When conservatives show up to speak on too many college campuses these days, it’s anybody’s guess whether they’ll be cancelled, attacked or otherwise shut down or shut up. While the…
Two decades after releasing its first plan, the company hoping to develop Minnesota’s first copper nickel mine will go back to the drawing board to update its proposal. It’s an…
This time Duluth school strategists thought they did everything right leading up to the $52 million technology levy dubbed Future Forward presented to voters. Slick website, numerous community listening sessions,…
Administrators at the University of Minnesota Duluth thought the decade-long decline in enrollment would finally level off this fall. That rosy assumption led the U of M system to help…
News that the Duluth Entertainment and Convention Center (DECC) faced a financial emergency shouldn’t have caught city councilors and officials by surprise. After all, earlier this month Mayor Emily Larson…
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…
An anti-nuke resolution before the Duluth City Council must have appeared to be a slam dunk to supporters. After all, their like-minded peers on the Minneapolis and St. Paul city…
Evidently it’s no secret that vagrants, drug use and defecation pose a public safety problem at several downtown Duluth city parking ramps. But the city’s unofficial policy of tolerating the…
Ah, the good old days of the pandemic, when Gov. Tim Walz’s emergency authority waived the public meeting laws, empowering state and local governments to hold official meetings online without…
It’s the same old story, but with a cruel twist for taxpayers. Like other public transit systems, the Duluth Transit Authority continues to run half-empty buses, still lagging far behind…
Duluth Mayor Emily Larson can’t say no one warned her about the timing of her plan to put a tax increase for city parks on the ballot this year. The…
In March, the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) reported that the Consumer Price Index had risen by 7.9% over the previous year, the fastest year-on-year rate since January 1982. Stripping out volatile…
To be sure, it’s not official until next month. But after two years of keeping their distance from the public like so many other elected officials, the Duluth City Council…
Resorts and residents in Canada have joined northern Minnesota businesses and families in pleading with the Canadian government to get with it, put the pandemic behind them and reopen the…
It’s not the most expensive item on Mayor Emily Larson’s wish list for spending $58 million in the latest round of federal COVID-19 relief funds coming to Duluth. But Larson’s…
It's a matter of great public interest. Yet in apparent violation of state law, the school district withheld details of what turned out to be a $3 million deal.
In March, the city of Duluth was nominated for Center of the American Experiment’s Golden Turkey Award for its ongoing financial support — and bailouts — of the Spirit Mountain…
The Cloquet City Council has set the stage to stop using so-called project labor agreements that in effect guaranteed union participation in city construction projects.
During the pandemic, passengers have avoided public transit like the plague with Metro Transit suffering a 60 percent loss in ridership alone. It’s hard to blame the public considering the…
A pandemic has a way of putting things in context, what’s really important, even in government. Take the 5-cent fee the powers that be in Duluth planned to impose on…
A September story in the Tacoma News Tribune details how one municipal utility in Washington is done with wind due to its high cost and low value to the reliability…
This article originally appeared in The Duluth News Tribune. In late September, Gov. Tim Walz announced he would circumvent the Legislature by using the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency’s bureaucratic rulemaking…
Governor Tim Walz may not “do drama” but his dramatics in attempting to avoid the accountability that comes with his office guarantee more of it. The Duluth News Tribune issued…
This op ed appeared in the Duluth News Tribune on July 12th, 2019 In March 2011, Clint MacFarlane, who had been home-brewing and developing his own recipes since 2006, opened…