Category: Rural Headlines

EXCERPT: “One-in-five U.S. rural hospitals are at a high risk of closing unless their financial situation improves, according to a new Navigant (NYSE: NCI) analysis of publicly available data. The study also shows that 64% of these at-risk rural hospitals are considered essential to the health and economic well-being of their communities. The analysis, which ...

EXCERPT: “City officials are hopeful that bipartisan legislation introduced Thursday in the Minnesota Legislature will give a long-awaited boost to the state’s Local Government Aid (LGA) program. SF 1304/HF 1102, led by chief authors Sen. Bill Weber (R-Luverne) and Rep. Dave Lislegard (DFL-Aurora), aims to increase LGA funding by $30.5 million, the amount needed to bring ...

EXCERPT: “Minnesota lawmakers weighed some of the first proposals aimed at addressing the shortage of child care providers in Minnesota’s rural areas Wednesday, Feb. 13. Lawmakers on the Senate Committee on Family Care and Aging advanced two bills that would set aside up $10 million in grants to help child care providers in Greater Minnesota expand ...

EXCERPT: “The Minnesota Department of Commerce will continue to appeal Enbridge Energy’s proposed Line 3 oil pipeline, Gov. Tim Walz announced Tuesday morning, Feb. 12. Walz said his administration, through the Department of Commerce, will petition the Minnesota Public Utilities Commission to reconsider the certificate of need it granted to the project, allowing an appeal filed ...

EXCERPT: “The Minnesota House Ag committee got an update on the latest Minnesota Rural Grocery Survey. The University of Minnesota’s Kathy Draeger says there are only about 250 local “main street” grocery stores remaining in Greater Minnesota. Draeger says rural Minnesota is losing these ‘main street’ stores at an unprecedented rate–which can have a significant ...

EXCERPT: “Nearly 35 percent of rural counties in the United States are experiencing protracted and significant population loss, according to new research released by the Carsey School of Public Policy at the University of New Hampshire. Those counties are now home to 6.2 million residents, a third fewer than lived there in 1950. In all, the ...

EXCERPT: “Assistant to the Secretary for Rural Development Anne Hazlett today announced the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) has launched a new toolkit to help support the deployment of high-speed broadband e-Connectivity in rural communities. ‘High-speed broadband e-Connectivity is becoming more and more essential to doing business, delivering health care, and, for schoolchildren, doing ...

EXCERPT: “New Gov. Tim Walz won’t release his first budget until Feb. 19 but some elements of his agenda for rural Minnesota are already starting to emerge. Walz is the state’s first governor from greater Minnesota since Rudy Perpich, an Iron Ranger who left office in 1991. The Democratic former congressman and former high school teacher ...

EXCERPT: “Local governments around the state could get a funding boost to the tune of $30.5 million a year if Gov. Tim Walz’s state budget gets a green light from the Minnesota Legislature. The DFL governor said Wednesday, Jan. 30, that he’d push to get the extra funds to help cities and towns pay for essential ...