“We got whacked.” That’s what Minnesota Rural Counties Caucus (MRCC) Administrator Dan Larson says of greater Minnesota’s share of the Minnesota Parks and Trails Fund. But he’s fighting for the 80 counties outside of the seven-county Twin Cities metro area, and he achieved remarkable success during this spring’s legislative session. He has also recognized Cook County Commissioner Fritz Sobanja for his leadership on this issue.
The Minnesota Clean Water, Land and Legacy Amendment passed in 2008, creating a 3/8 of 1% state sales tax that will be in effect through 2034. This revenue is distributed into four funds: a clean water fund, an outdoor heritage fund, an arts and cultural heritage fund, and a parks and trails fund.
The state has three park systems: the state park and trail system administered through the Department of Natural Resources (DNR), the metropolitan regional parks and trails system, and the greater Minnesota regional parks system. The amendment legislation states that the Parks and Trails Legacy Grant Program provides grants to non-metro units of government to enable them “to acquire, develop, improve, and restore parks and trails of regional or statewide significance outside of the metropolitan area.”
Dan Larson told the Cook County News- Herald that after the parks and trails fund was established, he “saw only two entities at the table”—the Metropolitan Council and the DNR—where decisions would be made on how the money would be split among the three trail systems, and these two entities “locked up” 86 percent of the funding.
The first two years of the grant program (fiscal years 2009-10 and 2010-11), the DNR was awarded 43 percent, the metro area was awarded 43 percent, and the rest of Minnesota had to compete with the metro area for the other 14 percent—and the first year, the metro area was able to procure 20 percent of that 14 percent.
In addition to this, the greater Minnesota cities and counties were required to come up with 25 percent matches on their grants and could get no more than $500,000 per project, while the metro area had neither a match nor a cap.
By the end of the 2009 legislative session, Larson and the Minnesota Rural Counties Caucus had gotten involved. The Met Council claimed the rural counties should not get more of the money because they weren’t organized, he said, so they created the Greater Minnesota Regional Park & Trail Coalition, recruiting some of the best park and trail directors in the state. They started getting themselves onto committees that make recommendations to the legislature on how the Legacy funding will get allocated.
When the rural counties showed up, Larson said, metro area lobbyists “threw every conceivable roadblock” in their way. They justified the greater Minnesota matching fund requirement by saying the metro area already put a lot of money into their parks from local property taxes.
The third year, the coalition was able to convince the legislature to dedicate 20 percent of the funding to greater Minnesota, leaving the DNR with 37 percent and giving the metro area 43 percent once again but not allowing it to compete for more. Greater Minnesota secured $7,123,000 for fiscal year 2011-12, almost as much as the rural counties had received through local DNR grants in the entire previous 10-year period.
This April, Commissioner Sobanja talked about the ongoing dispute and the initial success of the Greater Minnesota Parks and Trails Coalition at a county board meeting, saying, “The Twin Cities has all the money, and we’ve got all the land. … It’s a battle. The metro boys aren’t going to be too happy, and they’re madder than we thought they’d be.”
This legislative session, greater Minnesota received $7,718,000 for fiscal year 2012-13, which starts July 1. This represents 20 percent of the funding again, with no match and no cap.
On June 12, Sobanja told fellow commissioners that Dan Larson fought against 19 other lobbyists during the legislative session. The metro area thinks they should get more of the money because the population of the area is so great, but the rural areas have a lot more land to manage, he said. According to Larson, however, the population of the seven-county metro area is about the same as the combined population of the other 80 counties.
“This is Legacy money that the state imposed on itself to build a park system,” Larson said.
On June 12, the county board joined other counties and cities throughout the state in adopting a resolution declaring that the current funding splits are “inherently unfair to Greater Minnesota and not enough to carry out the state plan or meet public expectations” and that “the greater Minnesota percentage of Legacy funding should increase to a level more equal to those of the metro area and DNR.”
Larson expects the battle to continue, but he’s planning to stay in the fray. “We’re getting ready to hang on to what we achieved last year,” he said.
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