Legislature made sound education investments at both ends of the youth spectrum.
Star Tribune
May 26, 2006
Neal St. Anthony
The long-anticipated expansion of University of Minnesota's undergraduate business school is in the bag, thanks in part to the Legislature.
Private donors are on their way to reaching a $27 million goal for scholarships and construction costs that essentially will match the $26.6 million in funding from the Legislature.
A groundbreaking is planned for Sept. 28.
"We're pretty close to $20 million," said Jim Campbell, the retired Wells Fargo banker and interim dean of the business school. Most of the big pieces are coming from alumni who grew up in small-town Minnesota.
"Hanson Hall" will be named in honor of alumnus Herbert Hanson, a retired California investment manager, who made the lead gift of $10 million. Other donors include Campbell; Dave Hubers, retired CEO of Ameriprise Financial; Mac McDonald, retired chairman of Virginia's Signet Bank, and retired businessmen Larry Hinman and Don Anderson.
About half the private money, $13 million, will fund the difference between the $39.9 million construction cost and the $26.6 million pledged by the state. The other $13 million or so is expected to fund undergraduate scholarships.
"The university has a program that will match that money and that would allow us to almost quadruple the dollars we have available for undergraduate students," Campbell said. "It's a public university but it's expensive for some. We must consider access for these kids as well as just the building."
Hanson Hall will be connected to the existing Carlson School. The undergraduate school, ranked 12th nationwide by U.S. News & World Report, will be able to handle a 50 percent enrollment increase, to 2,500 students.
This is a good investment for the state, which covers less than 10 percent of the business school's operating costs.
The undergraduate school, which ranks ninth in size in the Big Ten with 450 graduates a year, turns away most applicants because of its limited capacity. Of those, 40 percent leave Minnesota to study elsewhere. Most Minnesota graduates, whether from Hastings or Hong Kong, stay in Minnesota to start or work for expanding businesses.
Guaranteed, the return to the public on this will be a lot higher than for a football stadium that will cost taxpayers $10.25 million a year for 25 years.
To view entire story, go to: http://www.startribune.com/1069/story/458383.html
Pioneer Press
May 21, 2006
Bill Salisbury
Minnesota will step up its commitment to bioscience research as part of a $1 billion public works program that the Legislature passed early Sunday morning.
In the House and Senate, the measure that many lawmakers said was the first priority this year — a bill to borrow $1 billion for state building projects — passed fairly quickly Sunday morning. After ten minutes of debate, the House approved it 111-21. The Senate had no debate on the massive building measure and passed it 60-6.
Getting the votes in the Legislature was far more complicated.
"It was a long process, and it's frustrating it took so long,'' said the chief House negotiator for the bill, Rep. Dan Dorman, R-Albert Lea.
He said the bill should go a long way towards repairing the Legislature's public image, tainted last year with a partial state government shut down and two years ago when it failed it pass its major spending, borrowing and taxing bills.
The measure includes $40 million to build the first of five bioscience research laboratories that the University of Minnesota wants to erect over the next 10 years.
"It's the most important project in the bonding bill," Senate Capital Investments Committee Chairman Keith Langseth, DFL-Glyndon, had said.
The public works measure is called the bonding bill because it would pay for most construction projects by selling $949 million in general obligation bonds to investors. Legislative leaders called it the most important bill of the session.
The money would build dozens of classroom buildings, laboratories and libraries at state colleges across the state.
It would pay $60 million to complete the Northstar commuter rail line from Minneapolis to Big Lake and transfer $7.8 million from the Metropolitan Council to continue planning a proposed light-rail or bus rapid transit line in the Central Corridor between downtown Minneapolis and downtown St. Paul.
The agreement also calls for expanding three prisons, building a new state hospital lockup for sex offenders and funding dozens of flood-control projects and park and trail expansions.
The House-Senate conference committee that negotiated the bill barely met Gov. Tim Pawlenty's demand to keep the price tag under $1 billion. The bill's total cost is $999,980,000 — a figure driven partly by Pawlenty's spending requests.
State colleges and universities would be the big winners under the bill. They would get $309 million — nearly one-third of the money in the bill — for renovations and construction projects.
The university had asked the Legislature to create a nine-member Biomedical Sciences Research Authority that could borrow $330 million to finance construction of the five labs over the next decade. But Dorman rejected that idea.
He objected to delegating the Legislature's authority to make construction decisions to an appointed body. Instead, he favors having the Legislature fund one new lab every two years.
To get the lab, the University had to give up a proposed $41 million science classroom building on its Minneapolis campus. But it got another $27 million to expand the Carlson School of Management.
To view the entire story, go to: http://www.twincities.com/mld/pioneerpress/news/local/14634807.htm
Pioneer Press
May 19, 2006
Bill Salisbury
The Honeycrisp apple will soon become Minnesota's official state fruit, thanks to Laurel Avery's 2005 fourth grade class at Andersen Elementary School in Bayport.
The Minnesota House today voted 101-23 for a bill bestowing the designation on the Honeycrisp, an apple developed by the University of Minnesota in the 1960s. The legislation now goes to Gov. Tim Pawlenty for his signature.
As a class project last year, Andersen's students discovered that 20 other states had official state fruits but Minnesota didn't. They decided it should have one and picked the Honeycrisp because of its Minnesota origins.
To view the entire story, go to: http://www.twincities.com/mld/twincities/news/breaking_news/14621534.htm