 Lakeland Public Television, the Bemidji Pioneer, the Brainerd Dispatch, and Northern Community Radio are proud to present Debate Night 2016, a look at our area legislative candidates, and now the State House of Representatives District 2B Debate. Your moderator tonight is Warren Larson. Good evening and welcome to Debate 2016, 11 state legislative debates over four nights. We're at Lakeland Public Television Studios in Bemidji. Our candidates for tonight's debate are Steve Green from the Republican Party, and Brian Klabundi from the Democratic Farm Labor Party. Our panel this evening is Dennis Wyman, Lakeland Public Television News Director, Matthew Ledke from the Bemidji Pioneer, and Scott Hall, Public Affairs Director for Northern Community Radio, K-A-X-E and K-B-X-E. Our rules for this evening's debate. Each candidate will be given three minutes for opening comments. The panel will ask questions after opening comments. Some of their own questions, others may be from the public. The candidates will rotate the order they speak, beginning with opening comments and finishing with closing comments. Each candidate gets two minutes to answer the questions. Each candidate will have a one-minute rebuttal opportunity. New this year, candidates will have the option of using one minute of bonus time to add on to one of their answers tonight. This can be used during the answer to the initial question or during the rebuttal, but can only be used once. Questions continue until we're about 50 minutes into the debate when we move on to closing comments. And so let's move on to our debate and our opening comments, our opening comments. So we'll start with Mr. Steve Green. Well, thank you, Warren and panel. And thank you for the viewers at home tonight. It's a great honor to be here. I had a little bit about myself, for those of you who don't know this, I am the sitting representative in this area. My wife and I have been married for 37, almost 38 years now. We live over in the Fostin area where we raised our six children. We now have, well, as of the first year, we will have 12 grandchildren. The events that are going on in the state and in the country for that matter are very concerning to me. And over the last years that I've been in office and continuing on, if you choose to put me back, it will be my focus to continue to work for the freedoms that I enjoyed when I was younger. The freedoms my wife and I enjoyed as we ran our business and raised our family. I see them disappearing in our country. I see the over taxation, the over regulation that has been imposed on us by government. And I have worked in the time that I've been there to try to reduce that. I continue to do that. We also did some things in the last biennium when the Republicans had control of the house to reduce some of the burdens on the veterans. We've got, their pensions are no longer have income tax charged on them in Minnesota, which was a travesty when it was imposed and now that's gone. If the tax bill had been signed by the governor, there would have been about $800 million of tax relief just in the one year and $500 million ongoing in tax relief to Minnesotans. Hope to bring that back when we come back next year. The little bit about our business, we had a greenhouse over in the Fostin area. It was successful for us. And after our children left home, we decided to cut back a little. And so I went into a light remodeling work and my wife is a CNA. And as it turns out, you never really seem to cut back because there's always something else to do. And then I decided to get into public service. And that is where I've been working now for the last few years. And hopefully that's where I'll continue to work. All right. Mr. Klabundi, your opening comments. Well, I'd also like to thank everybody here tonight. Excited for the opportunity tonight to voice our differencing opinions and talk things over. It's quite an exciting moment for me in our venture here. Like I said, I'm Brian Klabundi. I'm married to my wife, Jennifer, for 15 years. We have twin daughters that are nine years old. They go to school in Minilman and a two and a half year old son. We live on our family farm in Wabin, Minnesota. That farm's been in our family for 102 years now. I've only been there for 41 of them. But I always say our son, our claim for him is he grows up in the room that I grew up in. So it's kind of a neat deal. It's a true family farm we have. And we were quite proud of it. As Jennifer and I were talking about getting into politics, we were involved with some different organizations and some leadership stuff. And one of our particular mentors talked about opportunity and the fact of being prepared for opportunity and being ready to take advantage of that opportunity when it presents itself. We're here tonight because we saw an opportunity and we decided to take advantage of this opportunity. Now, if so chosen in November and we're elected, we see a huge opportunity to help fix healthcare. We see a huge opportunity to help fix property taxes out in our rural areas and in our small towns. We see a huge opportunity to help the education system. These are all huge issues in our state of Minnesota and we feel like we're ready to tackle the issues. So, you know, debate prep for a state house debate when you haven't done this before. A lot of it, you know, friends that we got together yesterday and went through some things. But life on the farm, you know, when we're harvesting we have our two-way radios and we talk and we actually ended up debating all night long basically. So our farm has provided us debate prep every fall. So on the way to the field this morning, we're combining soybeans and we talked about debate prep on the way to the field until I left at noon today. So as you can tell, Steve's probably got a bit of an advantage on me that, you know, he's done this a few times. So I'm gonna do the best I can to