   In July, I attended the State Legislative Leaders Foundation’s Emerging Leaders program. I was nominated by the Speaker of the House to attend this event and was the only Minnesota House member attending. It was great to meet other 1st/2nd term legislators across the country, break some bread and share ideas. You can see me in the bottom lefthand corner of this photo from the event:  Recently, I Emceed an event with our local Superintendents… Sara Paul from North Branch, Brian Dietz from Chisago Lakes and Steve Massey from Forest Lake. We had critical conversations about mandates, navigating funding challenges, parent transparency, student outcomes and a lot more. About 50 people attended the forum in Wyoming, with a lot of different perspectives. I love engaging our community in these types of events and appreciate the work our Superintendents do. It’s not an easy job! The Chisago County Press did a write-up on the event and you can read about it here.  Apart from that, I continue to host constituent conversations. I’m getting great feedback and ideas for legislation; these conversations are so meaningful to me to be the best legislator I can be. Feel free to email me if you’d ever like to get together! We’ll have some more townhalls planned in the near future – and I’ll keep you informed about dates/locations for those. In the near future, I’ll be touring bonding projects throughout the state. Being on the Capital Investment committee, I’ll get a firsthand look at some of the needs for small communities in Minnesota – including our own district. News you should be aware of! Several special elections are scheduled in the coming weeks to fill vacancies in the Minnesota Legislature. These elections matter. They determine who will represent your community’s voice on the issues that impact our daily lives. I’ll be heavily involved in each one of them. Aug 26th – Special Primary Senate Districts 29 & 47 Nov 4th – Special Election Senate Districts 29 & 47 You can find detailed information about dates, candidates, and voting locations on the Minnesota Secretary of State’s website: mnvotes.gov. Minnesota Fraud continues to be a huge problem that has been left unaddressed from last session. Recently, Acting US Attorney for Minnesota Joe Thompson came out and said the total for government fraud the past few years will total over $1 Billion. We had a chance last session to implement an office of Inspector General to proactively address some of this fraud. We just needed one House DFLer to vote for it, which didn’t happen. I’m praying that we can get something done this upcoming session, because Minnesota is fast becoming a state known for crippling fraud. That said, on a positive note, there was a sentence handed down to the Feeding our Future “ringleader” --- 28 years. Thank you for staying engaged and informed. Please let me know if you have any questions, comments or concerns. It’s an honor to serve you. |