[0:08] [Music]

[0:23] okay welcome everyone my name is Karine Shepard and I'm the president of the Bloomington League of Women Voters and

[0:28] we're pleased to make this form available to you this evening yes the League of Women Voters is a nonpartisan

[0:33] political organization that never endorses any political party or candidate our purpose in hosting this

[0:39] forum is to provide you with the opportunity to learn more about the candidates so that you can make informed

[0:45] voting decisions the league encourages active and informed voters we welcome

[0:50] all who are interested in learning more about the issues to consider joining our league and visit our website you can

[0:56] find information after the Forum outside election day is Tuesday November 5th and

[1:01] early in-person voting is available right here at Bloomington Civic Plaza starting this Friday September 20th and

[1:09] I would be remiss as a league member if I didn't ask you are you all registered to vote is your registration current do

[1:16] you know your Precinct and do you know your polling place and if you're wondering okay see a league member after

[1:22] the Forum in our current political environment this is an excellent opportunity to hear views directly from

[1:28] the candidates this event this evening required the

[1:33] efforts of many people and I would like to thank them the candidates for the time and effort that you have dedicated

[1:40] to running for office and for participating in this forum in these days of political polarization we can be

[1:46] proud that our candidates for their efforts that they make to run positive campaigns and for demonstrating civility

[1:53] in this form that is becoming of the office they seek and that reflects the attitudes and demeanor of our community

[1:59] as a whole whole I want to thank the me members of The League of Women Voters and especially to the voter service

[2:05] committee for planning this event and thank you to the city of Bloomington for the use of the council

[2:11] chambers here and also thanks to Bloomington TV for recording and broadcasting this forum on Bloomington

[2:18] TV and it will be posted online for on our website the city of Bloomington

[2:23] website and on YouTube and will'll also be be broadcast multiple times on Bloomington TV

[2:30] we ask the members of the audience not clap cheer or otherwise do anything that may disrupt The Forum or the recording

[2:37] process our league moderator tonight is Patty robless Patty is a member of the

[2:42] Maple Grove oio and Brooklyn Park league and is an experienced moderator she will

[2:49] now identify the rules of the Forum and will introduce you to the candidates thank

[2:54] you thank you good evening I'm Patty Rogas a member of the League of Women

[2:59] Women Voters Brooklyn Park oio Maple Grove and moderator for tonight's Forum

[3:05] I have completed all moderator training required by the League of Women Voters Minnesota and have moderated forums for

[3:11] over two DEA decades before we get started let's all get our cell phones out and turn them off or put them on

[3:18] silent thanks so much we ask that you do not use personal

[3:23] devices to record this event because doing so can distract or obstruct the view of others please remain as quiet as

[3:31] possible while the candidates are speaking so everyone can hear please hold your applause until the end of the

[3:37] Forum so that candidates will have the maximum time to respond to your questions the League of Women Voters

[3:43] Minnesota and our local leagues conduct candidate forums to provide the public with an opportunity to hear candidates

[3:50] discuss the issues that are important to the members of the public the league is a nonpartisan organization that does not

[3:57] support or oppose any political party or candidate the views expressed in each

[4:02] Forum are those of the candidates not those of the League of Women Voters lwv

[4:08] Minnesota and our local leagues post complete unedited recordings of forums

[4:14] excerpts or edited clips of candidate forums may not be used for political purposes this forum is being video

[4:21] recorded the recordings of candidate forums in their entirety are the sole property of the League of Women

[4:28] Voters this evening you will hear the candidate from the candidates for Minnesota House of Representatives

[4:34] districts districts 50b and 51b discuss issues that are important to the

[4:40] residents of the districts all candidates for the aforementioned offices whose names will be printed on

[4:46] the ballot have been invited to participate in this forum each participating candidate has confirmed by

[4:52] their signature their commitment to abide by The Forum procedure and rules copies of the Forum rules are posted in

[4:59] the lobby adjacent to this space we will try to cover as many issues as possible in the time we have if your question was

