Category: Rural Headlines

EXCERPT: “Kicking an opioid habit takes serious commitment. Methadone, the drug commonly used to curb withdrawal symptoms as a person tapers off heroin, requires supervised daily dosing in a state-licensed opioid treatment program (OTP) for the first month or more. After that, many patients can take a month’s worth of medication home with them, but federal ...

EXCERPT: “A number of school superintendents, board of education members, teachers and students from across the region took to the stand Friday to share with Minnesota legislators the unique educational needs of Greater Minnesota school districts. During an approximately two-hour long field hearing at Windom Area Middle/High School, those affected most by education finance and policy ...

EXCERPT: “Plans to make historic investments in Greater Minnesota could sail through fights at the Capitol over contentious pieces of Gov. Tim Walz’s spending blueprint. Some of the central tenets like a 20 cents per gallon gas tax hike and decision to keep in place a 2 percent tax on medical providers faced instant opposition from ...

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 ...