perform as best as I can. Steve has a disadvantage. He's been down in St. Paul and he has to explain what's happened down there with no action happening. And that's what we'll be discussing tonight. So looking forward to the opportunity and have a great night. Thank you. Our first question is for Mr. Klaw Bundy and it comes from Scott Hall. All right, thanks, Warren. The growth of big agriculture in Northwestern Minnesota, potatoes, soybeans, green beans and other crops is having a negative impact on water quality and quantity. And what is being done or what can be done by the growers and by the state of Minnesota to conserve water and minimize pollution? And specifically, but not only, do you support a moratorium on new wells in some ag areas? Well, let's start with phase one here. I think it's important that we need to know what our levels we wanna set our water quality issues that we wanna make sure that we know what the targets are. Long as farmers know their target and they know where they're going, they can manage their practice at that point. There is money out there through the federal government, through the CSP program that they are paid to closely monitor and manage their water quality. So a lot's been done with agriculture in the last five years. There is a conscious effort to improve what they're doing. They need a little bit more time, but they are moving forward with that. As far as a moratorium on drilling, no, not right now, I would not support a moratorium on drilling wells right now if there were concerns got worse, then that's something that could be taken and nothing's ever off the table, right? You can always take a look at it, but from that perspective, no. All right, thank you, Mr. Green. Thank you for the question. When this issue first came up, I was in the house at that time and the Democrats had complete control and they pretty much did everything they could to decimate our farm community with these issues. And so I started looking into this and so I didn't make my decisions based just on feelings, even though the farming community is about 37% of our economy and we can't afford to damage it too much more. We've already decimated our logging and our mining and our industry is leaving the state. Farming is about the only thing we have left because we're going after our resorts now too. The farmers that do irrigation and our next two rivers and lakes are required to monitor. They are monitoring wells and they are monitoring within the streams and I've watched the data. They have to report to the NPCA once a month and if you look at the data that they're bringing in, they are doing extremely well. There's only, if you look at the statistics that are there, the measurable statistics, the only one that is not either at or below the standard levels is chloride and they're working on that and even that is only over by like 0.05. So the farmers are doing a good job and we've asked them to do a good job. They've done a good job and then what happened is the Democrat Party came after them again and demanded more and it was not fair and I think that you have to look at all the statistics, can't just say they're polluting the water without looking at the statistics that are out there for proof, even over toward the west. The Red River is cleaner than it's been in 40 years. So something that they're doing is working. Okay, Mr. Klabundi, any other comments? Yeah, as a farmer, I feel I'm the best suited to be involved with these judgments on the water quality issues. You have to have clean water to have a viable community. It's just plain and simple. Without a good clean water source, there's no one that's gonna be there and we know that from other parts of the country that have extreme water issues. So as a farmer, I'm a conventional farmer that operates like any other large farm you see around. We have to manage our water quality. It is really important, so thank you. All right, Mr. Green, any additional comments? Yeah, as a farmer, you should know that if you look at the farmers that are out there with irrigation wells and farming next to these resources that they are doing the monitoring and they are doing what they're supposed to be doing. So then instead of going after them and punishing them for doing what we've asked them to do, maybe we should look at what's being recorded and go off the statistics that are there. I really think working together is gonna be the key to this. We need to have clean water and we have to have farmers that can operate. All right, we'll move on to our next question and that's for Mr. Green and that comes from Dennis Wyman. All right, thanks. We wanna thank you both for being here tonight. This is what we've been doing these debates a lot of years now. This is the 10th one I'm involved in, dating back to 1998 and it seems like every two years we're talking about health care costs, health insurance costs. Can you assess the state in your opinion, the state of Minshire right now and what would you do if elected to help deal with these health insurance costs a lot of Minnesotans are dealing with? Thank you for that question Dennis. In 2013, when the Democrats rammed us down our throat, now one Republican voted for it. It was not difficult to see that this was not gonna work and the people who were looking at the numbers told us it wasn't gonna work and yet we got it anyway. And now we're faced with people who are actually not even gonna be able to get insurance. They're gonna be forced off the policies that they have and there's nothing there for them under the Minshire plan. And it's important to understand and to know that before Minshire and before the Affordable Care Act, Minnesota was at the top of the hill on this. As far as providing coverage and at the bottom as far as cost, we were doing an excellent job here. We had 93% of Minnesotans were covered by some kind of a policy. The others, 7% had access if