 Lakeland Public Television, the Bemidji Pioneer, the Brainard Dispatch and Northern Community Radio are proud to present Debate Night 2016, a look at our area legislative candidates. And now the State Senate District 2 Debate, your moderator tonight is Warren Larson. Good evening and welcome to Debate 2016, 11 state legislative debates over four nights. We're in the Lakeland Public Television Studio in Bemidji, Minnesota. Our candidates tonight are Paul Utke from the Republican Party and Rod Skoy, the Democratic Farm Labor Party. Our panel this evening are Dennis Wyman, Lakeland Public Television News Director, Matthew Ledke, Bemidji Pioneer Reporter, Scott Hall, Public Affairs Director for Northern Community Radio, KAXE and KBXE. Now we'll go on to the rules for tonight's debate. Each candidate will be given three minutes for opening comments. The panel will ask questions after opening comments. Some will be 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 question. 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 will be used during the answer to the initial question or during the rebuttal, but can only be used once. Questions continue until we are about 50 minutes into the debate when we move on to closing comments. Each candidate will be given two minutes for closing comments. And so now let's start the debate. And we have Paul Utke with opening comments. Thank you. My name is Paul Utke. I live and work in Park Rapids. And I have been in Park Rapids for 23 years with my wife Nancy. I'm currently an insurance agent working in town there. I serve on the City Council, which I have for the last seven years. Family, we have Nancy and I have two adult daughters who live one in Fargo and one in Nashville, Tennessee. And so as we move into our issues for the evening, we have trying times now in Minnesota. I mentioned that I work in the health care industry and we have seen what has come down the pipe through the system the last week to 10 days with our health care. It's been the major topic from everybody that's stopping in. So I'm sure we'll see a lot of that tonight with the decreases in choices down to one. We're going to have a lot of people without health care choices as we move towards the first of the year. So we've got a lot of things to work on. Doorknocking has been very interesting this summer and fall. A lot of issues coming to the forefront that we need to address in Minnesota, including taxes, regulations, our schools, roads and bridges, comments on the Second Amendment and our environment. We are in a time when we have, in my opinion, government overreach or we've got way too much government. I hear from all the different venues, whether they're a contractor or a beautician, all the challenges that they have to go through just to open and maintain their business. And that's something that I think we can be a whole lot more helpful and a lot more user-friendly to our businesses that are wanting to start up and operate here in our state. We've been way too hard on their abilities to be profitable and be job creators and everything else that we want them to do. So at this time, people are concerned about our future and rightfully so and I think that's what we're probably going to be discussing here tonight, is what can we do to help the citizens of Minnesota? Thank you. All right, thank you. Mr. Skoie, your opening comments. Hi, I'm Rod Skoie and first I'd like to thank Lakeland Public Television for hosting this evening's debate. I'll thank Dennis and Scott and Matthew in advance for their questions. I'm married to Sarah Hogberg and I grew up in Kelleyer. Graduated from high school there. From there I went on to college at Augsburg College and I returned home after school and worked in the forestry business as a logger. Sarah and I moved to Clearbrook to take over our family farm in 1985. We raised two children, Mary and Patrick, living on our farm north of Clearbrook. M.L., the oldest, is currently serving our country in the Navy. She's served on the USS Kidd among other places, the Persian Gulf. Later she lived in Bahrain and currently she is reporting to duty at Buckley Air Force Base in Denver and I know the question is, well, what's the ocean in Denver? But she doesn't or won't tell me what she does, but we are proud of her. Our son Patrick was a software developer in the cities. Last spring he came home and said, you know, Dad, I think I'd like to try being a farmer. If I don't, I will always regret it. This on a personal level made me happy, but what it does for me is gives us hope that more folks are going to want to move north, understanding that if people have jobs, they do want to live in this great area that we call home. And they'll enjoy the outdoors, enjoy the activities that we participate in, hunting, fishing, other activities indoors and outdoors. I've been honored to serve the last number of years as your senator. As your senator, I was elected by my peers to serve as Senate tax chair. In this position, I authored legislation that structurally balanced the state budget for the first time in a decade. This ended the cycle of deficits that the state had struggled with, they had struggled through. I also authored legislation that established a mechanism for adding money to our rainy day fund. This fund is in good shape. The primary reason that the rating agency, Fitch, restored Minnesota to its top rating, AAA, saving us much money on interest. We need to keep on this path of strong fiscal responsibility. When I asked for your support four years ago, I said I would work to balance the state budget, that I would use my business experience to bear on the job of balancing the state budget. That is