As Essentia Health announces a 675-million-dollar upgrade of its downtown Duluth campus, state Senator Erik Simonson says he’s disappointed 164 million dollars to upgrade surrounding infrastructure was *not* included in a bonding bill the legislature passed in its closing minutes. The Duluth Democrat says it makes him suspicious that it’s more about politics than policy. Simonson says, “Any time we have a private employer that wants to make that size of investment, if we could find ways to… facilitate that growth, we should take advantage of that — much like we did in Rochester.”
Rochester Republican Senator Dave Senjem responds it’s “absolutely, certainly not politics” — and adds the measure didn’t make it out of the Tax Committee. “That bill is very extensive — I think it’s probably a very good bill,” Senjem says, “But it doesn’t belong in the bonding bill at the last minute.”
Simonson says an opportunity was missed to time infrastructure improvements with the project start, but that he’ll try again next legislative session.
More in this interview with Simonson:
And Senjem: