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| Date: | September 13, 2012 | | Contact Name: | Steve Sviggum | | Contact Phone: | 651-296-4184 | | Contact Email: | steve.sviggum@senate.mn | | For Immediate Release | |
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| The Process Does Not Always Yield the Right Result |
Today Governor Mark Dayton announced the awarding of the $47.5 million grants as provided in the Capital Investment bill passed by the 2012 Legislature. These were to be competitive grants with the awarding of the grants based upon merit and a scoring system to be more objective, rather than subjective political decisions. Many good projects got funding today- many did not.
“The Governor had a softball down the middle of the plate and missed it!” said Senator Dave Senjem, Republican Senate Majority Leader and also the Capital Investment Committee Chair. “The Legislature appropriately reformed the process for funding local projects. A bipartisan super majority set aside sometimes politically motivated earmarking and arm twisting to make explicit the legislative intent to lay out objective criteria for DEED to use in prioritizing projects that would create the highest return on investment (ROI). It was up to DEED and Governor Dayton to call the balls and strikes and they missed quite a few by ignoring the parameters set up by a Legislative supermajority.”
Based upon the grants awarded by the Governor there was legitimate criticism that the criteria was not closely followed and that the process was flawed and arbitrary. In fact, city of Mankato officials issued a press release saying: “Plain and simple, DEED got it wrong in its project scoring.”
Looking at the proposals that were scored by DEED it is clear that many of the criteria priorities set by the Legislature were not followed. Specifically, the legislation listed priorities such as attracting out of state revenue, an objective cost benefit analysis and return on investment and the project inducing private capital that were not seemingly followed.
“Certainly everyone can agree or disagree on the scoring used for the projects,” Senjem concluded. “It was a worthy and respectful effort for Minnesota to try and take politics out of the bonding process that has plainly stunk in the past. But how you can prioritize baseball stadiums with very questionable economic development, and rail corridors that by DEED’s own admission rank very low, over projects with great return on investment is non-sensical.”
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