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Capitol View®
Tim Pugmire

Lawmakers reflect on town hall meetings

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DFL leaders in the Minnesota House and Senate say a series of town hall meetings reinforced the need for a fair state budget solution.

House Speaker Margaret Anderson Kelliher, DFL-Minneapolis, said today that 6,500 people attended 23 hearings throughout the state, and 1,500 testified. That's on top of 3,000 suggestions submitted to the House Web site. Kelliher said the response shows Minnesotans understand the state is in a fiscal crisis and that tough choices will have to be made.

"They are most concerned about how fairness is applied in this situation," Kelliher said. "Fairness both in terms of cuts and fairness in terms of the use of the federal dollars and fairness in terms of any revenue raised. And they spoke loud and clear about this."

House Majority Leader Tony Sertich, DFL-Chisholm, says the data gathered from the hearings will be shared with appropriate budget committees for further discussion. Sertich said there were a lot of ideas, but not necessarily any new ones.

"Sometimes it's not even a matter of getting new ideas, Sertich said. "It's a matter of reinforcing what Minnesota's priorities are."

Republicans have suggested Democrats would use the public hearings to set the stage for proposed tax increases. Sen. David Senjem, R-Rochester, the minority leader in the Minnesota Senate, said he heard from a lot of people across the state who are in financial pain and hanging on the edge.

"We don't think taxes right now are an appropriate way to balance this budget," Senjem said. But if that's what the majority caucus wants to bring forward, that's fair. Let's just bring the process forward, get it going and we can debate that."