[5:06] not addressed tonight please feel free to contact the candidates directly here

[5:11] is the format for tonight's Forum speaking order was set before the Forum and will rotate with each question each

[5:20] candidate will have two minutes for an opening statement and one minute for closing remarks each candidate will have

[5:26] one and a half minutes to answer each question League volunteers Cynthia

[5:31] Jorgenson and Karen Dinan will time candidate responses and hold up signs to

[5:37] Show candidates when they have 30 seconds left and when they have 15 seconds left

[5:43] and when they must stop as moderator I will ask all the questions lwv Bloomington and I

[5:51] determine which questions will be asked and attempt in good faith to cover the topics of Interest indicated by the

[5:56] question submitted to lwv VA email prior to this evening and by attendees during

[6:03] this event if you would like to submit a question this evening please write it on an index card and pass it to one of the

[6:09] volunteers who is collecting those cards call card collectors please raise your

[6:15] hands serving as question facilitators today are Nancy clay and Douglas

[6:21] claycomb of the Bloomington League all submitted questions become the property of lwb lwv Bloomington no campaign

[6:30] material signs brochures cards buttons or clothing with the candidate information are allowed in the

[6:36] Bloomington Civic Plaza candidates please speak directly into your microphone so that your

[6:42] responses are heard and picked up by the video when you speak please look at the audience not at

[6:49] me here are the candidates for a two-year term as representatives for

[6:54] district 50b in the Minnesota house Mr Bob gust and Mr Steve Elkins vying for

[7:01] the Minnesota house seat representing District 51b are Mr Nathan Coulter Mr

[7:08] lion Dale Johnson candidate Elkins and his wife are members of League Women Voters

[7:14] Bloomington let's start with opening statements by the candidates two

[7:20] minutes and the first um candidate we hear from will be Steve Elkins hello I'm Steve Elkins your state

[7:27] representative for Western Bloomington I'd like to thank the league for this opportunity to address you tonight my

[7:33] wife Judy and I have lived in our home in Bloomington for 40 years and I've been knocking on your doors for about 30

[7:39] of those years I've come to understand what Bloomington voters expect from their elected representatives they want

[7:46] legislators who will work for Reproductive Freedom uh Common Sense gun violence protection laws preservation of

[7:53] Minnesota's tradition of free and fair elections equal rights for everybody

[7:58] quality public education for our children and grandchildren a public safety system that keeps us safe in our

[8:04] homes and our persons access to health care and an affordable cost housing that

[8:09] our ad adult children can afford as they start their families action to address climate change clean water and the

[8:17] protection of our natural resources a convenient safe and well-maintained transportation system a government that

[8:23] respects and protects our privacy and in all of these areas provides Effective Government that uses tax pay our

[8:29] resources wisely and provide services efficiently in my three terms in the

[8:35] house I've made this list of Bloomington priorities my priorities as well I have

[8:40] earned the respect of my colleagues and stakeholders for my thoughtful and pragmatic Appo approach to legislating

[8:46] and I'm known for working on a bipartisan basis to make state government more effective and I look

[8:51] forward to answering your questions thank you thank you Bob gust thank you

[8:58] uh this election is about who is the best person to make decisions for the people of Bloomington Steve Elkins who

[9:04] is literally my neighbor um lives up the street for me Steve Elkin and the Democrats think that they are I think

[9:11] that you are and what do I mean by that in this last cycle we had a$ 17 billion

[9:17] Surplus I think that money should have gone back to the people who who paid it and they could have spent it as they

[9:23] thought they should have paid it but more importantly than that we're a big tax and spend State already

[9:30] and so when we have a$7 billion Surplus that means we got $17 billion more than

[9:35] we had previously projected would be required in order to meet the needs of the state now to me that signals it's

[9:43] time for some tax relief let's give the money back to the let's give this money back but let's lower taxes going forward

[9:51] that didn't happen instead our government decided to increase spending by 40% so that they wouldn't have that

[9:58] um Surplus in the future and even after doing that they still raise taxes and so

