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| Date: | May 3, 2012 | | Contact Name: | Peter Winiecki | | Contact Phone: | 651-297-8077 | | Contact Email: | peter.winiecki@senate.mn | | For Immediate Release | |
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| SENATOR PEDERSON REFORMS PARKS & TRAILS GRANT PROGRAM Key Provision in 2012 Legacy Funding Bill Removes 25% Local Match Requirement |
St. Paul --- With the signing into law last week of the Legacy bill, State Senator John Pederson (R-St. Cloud), continued to build on the successful effort he initiated last year to bring equity into the previously lopsided way Park and Trail Legacy funding is distributed between metro parks, the DNR, and Greater Minnesota.
In the bill, Senator Pederson successfully argued for the elimination of a 25% local match requirement on any Park and Trail Legacy grant received by a city or county outside the seven county metro area, and for the elimination of a $500,000 per year funding cap on Greater Minnesota projects. This came on top of his successful efforts last year to shift about the same amount of funding Greater Minnesota received in the previous decade - for each of the 2012 and 2013 funding years, and to have those funds dedicated specific to Greater Minnesota needs.
"It's important to remember these are funds collected from the Constitutional Amendment voters passed in 2008, and not new funds," Sen. Pederson said, "we're fighting the metro and DNR for our fair share."
He said the initial Legacy splits happened before he was elected, "and when I found out last year how badly Greater Minnesota was being shortchanged by state and metro park interests, I had to try to bring some balance to the formula."
He was referring to the initial 2009 formula that guaranteed 86% of the total Park and Trail Legacy funding dedicated equally (43% each) to metro and DNR park and trail interests, leaving the remaining 80 non-metro counties to compete with metro counties for the remaining 14%. Metro counties received 20% of that remaining 14%.
"When I find these kind of excessively inequitable formulas I'm going to pull the curtain back and expose them for what they are - unmerited, unreasonable, and unfair to Greater Minnesota," Pederson said.
Local park and trail interests agree, and are gearing up for the improvements made possible by the substantial new funding stream.
"Grateful doesn't begin to describe how we feel about the way Senator Pederson has torn into the Legacy Park and Trail funding inequities," said St. Cloud Parks & Recreation Director, Scott Zlotnik, "he has delivered a very large piece of the funding pie - nearly ten years worth of dedicated funding for each of the next two years - then torn in again by knocking off the 25% local match requirement and project cap limitations." Zlotnik inferred that if we could hold on to this level of funding over the next 23-years. "Greater Minnesota regional parks and trails will become a system that is second to no other state or provincial regional system in the world. Now that is a true Legacy."
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