they would have chosen to take that access. And now with the Minshire we're told that they've upped that to 96% but that's false. Because when you count the people that first of all had their premiums doubled and tripled so that they can having a hard time making their premiums and their deductibles have gone from 2,000 to 6,000 to 10,000, that's not coverage. They're not gonna reach that unless they have a catastrophic illness. So Minshire needs to be repealed and buried and then go back and do the things we should have done in the first place which was to work on lowering the costs through medical savings accounts. We could have also used, excuse me, we could have had insurance being able to purchase across state lines which have opened up competition within the insurance market and these things alone. And we also need tort reform. We need reform in our courts to cut back on some of the frivolous lawsuits that are driving up the cost of medical care. All right, thank you. Mr. Klopp-Undy, same question. Well, the Affordable Care Act isn't going anywhere anytime soon. So I mean, repeal and replace isn't gonna happen. So what we gotta figure out is what we can do to improve the system we got. I actually am one of the people in the individual market, our family is, that has skyrocketing premiums. Skyrocketing, you know, our premiums are going up and our coverage is going down. We got deductibles that are going up all the time just to simply keep it on affordable premium. What can we do in the, you know, so we need to fix this in a short-term manner now because, you know, pumping some money into help, maybe a tax credit to help these people in the individual market that are really struggling and need that help. There's a lot of small business self-employed people that, you know, they need help now, not sit and argue for three more years and maybe something changes. So when I get there, that's something I'm gonna help address right away. Thank you, Mr. Green. Any other comments? No. Club Bundy, any additional comments? Just that, you know, the Affordable Care Act hasn't been all bad. My wife had cancer and without that, we wouldn't have access to healthcare and we're actually quite, you know, thankful for that. But at the same time, we realized that we can't afford these premiums as they're going. We need to really make some changes there. So there's definitely, with some pluses to it, now we gotta find that good, even spot. So thank you. All right, thank you. The next question is to Mr. Club Bundy and it's from Matthew Ledke. This question is regarding foster care. The issue of foster care is a major one across the entire state of Minnesota. There's many more children being entered into foster care placements and not enough people providing foster care now. At the state level, what would you support or what are you in favor of to help curb this problem? From my perspective, you know, I'm not an expert on foster care. I'm just not. And I would have to look to the sources. I would have to talk to people and find out what people need. I'm not just gonna make a rash decision. I wanna talk to people. I wanna talk to foster care providers. I wanna talk to social workers that are helping place foster care kids in custody. All those things I would, that's what I would do as a legislator. I would go talk to the people on the ground and find out what needs to be done and I would approach it from that direction. At this point, do I have a specific plan to fix foster care? That would, no, I don't. But I would certainly be more than happy to. It's, poverty is rampant in our district and it is very important that I would get out there and put boots on the ground and help find a solution for that. Mr. Green. The foster care issue comes up constantly and rightfully. So there are things that I think that we're not doing. And one of those is not looking into the reasons why the displacement of the families is increasing the way that it is. One of the things that I've tried to do was to go into the local units of government, the counties and also with the tribe and try to find out what they think we can do to keep these kids within their own families. We have a problem within our society that's causing this. And we do this with our correctional system and with other things too in Minnesota where we see a problem and say, boy, that's a problem. We go try to remedy the problem where we're at instead of going back to the source. And we need to go back to the source. What we're doing in the way of family services obviously isn't working because if it was working our foster care wouldn't be increasing. So I think that we haven't really made any strides there. No one wants to really dig in. And I guess it is hard. It's hard to go in and tell family members that what you're doing is wrong. But something drastic has to be done with this because to sit here and talk about foster care is one thing when you're talking to the camera but to go out and speak to the families and talk to the county units and really see firsthand what's happening. It's pretty devastating. I wish that I had the magic wand. I don't, but I do think that we need to go to the source and start correcting it for future years as well as the problem at hand. All right, Mr. Kolabundi, any additional comments? No. Mr. Green, any additional comments? Okay, then we'll have our next question will be for Mr. Green and that is from Scott Hall. Okay, Minnesota State Universities and, excuse me, let's start over. Minnesota State Universities and Community Colleges are in financial trouble. How can we assure Bemidji State and our community and technical colleges continue to offer high quality post-secondary options? The one thing with the universities is they've got increases every year. We are going broke funding the universities and the Minsk U and even the K-12. And there's nothing wrong with putting money into them but we