[10:05] I'm running not because I think I have a better idea how to spend your money I'm

[10:11] running because I think you have a better idea how to spend your money and I would like to give that opportunity

[10:16] back to you now when the Democrats took control of both houses they did a number of things that

[10:25] um kind of surprised me and I don't really think they were my priorities and I don't think they were the priorities

[10:30] of the people in Bloomington um including um uh voting rights for felons

[10:37] and um driver's licenses for non-citizens now you can make Arguments for both of those things but why was

[10:44] that the highest priority well I submit the highest priority was that it's just a tool in order to hopefully get votes

[10:51] so I'm voting for I'm running because I believe in common sense and and because

[10:56] I want to give go the responsibility back to the people thank you thank you

[11:01] Nathan Coulter good evening everyone and thank you all I don't think you think

[11:07] after five years good evening everyone um thank you all so much for watching thank you to the league for hosting and

[11:13] thank you to my fellow candidates for being here tonight I'm Nathan Colter and

[11:18] I'm running to continue serving our neighbors in eastern Bloomington in the Minnesota House of Representatives by way of my own

[11:25] background I'm a lifelong resident of Bloomington and proud to be a product of our Bloomington Public Schools I have a

[11:32] Bachelor's in music and political science from St Olaf College and a master's of public affairs from the

[11:37] Humphrey school at the University of Minnesota prior to serving in the legislature I served for five years on

[11:42] the Bloomington city council I live about two minutes from here which I am particularly grateful for tonight uh

[11:49] with my wife and our two daughters who just started kindergarten and prechool at Bloomington Public Schools just a few

[11:55] weeks ago I'm running again because I'm proud proud of the work that we've done and I'm excited for the work we have ahead

[12:02] of us when I ran two years ago I said let's get to work and I say that because

[12:09] I think that's what motans expect from our leaders or at least what we want to expect but I also say it because I mean

[12:17] it in my time in the legislature I have focused on what I believe are Center of

[12:22] Life issues Bringing Down the costs of child care College property taxes

[12:28] centering The Voice of Voters in our elections and delivering for folks right

[12:33] here in Bloomington I'm looking forward to talking about that work and the work

[12:39] to come tonight and at your doors through through election day and I'm excited to get back to work thank

[12:46] you thank you lion Dale Johnson

[12:52] hello there we go now you can hear me thank you uh hi I am lion Dale Johnson

[12:57] my real name is Dale Berner Johnson I am liondale because there's a big a lot of

[13:03] Johnson's in the state of Minnesota and when I got involved in politics helping

[13:09] other people about 10 years ago people would forget my name so I have over a

[13:14] sec a century or decade in Lions International I don't if anybody's familiar with that uh probably the best

[13:21] Organization for volunteers in the world and so I added the lion to my nail my

[13:26] name because it's lion Dale and people don't forget forget that uh I've been uh helping other candidates and in the last

[13:33] two years the insanity over at the state of Minnesota in the legislature just got

[13:39] too much for me I've never dreamed of being a a candidate I didn't spend my

[13:44] life in politics I'm not a political science major I am a guy who grew up

[13:51] working I am the son of a union member 38 years in the IBEW I am currently a

[13:59] member of two unions and I've been a member of four my father served in World

[14:05] War II and him and my wife my mother lived through the Great Depression a

[14:11] whole different learning of people who have lived through the depression I've SE I grew up in Minneapolis and I've

[14:17] seen the metro area change in a nonproductive way the crime is getting

[14:25] heavy and the spending over at the state legislature is insane the fraud that is going on was not

[14:33] addressed and is still not being addressed by your state representatives

[14:38] only the federal government is doing something so I would like your vote and I am the district east of Penn the blue

[14:46] collar working class T side of the town thank you we going to start with

[14:53] Excuse me can I can I ask one favor because we're looking at the audience it would be helpful when you're

[14:59] holding up the time if you if you kept it up until it was the next one because I'm looking over here and and I don't

[15:05] know and then all of a sudden I'm at 30 if you follow me I was a debater in high

