnson responds money should be spent in rural Minnesota on roads that don’t come to the Twin Cities. “Do it on the [Highway] 14’s and the 23’s and the Route 2’s, the kind of roads that really canhelp develop [and] connect cities in rural Minnesota.”