do need to demand results. We need to find out where we can trim costs within the universities so they can save money for themselves and put into their own programs. One thing where we failed drastically is over the last few years, we have gotten away from the technical colleges, from the trades. We are putting people through four-year colleges now and they're coming out with debt that they can't pay. And our option now seems to be let's forgive the debt. But the problem with that is, it's not gonna cure the problem because if you are one of the lucky people that gets a job, you're gonna be paying taxes, so you're not only gonna be paying back your own debt, you're paying back everybody else's too. This is a problem that we have to address and we have to start addressing it within the junior high system at the very least. We're getting the trades back into the high schools, getting people, getting kids an option as to where they wanna go in life if that's what they choose to do. And I will also been a big proponent of the trades for other reasons. You never lose what you learn on hands-on education. So if you're schooled in the trades, whether it's welding, robotics, it's really big, or anything else, carpentry, those things will stick with you for the rest of your life, even if you do decide to go to four-year college, but it'll better prepare you for the hands-on and the skills that you receive with those training programs. And so that's what I would like to do. And we have been working on that. I think we've made some inroads. We've got a ways to go to get it across Minnesota. Mr. Klopp-Undy, same question. Yep. I like to look at education in a big picture thing. If we want success at the top end, it starts with a good base at the bottom end. Starting with pre-K education at a good base, finding out if kids have a learning disability. We have that in our family. I have a daughter that's dyslexic. We found out early. We got our daughter the help she needed. She's a successful fourth grader right now, enjoying school, without us stepping in, making sure that she got the help she needed. She might be a struggling fourth grader. That leads into a successful junior high student. And this is where Steve and I are gonna agree. We want, I would like to see a program where we're guiding students into a certain direction, starting in that early junior high, where they're kind of thinking about a career. My campaign manager, Herner, husband owned a plumbing business in Wabon, Minnesota. And it's tough to find qualified people. They wanna work on some sort of maybe a scholarship program that they can help pay for school for kids. All kinds of different ideas are out there. The two-year, the VOTEC thing, getting back to that, my wife and I both went to a two-year school. She went on to a four-year school, but it comes down to money. You go to the VOTEC or into the North Dakota system. We went to NDSCS to get our two-year degrees because it saved us a ton of money compared to the four-year colleges. It's just pure economics. Getting the cost of some of these four-year schools down, start now with a tuition freeze maybe, and going forward, look at some of the administration costs and what we can do to reel some of that in. And I would hate to be a kid getting out of college with a ton of debt and trying to start a family. Thank you. Mr. Green, any additional comments? Well, I would agree that we need to address the administration cost within universities. It is a way out of hand. And that leads to the other debt. We have tried some things that don't seem to be working for rural Minnesota, and one is the debt forgiveness for those kids that come back and work in the area. And the problem with that is that in nursing, for instance, we have a terrible time getting folks back because even if we try to entice them with debt forgiveness if they'll come back and work in our hospitals, it doesn't even come close to what the Mayo clinics or the universities can pay in Minneapolis. And when you're a young person getting out of college, it's really hard to compete with the life of the cities. And so I would like to see us try to go after some of the people that are starting a family who wanna raise their family in what I believe to be the greatest community in the United States in Northern Minnesota. And so those are some of the things that we're working on now. Thank you. Mr. Claude Bundy, any additional comments? Yeah, I mean, when you're drawing families back to our district, we gotta make sure that all the opportunities are there that they have in the Metro out here. We need broadband across the whole district. We need the arts. We need things that bring families back to our area. We need trails and park systems that are thriving and successful to bring in these young families. You know, that's how we'll bring people back here with a good investment in our district. All right, thank you. The next question is to Mr. Claude Bundy and it's from Dennis Wyman. We'll stick with the education end of things right now. So let's shift it to K through 12. What do you see as the biggest education issues facing rural Minnesota schools? And what would you do to even out the disparity between Metro schools and rural schools? Well, when we've been traveling around meeting with superintendents, administration in our local schools, one thing you hear, you hear a lot of the same things over and over again. Special ed, funding, special ed teachers, crowding in these programs is a big issue. They're looking for help. So I think there's one area in our district that we would try to help out right away. Some sort of program to get more people into special ed, more to get people out to these rural areas. School counselors is another big one. We have a lot of kids that need some help making these decisions in life and where they're going. And I was a kid that went to college a first year and didn't