Year: 2021

EXCERPT: “The Minnesota Department of Employment and Economic Development (DEED) is now accepting applications for the Minnesota Main Street COVID Relief Grant program. A total of $64,200,000 is available in grants for Minnesotan owned and operated businesses that can demonstrate financial hardship due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Businesses that are majority-owned by military veterans, women, and Black, Indigenous, ...

EXCERPT: “Despite decades of federal and state investments in farm programs and rural economic development, most of rural America is still losing population while urban America is gaining. There are exceptions, of course. Montana attracted so many new people that the state gained a second congressional seat. And oil rich Williams County, North Dakota, was ...

EXCERPT: “The Trump era saw Republicans tighten their grip on voters in Greater Minnesota while DFLers made huge gains in the Twin Cities and metro area suburbs. Now, eight months into Joe Biden’s presidency, Minnesota’s geographic divide remains stark. An Aug. 28-31 MinnPost poll of 1,945 Minnesota voters found that rural and urban voters in Minnesota split sharply on everything from ...

EXCERPT: “Today, the Minnesota Department of Employment and Economic Development (DEED) has launched the latest round of Child Care Economic Development Grants. These grants authorize $5 million over the next two fiscal years for grants to local communities to increase quality child care providers to support economic development across Minnesota. A total of $2.5 million will ...

EXCERPT: “Nationally, one in six people, about 17.6 percent, face food insecurity, said Geri Henchy, Director of Nutrition Policy and Early Childhood Programs with the Food Research & Action Center (FRAC) in Washington, D. C. Henchy said food insufficiency, which measures how many people do not have access to enough food, affected one in 10 Americans this ...

by Whitney Oachs, Researcher On March 11, 2021, President Biden signed the American Rescue Plan into law. This bipartisan legislation was designed to enable Americans to respond to and recover from the impacts of COVID-19. Under the American Rescue Plan, the Economic Development Administration was allocated $3 billion in supplemental funding to assist communities nationwide ...

EXCERPT: “Newly released data from the 2020 U.S. census shows the bulk of Minnesota’s population growth over the past decade took place in the Twin Cities metro. The seven counties in the core metro grew by 11 percent over the past decade, adding more than 300,000 people. A collection of exurban counties on the metro’s ...

EXCERPT: “When Congress approved the massive $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan in March, it earmarked $40 billion to help bail out the country’s struggling child care system. Minnesota, in turn, got more than half a billion dollars for its child care providers. The influx of cash resulted in a tug-of-war over how to spend the money in Minnesota ...

EXCERPT: “A Minnesota electric company that wants to sell its financially troubled coal-fueled power plant in North Dakota expects to know Friday if its member utility cooperatives will endorse the deal that includes purchasing electricity over the next decade from the factory’s prospective buyer. North Dakota officials have hailed the potential sale announced last month of ...