[15:11] school that's how I remember that thank you um we're going to start with the uh Community questions now um

[15:19] and we're going to start first with Nathan culture if and I'll ask the question and all four of you will answer

[15:25] the same question and if you need the question repeated please you know don't hesitate to ask if elected what if any

[15:31] legislation would you support to address the need for affordable child

[15:38] care well I'm really really glad that this was that this was the first question that was asked tonight because

[15:45] I continue to believe that quality affordable accessible Child Care is the biggest social and economic issue we

[15:52] face in the state of Minnesota right now it costs on average more to send a kid

[15:57] to child care than it does to send them to the University of Minnesota we spend

[16:02] comparatively 17th on early care and learning in this state compared to our K12 system when

[16:09] arguably it's more important because we know that 80% of brain development happens by age three and 90% by age five

[16:17] in my just in my one term in the legislature I am proud to have been the author of more than $300 million into

[16:24] our early learning scholarships ensuring that thousands more Minnesota kids KS will have access to quality affordable

[16:31] early care and learning our budget that we passed last year also included great start compensation supports direct

[16:38] support for pro child care providers early care really Educators is what they are uh to ensure better pay and benefits

[16:46] so we have made some progress but we need to do more in particularly we need in particular excuse me we need to focus

[16:53] on affordability for middle class families we do need to up the public investment because it is a public good

[17:00] and we also need to focus on making licensing easier and more intuitive so that it's easier for these early uh care

[17:07] Educators who are also business owners to actually run their business thank you thank you lion Dale

[17:15] Johnson thank you uh suan okay Child

[17:20] Care what's why is child care is so expensive it's because of the mandates

[17:26] put on by the state and they want to keep jacking up the

[17:33] responsibilities and the prices the state wanted to unionize all of the health care uh Child

[17:42] Care locations why was that to give the kids a better

[17:49] safer area no so when we look at why is child care expensive it's because of the

[17:57] things that they have to been dealing with that are forced on them by the

[18:02] state uh that it's expensive yeah everything is expensive but it's

[18:08] government that drives up the costs not some woman who's running Child Care out

[18:14] of her house and it people have got to start to realize expenses come from

[18:20] government regulations and let the free market handle

[18:26] it thank you uh um Bob gust thank you um

[18:32] I would Echo that to some extent I have to confess I'm I don't have children um

[18:37] but I do have nieces and nephews um I've gotten uh questionnaires and things from

[18:43] different organizations you know seeking if I want their endorsement or whatnot and what I

[18:49] gather from what I've seen from them is the high costs are largely because of

[18:54] more and more mandates and more and more requirements now those requirements are all well-intentioned um but I also think

[19:03] that we lived without them for a long time and um and I think that I agree

[19:08] with Dale that that's what's driving up the cost now I believe I I'm always been

[19:14] in favor of of you know tax breaks for all levels of Education um and so to the

[19:22] extent that you can address the issue that way so that to the extent people have to pay for child care um that that

[19:30] is reflected in a way that they at least get deductions for it um I don't agree

[19:37] with the idea of we need more and more government into what I think we basically need less government but I completely agree um because there are no

[19:44] longer the idea like when I was growing up where you had a one income family and then you had someone else at home and so

[19:51] we have to we do have to address that and we do have to make it affordable but whether that's more mandates or whether

[19:57] that's fewer mandates um I think it's fewer thank you Steve

[20:04] Elkins yeah thank you so first of all what representative cter said I I won't repeat all of that because he said it so

[20:10] well uh but I would uh offer that the uh the root cause of uh higher child care

[20:16] costs is that it's a very labor intensive U per um function uh you don't

[20:22] ever see productivity in an uh uh in a direct care profession like that because

[20:28] you don't want want to includ increase the number of kids per um you know per

[20:33] per child care worker uh and people aren't going to go into child care if

[20:38] you can make more uh money flipping burgers at McDonald uh than you can from taking care of somebody's kid and it's

[20:45] not just this profession you we have the same issue with uh nursing home workers with personal care attendants who attend

