Legislative Update
Greetings,
I hope you are enjoying the transition into the holiday season. I cannot believe Christmas is less than one week away! If you're curious, take note of my holiday publication schedule near the end of this newsletter.
Eastside Corridor Open House
Since my last newsletter, I had the opportunity to attend the Eastside Corridor Bypass Open House at the Owatonna City Hall on Thursday evening, December 11th, 2025. I must compliment County Administrator, Renae Fry; our Steele County Commissioners; the Steele County staff; and the project consultants for a great presentation. In addition, I want to compliment Owatonna City Administrator Jenna Tuma, Mayor Matt Jessop, our Owatonna City Council members, and the City of Owatonna staff for their role in facilitating this very informative presentation. First, as an observer, I heard many citizens commented that they did not know how much information would be provided. Thus, they were very pleasantly surprised to see everything presented, especially the film depicting the proposed route of the Eastside Corridor and the new intersections. Second, many citizens did not know how much information was already available on the Eastside Corridor on the existing website. Finally, the open house allowed everyone in attendance to interact one-on-one with the planners, consultants, county and city staff, and their elected leaders. Great job everyone!
KOWZ and KRUE Radio
As always, I enjoyed a great visit with Community Connections host Corey Harguth on Tuesday. Although I prepared several pages of notes, we barely touched on several of the topics as the available time flew by quickly. First, we discussed the implementation of Paid Family and Medical Leave (PFML) on January 1st, 2026. Next, we discussed the November 2025 Budget and Economic Forecast which was actually published on December 4th, 2025. A key point here is the Structural Imbalance within the budget. In summary, we finished the 2024 - 2025 State of Minnesota budget on June 30th, 2025 with a surplus of $4.878B. However, the November forecast shows the State of Minnesota using part of that surplus in the 2026-2027 budget. Thus, we will close the budget on June 30th, 2027 with a smaller surplus of $2.465B. Translation: with no changes, we are still spending our budget faster than the tax dollars we are collecting. Thus, we may end the current budget in June 2027 with a surplus, but it will be a significantly smaller surplus compared to where we started with in July 2025. Thus, MMB forecasts a deficit in our future budget years with no changes to our current trend.
Next, we discussed how are negative business climate (over taxation and a very slow, tedious permitting process) makes our State of Minnesota much less competitive for new business opportunities.
Finally, we discussed the upcoming session and our attempts to garner bonding funds for infrastructure in our region.
Thanks again Corey and it was great to see the entire KOWZ and KRUE team during my visit to the studio.
Wrapping up Community Connections with host Corey Harguth on Tuesday, December 16th.
Owatonna Chamber Growth Breakfast
Recently, the Chamber hosted State of Minnesota Demographer, Susan Brower. Susan discussed our changing demographic trends within the State of Minnesota. Given the changing birth rate and net migration, we were able to deduce some of the future impacts our local schools and our employers will face in the not-too-distant future. Thank you to Susan for the conversation and to the chamber for hosting!
Fraud
Lastly, and probably most importantly, stay tuned for additional State of Minnesota Fraud updates. Breaking news is still coming out on the latest findings by the US Attorney’s office. In the meantime, you can view yesterday's press conference from the office here.
Future Newsletter
We will take a quick break for the holiday season. So, we will not plan to publish a December 26th newsletter, and our January 2nd newsletter will likely be published later in the day.
Please enjoy the Holidays, help a neighbor, and share in the Joy of living and working in Southern Minnesota!
Coffee with Tom
Please feel free to join me for Coffee with Tom at the Owatonna Chamber of Commerce on Friday, January 2nd at the Owatonna Chamber of Commerce from 12:00pm-1:00pm.
Our next meeting in Waseca will be on Friday, January 9th at the Waseca Chamber of Commerce from 12:00pm-1:00pm.
Thank you for your support and feedback!
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