Year: 2018

EXCERPT: “Newspapers are sounding the alarm about a new tariff on newsprint that is having unexpected consequences. Following a complaint from a Washington state-based paper mill that Canadian paper producers were dumping product in the U.S., the Commerce Department imposed substantial new tariffs on Canadian newsprint. At the same time, the U.S. doesn’t have enough mills ...

  Market forces in small rural communities almost guarantee that it will cost more to build a new starter home there than young families can afford, says the Center’s research associate Kelly Asche. Discussing his new report on the housing shortage, Kelly tells how some public-private partnerships are making it happen in places like St. ...

EXCERPT: “The major hurdles facing child care providers, as well as those seeking care for their children, remain staffing and affordability. That’s led to a child care shortage across the state, and especially in Greater Minnesota. That was the main theme of a meeting Tuesday in Bemidji put on by the office of Democratic U.S. ...

EXCERPT: “University of Minnesota President Eric Kaler wants outstate residents to know the state’s largest institution of higher education is working for them, too. Kaler shared his commitment to the ‘Block M’ brand and what it represents to Minnesota residents Friday, May 4, at a Brainerd Lakes Chamber of Commerce luncheon hosted at Cragun’s Resort ...

EXCERPT: “If Wadena’s downtown commercial district has the distinction of being added to the National Register of Historic Places in the future much of the credit will have to go to a route Denis Gardner chose to follow four years ago. Gardner was driving to his home in Deer River after being invited to Deer ...

  Kelly Asche, research associate at the Center, has just completed an article that gets to the heart of the question of why it’s so hard to get housing built in rural Minnesota. While rural communities recruit workers to alleviate the workforce shortage, they find they don’t have the appropriate housing for workers they would ...

EXCERPT: “State Rep. Paul Torkelson, the House Transportation Committee chair, is blasting the Department of Transportation for its newly released list of $417 million in highway projects, saying it fails to heed to outstate needs. ‘We have critical corridors like Hwy. 23 in western Minnesota, Hwy. 14 in southern Minnesota, and countless others in desperate need of ...

EXCERPT: “In 1998, when John Keller joined the St. Paul-based Immigrant Law Center of Minnesota (ILCM) as an immigration attorney, he would often drive to Worthington, where hundreds of low-income immigrants and refugees depended on the organization’s free legal services. ‘We would do workshops, answer a bunch of questions, do in-takes and represent whoever we could help,’ ...

  We meet this week with Rep. Joe Schomacker of Luverne to talk about where we’re at the legislature in the final weeks of the session.