[20:52] to uh people with disabilities in in their homes teachers uh any profession

[20:58] um and almost all of these are government supported uh where um you

[21:03] have a um you have people creating you performing Direct Care Prov um services

[21:10] to people the cost is going up and um Mr Gus mentioned uh you know well what what

[21:16] happened to the budget surplus about you know five billion of that just went into increasing wages for people uh indirect

[21:24] care professions teachers uh nursing home workers uh and um that's I think

[21:30] that was a very worthy worthy expense thank you um question two what are your top

[21:39] legislative priorities and we're going to start first with Bob dust well as you can probably guess from

[21:45] my opening remarks my top legislative priorities relate to things that I think

[21:51] are common to everybody and that's uh lowering taxes and I think there are a number of ways to do that and one that

[21:57] has occurred to me and that has been mentioned to me is a lot of people uh even fairly well off people object to

[22:04] the fact that we tax Social Security now we've modified that a little bit but for the most part um there are a lot of

[22:11] people who've paid in who are not happy that now they pay taxes when they collect their social security and a lot

[22:17] of those people end up moving out of state similarly we're one of only about eight states that still has an estate

[22:23] tax um well that also causes a lot of people to change their residency and

[22:28] when those people leave they take with them what the the taxes that they were otherwise paying the otherwise state

[22:34] income taxes which most people are prepared to pay um following that um I

[22:41] am a big fund the police person at the at our level the state level um I think

[22:48] we have to do all we can to help law enforcement and I think part of that is

[22:54] uh we should not be doing anything to encourage illegal immigration because because it is drives down wages and it's

[23:01] a tax on social services and frankly I drive 494 every day we have too many

[23:08] people here already I'm I'm actually not even in favor of people coming here from Iowa I just assume that thank you thank

[23:16] you um Steve Elkins um thank you um I

[23:22] think from an advocacy point of view I think the the legislature the most important priorities for me are you know

[23:29] preserving reproductive Freedom Common Sense gun violence laws preservation of our free and fair elections in terms of

[23:36] issues that I I work on directly myself you you know leveraging my my life experiences the the areas that I'm I

[23:44] think I'm contributing the most on are um you know first of all trying to uh

[23:50] address the affordable housing crisis we a a problem where if you're if you're my

[23:55] age you probably own a home it may already be paid for and this is not a concern uh but I've got two 40-year-old

[24:02] daughters uh who still have not purchased their first home so one of my top priorities in terms of issues that

[24:08] I'm actually working on is uh reducing red tape quite frankly that is preventing the Home Building uh industry

[24:15] from building the homes that our our children need in order to to buy uh and

[24:20] the uh you know second one would say would be the uh uh the cost of an access

[24:25] of of Health Care so I've been working on what's an incredibly uh complicated issue for uh uh for four years now uh

[24:33] trying to uh create uh an effective Marketplace in in health care uh we

[24:39] spend way too much on health care and there's a huge amount of uh opportunity to reform our Health Care

[24:45] system thank you lion Dale Johnson government

[24:51] accountability right now there is none over at the state capital the uh the

[24:58] fraud that was going on would only be stopped now because the federal

[25:04] government stepped in because their money was being taken your governor and your legislature

[25:12] didn't step in we can't keep going on and having

[25:18] that fraud going on it's nearly half a billion dollars discovered so far all

[25:24] right so why aren't people doing something about it and it was known for a long time that it was going on so we

[25:31] need government to be accountable and the the current state government says no

[25:37] we're not going to punish anybody in the Departments where this was going on

[25:43] because we're going to look at it as a as a teaching moment well they're teaching with your tax dollars all right

[25:49] when they can spend whatever they want because it's your money taxation is too

[25:56] high and Public Safety is going down the tubes because we're letting people out

[26:01] early and we're reducing the sentences for serious crime Meanwhile we're

[26:06] locking up police officers who are doing their job this stuff's got to set it's got to

[26:13] stop thank you Nathan coulure well as you might have guessed

[26:18] from my previous answer um quality affordable accessible early care and learning as I said uh I believe it is is