what I did. Now I again ask for your support to continue this work of strong fiscal leadership for Minnesota and for the North Country. I ask for your support, and I look forward to the questions tonight. All right. Well, thank you. Our first question tonight is to Mr. Skoy, and it comes from Dennis Wyman from Lakeland News. Okay, thank you, Warren, and thank both of you for being here tonight. Minnesota's fiscal year got off to a rocky start because state government revenues have slipped below projections. State budget officials announced Monday that tax collections were $97 million below their projections in the first three months of the fiscal year that began in July. Should Minnesotans be concerned about the state economy? And if elected, what would you hope to accomplish to spur the economy, not just in the state, but also in our part of the state? Well, Minnesota, the legislature deals with the economic forecast that the agencies put forward. This forecast has always lagged, both upticks and downturns in the economy. And we have been extremely aware that the forecast, the last two forecast cycles, was over-projecting revenue growth. So as legislators, we were very cognizant that we needed to leave extra money on the bottom line, and we needed to make sure that the state had a good, healthy rainy day fund. That's why I carried the legislation that I did to add a mechanism so that the rainy day fund, the reserves in Minnesota, would have extra money going into them whenever we had little better times. Now looking forward, I think that last February, the February forecast, forecast 2.4% growth. I think the actual growth rate is going to be about 2.1%. So we left money on the bottom line to account for that. Now, what do we do to stimulate growth? Well, we look at businesses that we currently have in our communities, and we try to build them up. We help them with their workforce housing. We help them by developing good, solid workforce for those companies. And we try to be as supportive of the economic activity that they do as we possibly can through these mechanisms. Another part of the economy that we're going to hopefully talk about tonight is transportation, because a lot of the economy that we have in Minnesota travels on the roads, whether it's tourists or forest products, agriculture, manufacturing, much of the customers and the produce that they use travels on the roads, and it's important to invest in our transportation infrastructure. All right. Thank you. Mr. Utke, the same question. Should the residents be concerned? We do have the Rainy Day Fund or a surplus that they were working with with the last session. So I'm hoping that we, as citizens, I'm not there, so I'm sitting on the outside like the average citizen and thinking that this is hopefully just a little hiccup. How are we going to spur the economy back? I come from a little different angle. You know, I want to see us get into some tax reform and some regulation reform to help out our businesses. We hear it from manufacturing. We hear it from our contractors. We hear it from those up and down Main Street. We need to make life easier for them. We're talking about respectful tax structure and a common-sense regulatory system, not abandoning all regulations and such, but we need to get back to where they're more user-friendly, something that they can work with. We're all geared to work no matter what our occupation is. We want to move forward. We want to grow. And in some cases, I think we're just holding them back and they're wanting to move forward. So I think through a lot of different ways we can help businesses grow. When that happens, they are employing more people. It's putting more tax dollars into our economy and in the end, it's generating what we're wanting to at the state level and it's a win-win for everybody. We're probably going to talk about a lot of different issues that come along with the unemployed and such. If we've got employers that are expanding and doing well, we're going to be employing a lot of people and making progress. This is going to be a problem. I would add to my first answer is that as we look at our state, the demographics show that we are an aging population. And currently, we do not have enough high school graduates going on to college just to fill the retirements that are coming, let alone the economic growth. So we're going to have to get created with our education system and encourage these high school students to go on and get further education. And that's going to require us, I think, to move toward a vocational, technical vocational training system to get further education for a lot of these kids. They're not interested in the lecture four-year degree, but they would be more interested in a hands-on vocational training. And so we need to, as we think about the jobs and the economy, make sure that our workforce is matching up with the needs that we have. Okay. Mr. Apke, any rebuttal comments? I would agree with a lot of that. You read the same statistics that, yes, we don't have enough replacement when we talk about those in high school versus those that are hitting 65 and above and exiting the workforce. The numbers are all there right in front of us that it's true. We have to be more creative. We have to have people that can do more than we've done in the past, whether it's, we might call it multitasking or whatever, but it's going to boil down to we just have to work smarter because we're going to have to do more with less people. And we're showing that, I mean, as we have the aging population, there's a lot of services they're going to want and desire and need. And it's going to take a lot of people just to keep up with