know what I wanted. I showed up in Cordia College in Moorhead and they asked me what I wanted to be and I had no idea. I said, teacher? And that obviously didn't work out too good for me. But guidance counselors are a big need out there. Special ed's a big deed. Like I mentioned earlier, pre-K education I think is such a solid investment for these rural communities with all the poverty that we have out here. Getting kids that foundation to their education is so important. Having kids that are reading to learn in third grade instead of learning to read. These are things that have to happen. So there's a lot of good things in education. We have great teachers. I never want to say anything ever bad about the teachers. Sometimes your hands are tied and we have to untie the teacher's hands and help them at some point or two. So thank you. Okay, thank you. Mr. Green, same question. We did do some stuff to relieve the disparities, the financial disparities between the Metro and the rural Minnesota. Unfortunately it's like pulling teeth because the Metro area has a lot of pull down there, as you know. But they do get funding massively, massive amounts more funding per student than we do up here. The argument can be made that maybe we don't need quite as much, but because of our school systems and we have better school systems, we have some of the best in rural Minnesota. And so maybe funding isn't all of it but it's a big part of it. And then to keep working on that. I don't agree with the universal pre-K. I think that the best foundation you can give a child is in the home. We have been moving our children into the education system earlier and earlier and we are getting a disconnect among our kids. If you look at what's happening in our area, as the kids grow up in this area alone, we have huge problems with drug abuse, with kids who have no direction. And the school system keeps telling us that they can fix the problem, but the problem's not being fixed. And we're not going back and looking at what's working and what's not. We just continue to plow down this road. Universal pre-K, we're already now trying to move four year olds into a new kindergarten and have the new pre-K be from infant to three years old. You really want your kids in the school system at that young? There's no substitute for parents. And we need these kids in their homes with their parents whenever possible for as long as we can keep them there until they're ready for school, whether that's six, seven years old, whatever the case may be. All right. Mr. Klopp, Andy, any additional comments? Yeah, I would say homes riddled with poverty, drug abuse and chemical dependency is probably the number one reason why we need universal pre-K. We can't have, there's no offense, but the amount of parenting going on in a chemical dependency household is gonna be pretty minimal. We need to help identify where these problems are within these families and getting them into school and making sure they have the nourishment they need. Make sure they're getting some nourishment, making sure they're getting some base to know that school's not necessarily a bad thing and get a positive, good experience for them, play-based education is a good way to get kids interested in school and keep them coming back. So that's all I'll say. Thank you, Mr. Green. You're making the assumption that most of the homes in rural Minnesota are in poverty and they're somehow abusing their children. That's not the case, simply not the case. Yes, we have, there may be some out there and we can identify them, but to roll everybody into that and say, well, there's some abuse going on, so let's grab all the kids, it's not the answer. All right, we'll move on to the next question. And that question is for Mr. Green and that is with Matthew Ledke. Mr. Green, this question is regarding the minimum wage. I'm wondering about your stance on the minimum wage and if you support any increases at the state level. No, I don't. Minimum wage is a joke. If you're starting at an entry level job, you're starting out maybe in a restaurant, restaurant tours can't afford to pay their waiters it's $15 an hour. And we're seeing that now in Minnesota where a lot of them are going into the electronic waiter because they can't pay that. You can't go into a business and mandate how much they pay. And as far as the regular level jobs, minimum wage also isn't even applicable there because you're not gonna hire anybody that's skilled for under the $15 an hour. So our wages are above that anyway. So all you're really affecting with the minimum wage job is the entry level jobs. We're taking jobs away from our youth who would be working after school or weekends, taking jobs away from a parent who needs a little extra income that now that job is not there. And so the other thing with the minimum wage job it allows bargaining power for the unions which drives up the cost of a lot of different things. And so minimum wage is not gonna work, not the way they're pushing it, not at $15 an hour. Okay, Mr. Klopp-Undy, the same question? Yeah, it's an interesting concept and it never hurts to debate the concept. I think it's a fun idea to where it can work, where it doesn't work. Those are all good conversations to have. Is it gonna work on main street menomen? I visited with the owners at a particular hardware store one time and at some point they may say, I wish we made $15 an hour working here. That's just not feasible in some of these small town areas in greater Minnesota. In downtown St. Paul, is it possible? Can it be? I think they did do that. Will it work there? It probably will be because the dollar can circulate so many times. Is it gonna work in greater Minnesota? Probably not, but is it a conversation worth having? Yeah, I think it is a conversation worth having. But as of now, it's just a conversation as of now. All right, Mr. Green, any other comments? Mr. Klob-Undy, any