[26:26] the greatest social and econ IC issue that we face in the state of Minnesota it's holding back young families it's

[26:32] holding back our economy billions of dollars left out of our economy because folks don't have quality affordable

[26:39] child care um bringing down continuing to bring down the costs of going to college uh whether that's a four-year

[26:46] college or Community and Technical College um strengthening um programs related to um

[26:55] uh uh apprenticeships that's the word I was looking for apprenti ships um strengthening the partners Partnerships

[27:01] that we have with our local governing partners and I do believe our city councils and county boards and school

[27:06] boards and Township boards they are local Partners um and in particular one area that I've focused on is a property

[27:13] tax system that works for everyone the reality is that over the last few years we have seen property tax increases hit

[27:21] hardest folks who can afford it the least partly because of the system that we have in place at the same time that

[27:28] many local governments are struggling even to afford the Necessities um I would say the other piece is just really

[27:34] delivering for folks right here in Bloomington thank you thank you uh next question we're

[27:41] going to start with Lion Dale Johnson what can the legislature do to make non-motorized active Transportation

[27:49] safer and more efficient I think we've uh got lots of

[27:55] non-motorized public uh things going on right now uh in

[28:02] Bloomington uh the street I live on was just taken from a two-lane Street each way to a one lane Street each way so

[28:09] that a a lane for bicycles could go in all the work to do that reduced the

[28:16] ability of traffic to flow and I almost never see anybody riding a bike in that

[28:23] area so we're kind of uh you know bikes are great I don't ride one but we're

[28:30] taking large areas and making this just for the bikes uh I think we maybe need

[28:36] to look at that a little bit and uh really think about what's working best

[28:42] for everybody I'm 69 years old I ain't G to hop on a bike I can drive my car but

[28:50] some people want to ride a bike but we go too far and to worry about it

[28:57] constant ly uh we are considering always

[29:02] looking to get more bike paths and what is its real effect on the average person

[29:10] I would say that people who bike every day is a very tiny percentage of the

[29:17] population thank you Nathan Coulter uh well thank you for the question I um I would point to support

[29:25] that I have demonstrated for our transit system our including uh expanding bus Rapid Transit

[29:31] um I would also say that I know that you know we there have been some dips in in

[29:36] ridership in the trans in on Transit over the last few years due to um very legitimate safety concerns and we um and

[29:44] I'm sure representative alkins can speak to this more expertly than I can but um

[29:49] the the policy changes and the Investments that we made in in making transit in particular Light Rail safer

[29:55] for folks to ride I think is going to go a long way toward addressing a lot of these concerns um I think the reality is

[30:02] that and I saw this even when I was on the Bloomington city council that folks do want to drive cars less they want to

[30:09] be able to walk and bike and take transit but the reality is for a great many folks including you know folks here

[30:15] in Bloomington it's just not an affordable option it's not an accessible option and so I think uh you know that

[30:22] we we need to have the conversations about how we afford that kind of infrastructure and how that gets uh put

[30:29] forward thank you uh Steve Elkins uh thank you this is uh an issue that I've

[30:35] been working on since uh I was first elected to the Bloomington City Council in 2001 when I was uh door knocking that

[30:42] year uh the number one complaint of citizens at the door was about speeding in their neighborhoods and so I started

[30:49] working on this issue um as a as a result of what I was hearing at the doors and so uh Innovations like the uh

[30:57] four lane to three uh Road diets as they're referred to um weren't actually

[31:02] originally um implemented because uh they created bikeways that was just a nice to have we started doing that back

[31:08] in the 2000s because it dramatically reduces uh accident rates for both motorists and uh and pedestrians and and

[31:16] cyclists and after a while we simply just uh discovered that uh in the process of converting roads from four

[31:23] lanes to three for safety reasons was in the process creating uh a network of uh

[31:29] of bicycle lanes that we see in the city today I've continued to work on this issue in the uh in the legislature as

