Year: 2017

EXCERPT: “We’ve heard a lot about America’s struggling rural areas in the past year. Forgotten America, where men and women lead hardscrabble lives marked by poverty, lack of opportunity, addiction and despair. Rural America, we’ve been told, is falling behind: on everything from Internet access to health care to business to youth. But recent Census Bureau data suggests that some of these concerns, at least, may be overstated — particularly when it comes to ...

Last week we talked with Mike Maurer, Chief Deputy and Emergency Management Director for Blue Earth County, about disaster preparedness in rural communities. Mike joins us again to talk about a specific community, Lake Crystal, and how it managed major storm damage last year.

EXCERPT: “The number of people living in rural (nonmetro) counties stood at 46.1 million in July 2016—14 percent of all U.S. residents spread across 72 percent of the Nation’s land area. The rural population declined by 21,000 between July 2015 and July 2016, according to the U.S. Census Bureau’s latest population estimates, the sixth consecutive ...

EXCERPT: “A mentally ill person should not be treated for the disease in an emergency room. Or sitting in a jail. But that is what often happens in rural Minnesota, where there are not enough health care professionals such as psychiatrists to treat them. And there are not enough psychiatric hospital beds even if the ...

With hurricanes hitting the South and tornadoes in the Midwest, we thought we’d sit down with Mike Maurer, Chief Deputy and Emergency Management Director for Blue Earth County, to talk about disaster preparedness in rural communities.

EXCERPT: “State lawmakers joined members of the renewable energy industry Thursday to tout a new report about clean energy jobs in Minnesota and to call for a higher state energy standard. Lt. Gov. Tina Smith, together with Sens. Karin Housley, R-St. Mary’s Point, and Nick Frentz, DFL-North Mankato, gave a news conference with Clean Energy ...

EXCERPT: “Small-town hospitals and clinics may not have all the bells and whistles of their big-city counterparts, but they offer something patients often cannot find in the cities: quarterbacks. ‘You have a quarterback here,’ said Dr. Heidi Korstad, sitting in the cafeteria of Bigfork Valley, a sprawling medical complex of hospital, clinic, nursing home and ...

EXCERPT: “Some 900 homes on the Fond du Lac Band of Lake Superior Chippewa reservation will soon gain something that 80 percent of U.S. residents already take for granted—home access to high-speed Internet service. Thanks to two $3 million U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) grants, plus an additional $2.2 million investment from the tribe, some 160 miles of ...

Last year the Center released the report “A Quiet Crisis: Minnesota’s child care shortage,” which shed light on a dire family and economic development problem affecting the entire state. A year later, we revisit the issue.