that, let alone everything else we're doing on a daily basis. So this education training, getting our young people a skill early in life so that they're out there working and productive is very important. All right. Thank you. Next question is to Mr. Apke. And it's from Matthew Lidke from the Bemidji Pioneer. Mr. Apke, my first question. My first question is actually carrying on with the topic of education. I'd like to ask about your stances on the issue of student debt, which is quite an issue for a lot of students who are graduating from college now. What are your stances on initiatives to help students with debt and also your stances on initiatives related to tuition? Okay. Thank you. Education, student debt, I think kind of goes hand in hand with a little bit of what we just talked about. Some students are cut out for and are going to be successful with a four-year or even more than that college degree to go on into specialized, whether it's a doctor or whatever it might be that they're pursuing. I think too many of our young people in the past, as they come out of high school, has just assumed that they are going to go to a four-year college or more. And a lot of them kind of went and just spent time and they racked up a lot of debt. And I think it's up to us to help set that course for better training while they're in high school and even probably prior so that they know, help define their interests. And so when they hit the college, if they're cut out to be a four-year college student, that they're successful, they get in and out in four years. There's a lot of kids that are going to do extremely well and actually end up with some really good jobs if they hit a one-year or a two-year technical college and have a great quality of life. And that is going to cost them a lot less. You know, I think it's... So we have smart students. And then, you know, there is the top, the bottom line question is the cost of college. And I understand that I had a daughter that went to a private college. I saw those bills that they can be overwhelming. And, you know, we have to do our best to, whether it's through, you know, tuition grants or however we can do it so that it's affordable, but yet I don't want them to be free. I think the kids, the students, they have to have some skin in the game so that when they come out, it's... they appreciate what they got. They worked hard for the end result. Okay. Thank you. Mr. Scoria, same question. Well, student debt is approaching record levels. And it is impacting these people's ability to start their lives and raise families and buy houses as their work career starts when they are already carrying such a large amount of debt on their backs. So to that point, last year in the tax bill, the Senate carried to a conference committee and was adopted two provisions to help students with their debt. One was a credit for parents and students to help them pay off their student debt if their income levels were in a range of ratio with regard to the debt. So that we were trying to help them pay off debt. The other provision was a strengthening of the current 529 college savings plan. We think it's important that families and students save for their college through their youth if they're able to. So those two provisions were there. We also are trying to find mechanisms to strengthen the tuition forgiveness plans that we have for service in depressed economic areas. That would be a benefit to have people provide service in some of these areas. Now we do have more people in school so that does drive up the cost for the colleges. But the other part of the college cost scenario that students are paying for is that in the late 90s, the state was paying, I think it was around 67% of the cost of attending a state college or university. That number is now down to about 40%. That has translated into significant tuition increases. Now the state's not going to go back to 67%. But we really shouldn't slide any farther down that because that is part of the reason Minnesota students do carry such a high debt load. Thank you. Mr. Utke, a rebuttal? I think we covered it. Mr. Skoy, any rebuttal? No, I think that was good. Great. Our next question will go to Mr. Skoy and it's from Scott Hall from Northern Community Radio. Thanks, Warren. Quality daycare and early childhood education programs help kids get off to a good start. But those programs are very expensive and over the last two years at the urging of Governor Dayton, the legislature put new money toward early childhood education. What more can be done to support working parents to get their kids off to a good start? Well, Scott, my wife was an early childhood educator and so I understand the importance of giving students a good start, getting them ready for school. There are social skills, there are learning things and techniques that needs to be in the child's toolbox as they go off to kindergarten. So having a good base is really a good thing. Governor Dayton had proposed and was included in last year's tax bill a childcare credit to help parents pay for the cost of childcare when they have youngsters and they're going off to work. So that, I hope, will come around to be revisited again in the future. And then for me, as we went through the early childhood education debate last year, what I was hoping we would do would be to beef up the current school readiness program. Within our school systems now is a school readiness program that works for somewhere in the neighborhood of 20 or 25 million dollars. We could have done a significant increase in that program. It wouldn't have gotten to where Governor Dayton wanted us, but it would have been a step. It would have been