[31:35] well I'm very proud of the legislation I passed uh uh when I was a freshman in in

[31:41] the house that allows cities to set their own speed limit policies as a result this year you saw Bloomington um

[31:48] reduce its default speed limit to uh to 25 miles per hour uh implemented the

[31:54] bill duly bicycle safety act uh two years ago that further improves bicycle

[31:59] safety non-motorized safety throughout the state so this is an issue I've been working on for a long time and very

[32:05] proud of thank you um Bob gust thank you so uh the question I guess is a little

[32:11] ambiguous because the way uh Dale answered it was referring mostly to bikes and and the way Mr Colter answered

[32:17] it was included uh mass transit um the mass transit has not uh really served

[32:26] the way we all had hoped with all the Light Rail that's gone in maybe it will maybe the uh Light Rail coming from Eden

[32:32] Prairie will eventually get done and maybe people will start going downtown again um but I I don't know as for

[32:38] bicycles um you know I think it's great to provide the the right kind of access

[32:43] um but frankly I I used to office downtown and there were bike Lanes in

[32:49] the winter when you know the lanes are a little bit narrowed anyway because of snow pack and nobody was riding their

[32:56] bikes in the winter and and it just seemed like it's it's gone a little too far and even drives on Highway 100 um

[33:04] there's uh you can cross Highway 100 at 70th Street or you can cross it at 76th Street that wasn't enough so they put a

[33:11] uh uh a special bike bridge and this bridge had to have cost millions of dollars because it's very elaborate I

[33:17] drive under there all the time in the 10 or so years that's been that I've seen four people on on bikes up there so you

[33:25] know I'm not obviously not against it but I think we spent way too much um time on it and way too much money on it

[33:31] I think it's more than adequate the way that it is thank you uh question number four and

[33:38] we're going to start with Steve Elkins please share why you support or do not support the use of rank Choice voting in

[33:45] elections and if elected will you help pass the local options bill which would

[33:51] give all jurisdictions the option of adopting rank Choice voting yeah I'm uh

[33:57] um long been a strong supporter of of rank Choice voting um uh you know during

[34:03] my city council years uh in the 2000s I was actually uh uh a member of the

[34:08] independence party which kept Fielding really good candidates for for State office but uh uh they do out do well on

[34:16] the early polling and then would fade at the end as people uh you know re you know retreated to the the the their not

[34:23] necessarily their favored candidate but uh the the uh to avoid getting the the

[34:29] least favorite candidate elected we're seeing uh elections uh here and across

[34:35] the country where um the inability of a voter to cast a a second choice valid is

[34:41] uh really skewing the results of our elections uh I like to point back to uh

[34:46] say that the uh 2000 Bush V Gore election where if uh Florida voters had been able to who had voted for Ralph

[34:53] nater had been able to cast a a second Chase Choice vote for Al Gore instead Al

[34:59] Gore would have won Florida handily that year and we would never heard about hanging Chads 2016 uh Jill St Stein took

[35:08] enough votes from uh uh Hillary Clinton in Wisconsin Michigan and Phil in um

[35:14] Pennsylvania to uh um basically her her vote total was higher than uh than

[35:20] Donald Trump's vote total and all three of those States and if those people had been able to vote for Clinton as a their

[35:26] second choice vote she would have won the election there as well thank you um

[35:31] Bob gust I'm against rank Choice voting uh

[35:36] primarily because it seems to provide another opportunity for people to doubt

[35:42] election Integrity um you can recount ballots regular ballots but when you're

[35:48] recounting ballots and then you're going well who do they vote for second who they vote for third it's all gets done

[35:54] through a computer and you end up with I think skewed results I my understanding

[36:00] is the mayor of Minneapolis was fourth um on the first ballot in the last

[36:05] election that's my I've heard that I I don't have a source for it and and he

[36:11] and yet he won so he was not the most popular but he was sort of you know down

[36:16] the list and and perhaps the you know through through some process uh was

[36:22] ultimately elected now Mr Elin cites uh you know some issues with Hillary

