Last week, Axios reported: Minnesota swing voters in Axios’ latest Engagious/Sago focus group support some of the DFL‘s biggest legislative victories, but overwhelmingly oppose tax increases included in the recent state budget. … Zoom…
We recently visited this southern Minnesota city and noted some of the connections to free-food fraud. Back in March of last year, we noted that during Covid, Owatonna had more…
Rochester city hall desperately wants voters to reauthorize the half-cent local option sales tax that’s set to sunset this year, along with the $12 million the tax generates annually. Officials…
As the Department of Revenue is getting ready to send those significantly smaller-than-promised $260 rebate checks, at American Experiment we are still uncovering where the rest of the surplus went.…
Where did the $18 billion surplus go?
If you have, among other things, “eight years of professional experience in regulatory oversight, public administration, business or law enforcement” as well as “knowledge of the cannabis and/or hemp regulatory…
The Rebuild Duluth housing initiative began with the best of intentions like so many other government programs. The idea unveiled by Duluth Mayor Emily Larson four years ago was to…
The North Dakota Legislature just handed taxpayers the biggest property and income tax cut in state history, more than half a billion dollars overall. But that could be only a…
The easy part ended when the Minnesota Legislature rubber-stamped Rochester’s request to ask voters to extend the city’s expiring half-cent local sales tax for another 16 years. This fall residents…
The auditors’ report identifies dozens of questionable transactions. You will recall the fallout back in March from the disastrous, late-February, Expo put on at the convention center by the City…
A 30-second ad put out by the state’s tourism board was featured today on the multimillion-follower Twitter account Libs of TikTok (@libsoftiktok). The video can be seen here. The Libs’…
Back in March, my colleague Bill Walsh warned that the proposed creation and expansion of a raft of state agencies would lead to a boom in state government hiring: Gov.…
If you enjoy massive trade shows, you, like the mayor of Bloomington, are probably disappointed that Minnesota lost its bid to host the 2027 World Expo (which went instead to…
In the last session, Minnesota’s legislature voted to raise taxes on Minnesotans by more than $9 billion over the next four years. But the legislators at the capitol aren’t the…
Not all the indicted figures in the Feeding Our Future case stuck around to face justice. According to media reports, at least three of the sixty defendants have left the…
Connecting more dots between Feeding Our Future defendants and political figures in Minnesota. Back in March, the U.S. Attorney announced the latest batch of Feeding Our Future indictments. The batch…
Downtown Fargo has a problem. It’s gotten so rowdy and noisy on the streets on many nights that city hall has been deluged with complaints. Last summer the controversy got…
Yesterday MPR News asked, “Minnesota bets on the child tax credit to cut poverty. Will it work?” To answer that, let’s revisit a post I wrote in March about poverty.…
Abdulkadir Awale, defendant No. 56, has become the 10th defendant to plead guilty in the Feeding Our Future scandal. Awale, of Bloomington, ran three restaurants involved in the scandal: Karmel…
Although Minnesota has a constitutional requirement for a balanced budget, the legislature is allowed to borrow money for capital building projects.
Two more of the 60 defendants plead guilty. As expected, Defendants Nos. 51 and 52 pled guilty this week, bringing the number of convictions in the Feeding Our Future free-food-fraud…
Now we know where the surplus went — staff raises and member per diems. Yesterday the House Rules Committee met and voted to increase their per diem payments from $66…
Despite facing an $18 billion budget surplus, the legislature has slapped Minnesotans with about $9 billion in tax hikes in the just-ended legislative session. But unfortunately for residents in some…
And a well-connected local political nonprofit is driving the agenda. In settling a lawsuit brought in 2022 by a Minnesota prison inmate, the state just discovered a new constitutional right…