viable for the schools to do within their current facilities, and it would have been a stepping stone for further advancement to come down the road. So I think it's important. I think we're going to have continued discussion about this. There also was the mechanism for scholarships. I don't know how a four-year-old qualifies for scholarships, but that became a law over the last couple of years, too, to help with some of these costs. Mr. Utke, the same question? Well, we see in today's economy that when we have two people in the household working, this quality daycare is extremely important for parents to be able to go to work, earn what they need, and have the comfort that their children are at a quality place in being well taken care of. I don't know. We've talked about some of this extra early childhood in such childhood education. It's great. I'm just wondering how far we go. How young can we get? I remember when my kids started the year before kindergarten, and that seemed very young to be off to school and on a regular schedule already, and now we're moving this ahead to four-year-olds and possibly younger. The daycare part is nice. I think there's a time when kids need to be kids, enjoy just more of the recreational part of being kids than into the structure of a school or an education system. We know that our kids have a lot they have to learn nowadays, so starting early and getting off to a fast start is so important. I do kind of wonder where that... When is it too early? What is the right time? I think we keep pushing the envelope as far forward as we can, and I think there's a time when we still need to back up and be a kid. But childcare, we do need. It's important. That's what's keeping our families going, mom and dad going off to work, or if it's a single parent and they have to get to work, they need to have childcare available, and we need to work with some tax credits or whatever to make this affordable, because childcare is going up. They've got a lot of costs in their businesses, and we'd have to make this a workable solution. All right, thank you. Mr. Squoy, any rebuttal? Well, not a rebuttal, just an addition. It's...when parents are going, both of them off to work and the child is so young, the child is not going to be in the home. He's going to have some kind of childcare or institutionalized setting. And I think one of the things that we really need to be cognizant of is there are ways to make that time more beneficial. And if we can provide some training to care providers, if we can have ways to enhance the services that are provided, whether it's in home or in a more formal setting, I think that would be a very good thing and would be a place for the state to start trying to have positive impacts on these young children, because many, you know, part of Minnesota's economy is that we have a large percentage of two-income households, and that means that those children are going somewhere for care where both parents are working, and we need to make that as worthwhile and valuable as we can. Do you want any additional comments, Mr. Uskie? The only thing would be is, you know, helping out with the childcare providers and stuff, maybe offering some assistance from the state as far as, you know, if there's training and those things. I just don't want to see another agency get involved. You know, every time we seem to add something as far as care and help, it involves hiring a whole new group of people at the state level, and I just would not be in favor of that, but as far as assisting, offering educational opportunities, kind of being that conduit to make their life easier and helping them do a better job for our young people, that would be a win-win in my book, in my idea. Okay, next question is for Mr. Utkie, and it's from Dennis Wyman. Okay, question is regarding transportation. What is your long-term transportation fix to ensure that Minnesotans have good roads and bridges to use, and would that involve support for an increase in the gas tax? Okay, thank you. I will start with the tail end of the question for the gas tax. No. At this point, my idea on transportation is there are already certain parts of our taxes that come in, in fact, the gas tax and some of those that are dedicated to roads and bridges. I would like to see additional funds dedicated to roads and bridges, as an example, the sales tax from auto parts, et cetera. I know that that's in the general fund now, so you just can't pull dollars out of one fund and add it to the other and say, hey, this is easy and it's done, you've got to balance it. But I would like to see transportation, as far as roads and bridges, end up with a majority of dedicated funds so that they know from year to year what they've got to work with. They can plan more than just a year or two out. They can plan further on how they're going to upgrade, because we know that we've got a lot of work out there that needs to be done. And then there's always going to be a time when we're going to need to bond for these exceptional things. We need to do more this year or more next year type thing. I would like to take the big chunks out of bonding, because I think we start playing a political ball in St. Paul. And I don't think we should be doing that with our roads and bridges. I would like to see a much more stable financial path to that part of our structure. And again, we can add to it for the ups and downs as we hit them. But in our part of the country, roads and bridges are extremely important. That's how everything travels. All of our merchandise to the main street businesses, on and off the farms with all of our product, our logging, et cetera. Quality roads and bridges are