| Entenza talks education, economy at Waseca visit |
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Posted: Saturday, November 7, 2009 11:21 am
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County News/James AndersonDFL gubernatorial hopeful Matt Entenza talks to Waseca School Board member Cathy Hoy after Saturday's breakfast at the State Street Bistro. Wasecan Annette Lord looks on.
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By JAMES ANDERSON
Publisher / Editor
WASECA — It didn’t surprise Matt Entenza that the first comments he heard Saturday morning were about the Waseca schools referendum that failed earlier in the week.
When the DFL gubernatorial hopeful met with the breakfast crowd at the State Street Bistro, the referendum defeat was still fresh in their minds.
“I understand people’s frustration,” he said after speaking with a group of mostly Waseca County DFL members for nearly two hours.
“The state government in Minnesota has put the cost of schools on local taxpayers, and at the same time that cities and counties have been forced to raise taxes.
“Property taxes aren’t based on ability to pay,” he said. “It should be the last tax to be raised. Now it’s the first.”
The former prosecutor and state representative told the crowd that the first way to fix education funding is to have state legislators go back to a 2001 bipartisan agreement under then Governor Jesse Ventura. The agreement stated that the state would pay for all K-12 education costs, while property tax levies were used only for extras that were specific to local education.
Entenza said the state drifted away from that policy quickly in 2003 as education funding was forced upon school districts.
Cathy Hoy, a Waseca School Board member chatted with Entenza as he first arrived at the Bistro.
“People are mad at the government in general,” she told him, adding that Tuesday’s failed referendum vote was “the only way they can have control.”
“In 2003 Pawlenty cut schools for real for the first time since the depression,” Entenza told the breakfast crowd.
In order to restore funding to schools, Entenza stressed, job growth needs to be restored.
To do so, Entenza said he supports clean energy and clean technology initiatives.
“I come from Worthington, one of the windiest places in the world,” he said.
Entenza said he will work towards the development of more wind, solar and geothermal energies that will create local jobs in the process.
“Right now, we pay energy to dictators in the Middle East and coal barons in Montana. We should be paying ourselves,” he said.
Entenza said he is “laser focused” on new wind technologies that are owned and manufactured locally. Currently, he said, 90 percent of clean energy projects now aren’t owned locally.
They need to be owned locally, he said, because “that creates jobs. That means folks in the Cities pay you for energy. I’m focusing on energy because it’s full state regulated. It doesn’t take an act of congress or approval of a Republican county board.
His focus on clean energies, clean technologies and specifically wind energy is his commitment to bringing more Minnesotans back to work, he said.
“I believe you have to grow economy. You can’t cut your way out and can’t tax your way out of the problem as you just saw with your referendum,” he said. “To invest in schools you have to have a strategy to invest in the economy.”
Entenza had planned visits in Owatonna and Rochester as well Saturday.
“A governor can’t win without winning Southern Minnesota,” he said. “I’ll be back in Waseca.”
James Anderson can be reached at 837-5443 or janderson@wasecacountynews.com |
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