other comments? Nope, no. All right. All right, our next question is for Mr. Klob-Undy and it was with Scott Hall. Okay, how well is your district connected to broadband technology and how important do you think it is for the economic quality of our district to be? To be, it's very important. It's a big district. It's a broad district. I have a friend that was, he's an IT and so his job is basically works overnight in India on software and he was living in Maple Grove, I think it was and he made the decision. I wanna take my family. I wanna move back to our roots. I want my kids to be able to come out and jump in the track I farm with his brother. He wanted to come out and jump in a tractor and show his kid the way of rural living out in Minnesota and get him away from the metro life. So as he was doing this, he was looking for places to build his new house. Well, he had to be extremely site specific. In fact, he couldn't go build a new house on his home farm because it just wasn't possible because there was no broadband access right there. About three miles from my farm, I do have the broadband at my farm. He had to look until he found the right spot with the broadband access. Now, how many people are we deterring from moving out here with not having that access? I think that is something that we could really help draw families back into our area. Also, how many families struggle and are working hard and get a run a small business, a Marricade business, creative memories, a tastefully simple. And if you don't have the broadband access at home, that means you got to go to work and do it and take time off from your employer. So I think getting us wired border to border in our state is of utmost importance. And I think when it comes to education it's gonna become continually more important all along. We should have the same right to the same opportunities that I have in the Metro as we have out here in Greater Minnesota. It's just plain and simple. It's gonna be the new electricity. So we need to invest. All right, thank you. Mr. Green. Excuse me, broadband is important. We did stick some money into broadband. We were told from the start that they needed about 20 million into broadband. And then we said, well, we did the numbers and we came up with a number of actually 35 million. And then of course that wasn't good enough that they wanted 100 million. But I think we settled in at 35 million. We do have broadband coming out here now into some of the underserved areas and unserved areas. I wanna take a hard look at it as we're putting it in because the problem that we have with technology is it's half-life is so short. And by the time we get the broadband in, there might be something new on the horizon already. The other issue that I had with pumping too much in at one time is it gets to be really lucrative for bigger companies to come in. And when we do make the switch to the wireless broadband, which I think will be in our future, I want it to be far enough into the future where we're not gonna hurt some of our seniors who still rely on our landlines because if we take too much of our landlines away with the wireless broadband, we're gonna be harming some of the folks that still rely on the old phone services and the things that they need. And also it's gonna take a while to get that wireless in. So we have to continue to support the broadband issue, but also continue to look at it and make sure that we're not gonna be dumping a bunch of money into a system that has become outdated. Okay, Mr. Klaw-Bungie, any additional comments? Yep, some of the broadband that's been put in is already outdated. Technology moves that fast simply. You're not gonna be able to avoid that. You can't put off spending the money on it, assuming that something better is coming down their road shortly. It may not, it might be 10 years, it might be 25 years. A strong investment now is what is important. I think the 35 million was a scratch the surface of what we need and we need to fight harder for our areas. Technology's always evolving. There's always gonna be something, but that doesn't mean we simply wait in fear waiting for something to come around. We need to move forward. We need to invest. That's what's gonna bring people here. Thank you, Mr. Green, any other? Yeah, you just proved my point. You just got done telling people that what we've already put in is obsolete. Perfect example. And so if we're looking down the line and I'm looking at the AT&T's and they're saying that within two years, we're gonna have wireless internet popping out to these communities. And then you're telling me you wanna put more than 35 million at a time in. When in truth, the folks that are applying for these grants and putting this in have already told us this is how much we can do. So if we dump in the amounts that they're talking all at one time, it's gonna sit there for two, three years before it's used up anyway. It's gonna be a constant. Would you like to use your minute? No. All right. Well then let's move on to the next question and it's to Mr. Green and it's with Dennis Wyman. Question on taxes. How do you feel about the current tax system and also taxes in general in Minnesota and what would you strive for any changes at all? I don't like our tax system that we have here and we could start with property taxes. Property taxes are way too high in Minnesota and we keep looking for ways to lower property tax and incentives. But one of the things that I wanna make clear to people today is that we have a problem in Minnesota with loss of a property tax base. In Minnesota we have roughly 56 million acres. 17% of that is owned by the state. The state of Minnesota is the third largest landowner in the United States. The only people that own more than Minnesota are United States government and the state of Alaska. 