right at the top of the list. Thank you, Mr. Scoy. Same question. Well, as we mentioned earlier, transportation is important for our area. And the current gas tax is constitutionally dedicated to go to roads and bridges. And so it has a distribution formula that 61%, I think it is, goes to the state and then 29% goes to counties, municipals and others. So we have a formula that recognizes the farm to market road system that is developed in Minnesota. And the formula works, it's just not been able to keep up with inflation. So for me, I think that the best mechanism to use is the current gas tax. It's constitutionally dedicated. It truly is a user fee. You use the road, you buy the fuel, you pay the fee. And so that is the mechanism that I have always been supportive of. Now, what the Senate did two years ago to try to get around this no-new tax issue that we run into in St. Paul was to have a gas tax for roads and then offset that with tax reductions in other areas. So we would propose a statewide business property tax reduction. There was some income tax reductions. There were some credits to try to make it revenue neutral. But that didn't move forward. Transportation is a thorny issue in St. Paul because there are a lot of different constituencies. There are people that don't want to raise taxes. There are people who are okay with it. There are people who want transit. There are people who want just roads and bridges. And so putting together a coalition to actually pass a bill is very challenging. I think as the leaders and the governor recognized last year during the session, they recognized the needs are now around $600 million a year of additional new money. And so we've got this large problem. We're going to have to come together. I'm willing to compromise. I'm willing to look at other options. The only thing that I would say, I mean, even if we're going to do bonding, you have to have new money to make the debt service payment because there's just no free lunch. You don't get anything if you don't put some new money into it. Thank you. Thank you. Mr. Utke, a rebuttal? I guess not really a rebuttal if we go on a further comment. It's just, I think I would really like to see something good and solid for roads and bridges in our transportation system where we have a plan that's going to move forward. We get into some of those things like what was just mentioned of maybe adding to the gas tax, but taking away some others. Those of us that haven't been to St. Paul in the past, we're always a little hesitant to that because once it seems like you raise something, the others come right back. It never goes away. So I would not be in favor of any additions to the gas tax at this time, but I would like to come up with a good, solid plan to stabilize the funding for roads and bridges. Mr. Skoy, an additional comment? The only thing I would add is if we are going to do sales tax on auto parts for roads and bridges with a statutory dedication, I would caution people that this has been tried in the past. There was a sales tax on lease vehicles that was statutorily dedicated to some transit project in metropolitan area, and it lasted a year. I mean, statutes are changed every year. So the reason that the gas tax has been so stable for so long is it's a constitutional question. Whatever we would do, I would propose at some point we'd have to try to do it as a constitutional question, which takes time because it has to be run in a general election. Thank you. The next question is to Mr. Skoy, and it's from Matthew Ledke. Mr. Skoy, my next question is regarding bonding. The session ended without the bonding bill getting passed in the very end. So my question is, would you support the 2016 version of the bonding bill in 2017? And also with that, what happens if the light rail subject comes up again? Well, there was disagreement over the south-west light rail line. I would have voted for the bill whether it was in or whether it wasn't. I thought that it was unfortunate that all of this good projects that were negotiated in a bonding bill, and yes, the permanent tax relief that really was targeted at rural areas and small businesses in Minnesota families did not become law because of the south-west light rail line. Governor Dayton said from the get-go that in order to call a special session, it had to include Hennepin County's ability to pay the local share for light rail, not the state Hennepin County. So that would have been the federal government and Hennepin County funded construction project. Now, we ended up not getting a special session because the House leadership wouldn't go along, and so the tax bill didn't become law, the bonding bill didn't become law, and the south-west light rail line happened anyway. So it really was a failure. With regard to a bonding bill, I would support the bonding bill, as I said, with it in it or without it, but there's going to be a whole slew of new legislators in St. Paul. There's 201, and I don't know how many are going to be turning over, but there will be some, and those legislators are going to be more likely to want some of their input into the process. It takes a supermajority to pass a borrowing bill. So on the House, it takes 81, and I think that it would be an uphill battle to just start out the first week of January with the bonding bill. I think the tax bill has a little better chance, but that has to originate in the House, and so the outcome of the election is going to bear heavily on how that turns out. All right, thank you. Mr. Utkey, the same question. Okay, looking back at the bonding bill of 2016, which was this past session, I've read a lot of it, and I know that those that are there and