The hot topic for the past week has been the outrageous raises that Gov. Dayton gave to his commissioners - about $25,000 per commissioner totaling more than $800,000 per year.

 

Minnesota needs to focus on roads and bridges and other priorities families care about - not on raises for big agency leaders!

 

On that note, many of you have emailed and called me over the past two weeks expressing your concerns about new gas and mileage taxes, in order to pay for new roads and bridges.

 

I do not support new taxes on gas or mileage.

 

We need to remember, our roads and bridges did not fall into disrepair overnight. We brought up this issue many times over the past two years, only to fall on deaf ears.

 

In the past two years DFL leadership increased state spending from roughly $35 Billion to $39 Billion. One of the largest expansions in state history!

Did the DFL focus on our roads and bridges? No.

 

The DFL had total control over our state government, and chose instead to increase the number of government bureaucrats by over 1300 positions. They stuffed millions of dollars into the bureaucracies and spent close to $90 million on a new palace for themselves. We could have chosen to build new roads with this money instead of bigger government, but Democrats chose bigger government.

 

Last week I touched on the fact that Minnesota will be forced to build up to 14,000 acres of new solar fields in order to meet the new, DFL mandated, renewable power standards. We have since learned that this number could be as high as 20,000 new acres!

 

Where are all of these new acres of solar panels going to be built? In the metro? I don't think so.

 

Once again, the metro-DFL expects Greater Minnesota to meet their demands.

 

Right now, there is not much regulation when it comes to the expansion of new, commercial/industrial solar fields. Some have called it the new "wild west" of solar.

 

There is little protection against large, out-of-state developers coming into to small communities and building massive solar fields. Currently, two communities are facing this issue. One may be forced to accept a 500 acre solar field and the other community may be forced to accept a 600 acre solar field. Do you want this in your home town?

 

I have introduced a bill this week that would require that these large scale solar developers need to meet two criteria if they chose to bully their way into a community.

 

1. Local control restored. They must FIRST get county board approval to build.

 

2. The developers must have a bond to insure that they can clean up their mess in the event they go bankrupt or out-of-business.