8% of our land mass is owned by the federal government in some way. So that's 25% right there. When you add in the lakes we're at 29% and that does not include our non-profits and it also doesn't include easements. So we have a problem in Minnesota with the state buying and owning too much land. It also takes away from young folks who wanna move back to the area because there's no place for them to move that that isn't so far outpriced because of the lack of property that's here. And these are issues that we definitely have to address. The other tax issues we implemented the fourth tier. And when we did we lost massive amounts of people who are in that category in the state. It's estimated that by the Minnesota revenue that Minnesota lost nearly a billion dollars in the upcoming years by folks who left the state because they just refused to pay that extra tax. We don't live in a society anymore where we're gonna keep people here and just assume they're gonna continue to pay. The other is the business tax. We have very burdensome business taxes. We have a business property tax that's extra on top of the local property tax. And we just tax them because we can. The money just goes into the general fund down at St. Paul and is dispersed out the way the politicians see fit. We need some major overhauls within our tax system. All right, Mr. Claude-Undy, same question. Obviously property tax is gonna be a big one in our district. It's burdensome at this point and it needs to be fixed. There was an opportunity to fix it with the tax bill but that failed to get through due to lack of bipartisanship on other bills. So that's something that we need to, that's an impact that impact my farm this year. Other taxes, when you look at business and business taxes, I've talked to a lot of businesses. I have a brother that owns a manufacturing business with a high school friend of his. They started on our shop and our farm and they've grown it from a 30 by 30 shop to a multi-million dollar business with a lot of employees. And I asked him, I said, what's your, he's a businessman and he follows every number. And he said, taxes will be what they're gonna be. They're just there, you deal with them. But he goes, what we need with the state of Minnesota is to streamline our ability to operate, to move our businesses forward. That's what's important to them. They wanna be able to, if there is a tax code issue, have an accessible Minnesota revenue system where they can get answers without hassle, without huge fines, things like that. There's ways to streamline and reform some of this that won't cost a lot of money and it will help our businesses succeed. Okay, thank you. Mr. Green, any additional comments? Yeah, if you wanna talk about the old regulation, that's a different question. We could be here for a very long time. But the tax issue and property tax alone, just that business property tax, for some of the bigger businesses, they tell me it makes up 30% of their property tax. And so it is a huge issue that we need to deal with. Okay, Mr. Klob-Undy, any additional comments? No. All right. Next question would go to Mr. Klob-Undy and they would be from Matthew Ledke. This question is regarding pipelines. Recently in our region, there's been talk of pipelines ranging from the sandpiper getting pushed back by Enbridge to also Enbridge's line three replacement. I'd just like to get your overall stance on pipelines and your thoughts on some of the current conversations that's been going around them recently. Yeah, obviously it's a huge issue from here to North Dakota right now. Finding an acceptable route for the pipeline that's gonna make it easier to work and operate for them to move things through is important. I am happy it's not going through the headwaters of the Mississippi. I think that there could be a better location maybe. That's not for me to decide, I guess. My kids go to a school one block from the railway. There's a lot of oil traffic, potentially dangerous. We had a propane explosion in Callaway, Minnesota this last winter, could have been a loaded propane or could have been a loaded oil train, could have been a serious disaster. At the same time, I'm not gonna sit here and fight for the oil companies and their pipelines. That's for their battle to do. If they need to find their route, that's up to them to do, not for me. All right, Mr. Green. I am in favor of the pipelines I have been. We have many pipelines underground right now. The line three especially needs to be replaced. It's getting older. Just this morning, we got word that there was some sabotage in the pipelines. Well, actually, apparently across the nation, but in the Clearbrook area where they tried to, they broke in, tried to close some valves, which could have caused major damage and loss of life. It's unacceptable for that kind of irresponsible actions to take place. But the fact is, pipelines are the safest, most efficient way to move oil. If we're not gonna move it by pipelines, we're gonna move it by rail. And our rails are taxed greatly. In the last year, I believe it was that the railroads put half a billion dollars into upgrading their railroads. And I still haven't seen anything done through my area on phrase E, where the tracks, the spikes are coming out of the tracks. And having these oil pipelines in place would have relieved some of that. It also would have freed up some of the rail cars for moving farm produce, which we desperately need as well. It's not responsible to believe that we can function as a nation without oil. It is our lifeblood. It goes, if you traveled here tonight, you used it. If you're doing anything that allows you to survive in the world today, in some way, you're affected by the price of oil. Now the Enbridge line apparently has been killed coming through here, so they won. But just for the record, the counties along the pipeline lost about 23 million in property tax relief because of it. Mr. Globe-Umbry, any additional comments? Yeah, I