putting it together, there's always a lot of give and take. You've got the separation of wants versus needs and whose project, and bringing together the bonding bill that's best for that group of legislators that is currently sitting there and working on this. But with that being said, the light rail addition would be a no-go for me. I understand when they talk about where all these various forms of funding are coming from to pay for the actual light rail, but the big part that doesn't seem to ever come back or they don't talk about a whole lot is light rail costs all of us in Minnesota, tens of millions of dollars a year for operational costs that we are subsidizing. And I think that's where a lot of people in our area are looking at that and saying, you know, that's a backbreaker for us. It's a no-deal. There's a lot of good projects in that bonding bill besides that that would have been good for our state and still can be. It should be looked at. But the light rail is an issue that I think should stand on its own because that splits a lot of our country. And I understand the fact that we all go down to the Twin Cities. We have to drive through the congestion and such that is there. But at what point do we do light rail versus an improved busing system or what is best? And at this point, I just don't see the numbers for light rail that would make me jump on board and support that. Mr. Squay, are you rebuttal or additional comments? Well, just a clarification. Currently, the metropolitan counties have a quarter-cent sales tax that they use to pay for their transit. In the proposal, the transportation, the comprehensive transportation proposal that was discussed, that was going to be increased to half-cent. So it would have been the metropolitan county sales tax that would have been covering a lot of those costs. And the construction cost was going to come out of Hennepin County and the federal government. Former Transportation Chair Bernie Lieder from Crookston, who was a transportation expert, pointed out to me many times, he would say, Rod, let the metropolitan area solve their transit needs, their transportation needs with their sales taxes and their construction money. It just frees up road and bridge money for the rest of the state. And it seems like former Representative Lieder's advice was pretty good then and I still think it's pretty good. Mr. Utke, any additional comments? I guess I just would continue with what I was talking about a little bit and add to it was the fact that, you know, it was unfortunate that with the bonding bill sitting there at the 11th hour and ready to move forward that something that really hadn't been discussed in the whole session which was the light rail got added right in the last few minutes and, you know, it caused the whole bonding bill to go down. I don't think that was the right way to do it and we saw that it was a very partisan thing and, you know, I guess we hope that future legislatures operate better and we can move forward with some of these projects for our citizens and not make it, you know, throwing that in at the last minute was in my mind unacceptable. It should have been discussed. Everybody should have known it was coming and we'd have had progress. Do you want your additional minutes? Yes, if that's what it would take. I have to clarify that. That language had been discussed. That language was given to the Majority Leader of the House Pepin and she put it in her purse and nodded consent when the Senate and the House were negotiating whether that language was going to be in the bill. The Senate thought the language was to be in the bill. It was part of the negotiated agreement. When it came over from the House it was not in it. We amended it in and sent it back. They had time to act on it but they left early and went signe die. The next question is for Mr. Utke and it comes from Scott Hall. Thanks, Warren. Our medical care system is prepared to aggressively treat people with cancer and diabetes and other serious health problems. But that's not so true about the way we treat people with mental illness. For example, we know many people with mental illnesses are homeless, they're in our prisons, and police often have to respond to people who are in danger to others as a result of their mental illness. So how can we do better? We need to do better because you just mentioned a number of things that are costing us a lot coming in the back door of this issue and that is when you talked about our jails and our police. We see those budgets continue to climb for a lot of different reasons and I'm speaking of through my city council work. But back to the mental illness, I've been involved with our local DAC on the board there for the last six years in Park Rapids, both with the physical handicapped and the mental handicapped and mental illness type people. We need to help them, we need to do better. But places like that are doing an excellent job of treating them but it's identifying and getting to all of the people prior to them getting in trouble. When you mentioned the fact that we see a lot of them in crime situations, ending up in jail, confronting our law enforcement and they're having to work with it, it kind of boils down to we need a way of identifying them sooner. Like a lot of things, it's finding out who they are and where they are and how we can help. I think we're a society that we want to help people. We reach out to people like that, but a lot of times it's identifying them and catching them while they're, before they've done something really bad or even hurt themselves or hurt others and that's the biggest challenge out there. I think a lot of it's going on detective just because they can fly under the radar and unless somebody is right, if it's somebody you live with or somebody that you're really close to, you probably don't notice that there's a problem until it's well-developed and I know that we need to spend a lot more time and effort getting to that. We see issues even coming back from our military, coming back from serving overseas and what they're involved in and we need to help get them back on their feet and back into society, whether it's through their job or education and help them out however we can because it's serious. Thank you. Mr. Skoy, same question. Well, Scott, that's a very challenging topic that your question addresses and as a state, we have a lot of work to do. As Paul mentioned, many of our jails are full of people that have mental illnesses and they're not getting treatment there. Senator Goodwin, a couple of years ago, was up in Bemidji working with Sheriff Hodap on ways to take those people in the jails that have mental problems and provide treatment for them outside of the jail. We did find some resources for it, not what they needed, but it really is a challenge and as Paul also mentioned, it's just not reaching people after they've been in trouble. We should be addressing these needs earlier. A number of ways would be to try to find identifiers earlier in the schools. You know, Minnesota is like last in the nation a number of counselors in our schools and some additional effort there would be beneficial in trying to identify some of these problems. There was an article in today's or yesterday's paper, I don't remember which one it was, about mental illness and there are people that are identified, but getting treatment is hard and just prescribing drugs is not the answer. So we have work to do. It is going to take resources. In St. Paul, the area of the state's budget that is the hardest to find resources for is health and human services. The mental health initiatives fall within that budget, but it's an area that we need to pay some particular attention to and legislators are having conversations, but the answer is not known today, but a multi-focused attack would be needed. Thank you. Mr. Utke, any additional comments? No, I'm fine. Mr. Skoy, any additional comments? No, thank you. Alright, our next question is to Mr. Skoy and it's from Dennis Wyman. Thanks, Warren. A report from the Minnesota Department of Human Services says taxpayers have funded more than 73,000 abortions at the cost of $22.5 million. Do you support using taxpayer money for abortions and how would you vote? Well, as long as that is a legal medical practice and the patient and the doctor is determined that that's what the needs are of that patient, I don't think because they don't have private insurance or financial wherewithal they should be discriminated against. So as long as it's the law of the land, I would be supportive of all Minnesotans having the medical care that the doctors have determined to be needed. Great. Mr. Utke? You know, I know that we have issues at the state and I mean this stuff's gone all the way to the Supreme Court and such on abortion and such but I would not vote for taxpayer funded abortions. I don't believe in abortion. I know that most of it's above and out of our hands but if there are votes that come up that are related to taxpayer funded abortions I would not support that. I would not vote for it. A lot of it's out of our hands and such at the federal level but that's just where I stand. I'm not in favor of it. Mr. Skoy, any additional comments? Well, I voted for a lot of bills that have tried to reduce the number of abortions in this state but that's not the question. If it's a legal procedure do you discriminate against people because they don't have the financial wherewithal to pay for these procedures on their own and I don't think that's appropriate. Mr. Utke, any additional comments? Just briefly, I guess I don't look at abortion as it should be used as a form of birth control and I know that there's a lot of things that enter in it but in the bottom line is I don't support taxpayer funded or tax money going for abortions. Next question is to Mr. Utke and it's from Matthew Lidke. Mr. Utke, around here Beltrami County is facing a real crisis with foster care in terms of rising number of children who are placed in foster care and a lack of people providing that foster care and that's something that's an issue at the entire state level. So are you looking at any initiatives if elected to help in the foster care crisis that's happening right now in the state? You know, as you bring that up, it is a major problem. It wasn't that long ago we had a program at a Rotary Club in Park Rapids talking about this same issue. It's been brought up around the district as I've traveled. It's a big issue with probably an unknown solution at this point. I know we have foster care in Hubbard County that they were talking about kids, children having to go all the way to southern Minnesota or short term care to have a family that could house them which is just exactly not what we want to do. We want to keep the kids close to home, hopefully connect them back up with their parents. We definitely need to help and assist that program, find additional foster parents and at the same time we need to do what we can to work with the family units that's there. We have a problem in our country today with our family units falling apart. All of so many things we talk about starts with a family. A couple of parents in the household raising these kids and it's more than what we can solve sitting around the table tonight but that's part of it too. We need to do what we can to help hold that