mean, these are all reasons why it's a tricky question. We want safe rails, we want open rails, we also want clean water, we want safe water sources. We gotta make sure we're prudent on every decision and location, and we just need to really make sure we're making right decisions. We can't have rash decisions affecting water qualities for generations. Not saying anything, but you really gotta watch how we're doing this. Those are, it's too important to mess it up. Okay, thank you. Mr. Green, any additional comments? We are watching how we're doing it. It's another one of those issues where I don't just sit down one day and say that I support pipelines. I went and I viewed the pipelines. I've gone into where they are and I've gone to watch how they're made and all the safety features that are on them, the equipment that they have that go through the pipelines to test them regularly for weak spots. It's the shutoffs. If there's any variation in the pressure, in the flow of the oil going through, the lines automatically quit and valves shut, so they've done a good job to keep these things safe. And I think that it was a real blow to Northern Minnesota when that line got stopped. All right, well, we've run out of time as far as for questions, and so we're now going to move to our closing comments. Each candidate has two minutes to close, and starting closing comments will be Mr. Klaw Bundy. Well, as always, I want to thank you guys for the opportunity to be here tonight. Truly a learning experience for me. This whole experience of running for office is, I've met a lot of new friends and we've experienced things that I never thought I would get to see, so I am very appreciative to all that. When I'm in St. Paul, I'm going to be my own boss. As a self-employed farmer, I have an independent mind, and it's truly impossible for me to believe that Republicans have 95% of the good ideas. There's got to be some working across party lines. That's what we're here. That's why we're running for office. You know, when the state finished the session, they really didn't pass anything. They didn't get anything done. If you're a contractor and you're working on a road and you have a deadline and you don't meet your deadline, there's penalties. There's violations, there's fines that go with that. The only penalty for this is we're paying the penalty by our bonding projects not getting passed, by our tax bill not getting passed. These are things that are just too important to our local communities that I will work hard to make sure that we're not operating at the last minute. We're operating on time and getting things done on time. As a farmer, that's how I know I have to operate my business and I hope other people realize that also. Once again, I really appreciate the time. Come November 9th, I hope it's my time to become the next representative of District 2B. I will do everything I can to help the district expand opportunities for young families and vote clubundi, because we can do this. Thank you. All right, thank you. Mr. Green, closing comments. Well, too, thank you everybody for tuning in tonight. I'm gonna have to switch my closing comments a little bit just to inform you that in the first half of the biennium we fully funded the government. We passed all the budget bills and all the tax bills as we needed to pass. In the second half of the biennium, we passed a supplemental tax bill with 89% bipartisan approval in the house. And it was only because the governor decided he didn't want to sign it that we don't have that. And like I say, that was about $7 to $800 million in tax relief for Minnesotans immediately and $500 million in an ongoing basis. And the governor used it as a tool, the first bonding bill that went through the house I did vote for. It was $800 million, a little higher than I wanted when you add both years together, but it was mostly roads and bridges. When it went to the Senate and came out of conference committee, they were playing games. It was very clear at that point that there was not gonna be a bonding bill. And it came back bigger and more bloated and I wouldn't vote for the second half of it. It passed anyway and we sent it back to the Senate under an agreement and in the last few minutes of session, the Senate dumped light rail on it. And just to clarify on light rail, the people in the cities do not want light rail. The Met Council, which is an unelected government group, is pushing for the light rail. People paying the taxes there do not want it. And so this was a game that was played. I'd been listening to rhetoric coming from the governor's office and from the democrat side, all session during the 2016 year that if they could send us into the election as a do nothing congress, they would have a better chance in the election. And that's what happened in the end of session. But keep in mind, the state was fully funded, transportation was fully funded, the supplemental bills didn't pass because of political games on the democrat side. All right, well thank you. I'd like to take this time to thank our candidates for participating in tonight's debate. I have a great amount of admiration for individuals that are willing to step up and serve our communities and this great state of Minnesota. If you've missed any portion of tonight's debate and would like to watch it again, it will be available on Lakeland Public Television website within 24 hours. That website is lptv.org. Also, to read a recap of tonight's debate, you can pick up a copy of tomorrow's Bemidji Pioneer or log on to the Bemidji Pioneer website at BemidjiPioneer.com. You can listen to the audio of the debates at kaxe.org. There are gonna be two more nights of debates coming up tomorrow night, Thursday, October 13th in the Brainerd studio at 7 p.m., a Senate nine, Senator Gazilka, the democrat and the Republican Jason Wienerman. That ends our debates for tonight. Thanks for watching.