family unit together or help reconstruct it, do whatever we can and we know at the same time there's going to be issues where we need foster care because we have kids coming out of homes with drug use and a whole bunch of other bad things and it's not the kids fault so we need to take care of them, get them into a good environment, get them moving forward and at that point can we work them back with the family unit or relatives or however that works to connect the kids because unfortunately they're the ones that suffer through all this. Okay, all right, thank you. Mr. Skoy, same question. Clearly Paul is right in that it's problematic to have so many children having such tough time in their family at home that they are being taken out of the home and placed outside the home. That's hence the word, out of home placement. The state has an obligation to help the counties as they provide services to the citizens of their area and trying to make sure that those children have good opportunities and hopefully with time can be reunited in their family. There is a particular area of child welfare that Beltrami County is particularly vexed or working with and that's with regard to the Indian Child Welfare Act. It's a federal law and its purpose is to try to provide for Indian children a more culturally aware treatment trying to keep those children at home where they can be with extended family or in a more culturally appropriate setting for them. In that case, in last year's tax bill we had a provision that the state would pay the costs of those out of home placement costs as opposed to the county. It was a significant step forward in the relationship of Beltrami County and Red Lake and I would hope to move forward with that again. I think in the long run having those children receive their care in a culturally appropriate setting is much better for the children and hopefully for their families. All right, well thank you. I hate to say, time's gone fast and we have to move into closing comments and so each candidate has two minutes for closing comment and up first is Rod Scoey. Hi, I've made Northern Minnesota my home for most of my life which is why I am dedicated to making it a great place to live, work, and raise a family. Legislatively, I was architect of probably the two of the best thing the legislature has done in recent years. That is a long-term plan to keep our budget balanced and a tax relief bill that included millions of dollars of middle-class income and property tax relief. I work for funds to assist locals as they continue to work with aquatic invasives. I've worked at funding targeted to rural and smaller school districts. I'm currently working with the Minnesota Rural Education Association trying to find ideas to improve funding for our rural schools. I work for funding to combat bovine TB and make Minnesota free of this disease that affects our animal agriculture industry. And I've worked for the Minning Bonding Project, some of which we've talked about tonight. And I will work to make sure the bipartisan widespread tax relief bill targeted at Minnesota families that I authored becomes law. This bipartisan bill passed with 87% of legislators supporting the bill and we need to get these provisions into law. Through responsible targeted relief we can use our dollars to support more working Minnesota families and businesses, and help our economic recovery spread to every corner of the state. I ask for your vote in this continued effort. I ask for your support to continue to be your voice for our area. Thank you for listening tonight and vote for Rod Schoai on November 8th. Thank you. Mr. Utgier closing comments. Thank you. I want to thank everybody here tonight. Thank you very much for your questions. Thank those that are watching us on the television. I hope that I've earned your trust and support. The time is now to change the direction of our state government. I will work to reduce our ever increasing size of government. There's a lot of work to do but I see tax and regulatory reform, health care reform and education reform as the top issues for 2017. Our tax and regulatory structure has kept job growth flat for far too long. Our health care system is in the process of cancelling thousands of policies of a large number of our neighbors and family members. Please remember that the Affordable Care Act, known as Obamacare and Minshire, are the creation of the Democratic Party. There was not one Republican vote at either the national or state level in support of this legislation. My priority will always be on serving the citizens of Senate District 2. With every vote I take, it must pass my 4-way test. I will base it on how it affects Senate District 2. Is it respectful of the taxpayer? Will it enhance job growth or impede it? And is it good for Minnesota? I ask you to check out my campaign at Paulatkey.com or on Facebook at Paulatkey and finally, I ask for your support and your vote on November 8th. Vote Paulatkey. Thank you. Alright, well thank you very much and really appreciate your participation in tonight's debate. I have great admiration for individuals who are willing to serve our communities and this great state of Minnesota. Now remember, we'll have additional debates right here on Lakeland Public Television. Now if you missed any portion of tonight's debate you would like to watch it again. It will be available on Lakeland Public Television website within 24 hours. The 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 Bemidji Pioneer website at BemidjiPioneer.com You can also listen to the audio of the debates at kaxe.org Coming up at 8pm we'll have Matt Grussell and Jerry Loud. Good night and thanks for watching.