[36:28] Clinton well I submit if you'd had rank Choice voting in 1992 the Ross perau voters probably their second choice

[36:35] probably would have been uh George HW Bush and so I I think it can go either

[36:41] way but we've lived with a system for a long time that I think has worked the only place that I could see it was a

[36:48] place like in Minneapolis where you could have five Democrats and one Republican running and then the

[36:53] Republican gets elected and I think that's why Minneapolis actually adopted rank Choice voting because they thought

[36:58] well we might split the vote too many ways um and they thought that was a problem well then they should go to you

[37:05] a two-party system uh lion Dale Johnson thank you for the question uh I

[37:11] am opposed to legislating at the state level a mandate for rank Choice voting

[37:19] clear it's not a state issue it is a local

[37:24] issue it is a confusing system system we've been using the other system for

[37:31] 250 years why do we we to change it I will

[37:37] give you the facts the facts are that it somehow or another and nobody can prove

[37:42] why but it favors the Democrat Party so you will see the Democrats pushing

[37:49] this and in Bloomington there was a lot of outside

[37:54] money from outside of the state used to push that into the people in

[38:01] Bloomington and and Nationwide there's a guy down in Texas spent like $5 million

[38:08] around the country to push rank Choice voting money he made when he was a Enron

[38:15] he made a he made a bunch on Enron before it collapsed and ate up my

[38:20] 401k so why is it being pushed why don't we just stay with what we have and the

[38:26] confusion ask people how it works most of them won't know and it does make it more

[38:34] difficult to try to figure out like Bob said well how do you recount these votes

[38:39] it's a bad deal and it's certainly not State mandate Nathan

[38:45] coulure well I do support rank Choice voting and I will confess to being something of a convert on this issue uh

[38:52] in fact the the very first meeting I had after I was elected the city council on it well let's just say I've had had bad

[38:57] meetings folks that was a bad meeting um but ultimately you know I had

[39:04] conversations with a number of folks and what I came to see is that rank Choice

[39:09] voting really is just a better way a way a way to better reflect the will the

[39:14] actual will of the voters it ensures that it's harder to sort of skate by

[39:19] into office with a small percentage of the vote while also ensuring that voters

[39:25] themselves have the widest variet of choices available on their November ballot and I mentioned earlier that this

[39:31] is one of my priorities centering the voices of Voters in our elections I

[39:37] actually do believe that the best path forward for rank Choice voting right now is to pass the local option bill that

[39:42] moved forward in the legislature unfortunately didn't make it across the Finish Line to ensure that every city

[39:49] county school district Township Board every local government in the state can if they choose to if their citizens

[39:56] choose to adopt rank Choice voting and what happens is that every time that happens folks see it they get it and

[40:04] they like it thank you thank you um the next question we're going to

[40:11] start with Nathan Coulter Americans including Bloomington residents are living through the toughest housing

[40:17] market in a generation what ideas are you going to focus on to address this

[40:24] trend well I'm I'm glad that this question came came up and housing is actually one of the issues that motivated me to run for office in the

[40:31] first place um and it's it's not surprising to hear that folks are are really really struggling to find housing

[40:38] we have an estimated in the state of Minnesota an estimated shortage of 160,000 Hing housing

[40:45] units I'm really really proud of the work that we did and the Investments we made uh2 million for Housing Development

[40:53] for low and middle- inome motans we also strengthened tenant rights and I overall

[41:00] our housing budget invested a billion dollars into housing affordability into getting minnesotans a safe warm clean

[41:08] place to live we do need to do more um in terms of I would say we need to

[41:13] empower local governments that are doing the right thing much like we're seeing here in Bloomington with our opportunity

[41:19] housing ordinance that I was proud to to support and move forward when I was on the city council um there are I think uh

[41:26] changes representative Elkins mentioned some of them related to zoning um really we we just need to sort of make it

[41:35] profitable make it accessible for everyone to have a safe place to call home in

[41:41] Minnesota thank you um Lian Dale Johnson housing I grew up in a house in

[41:47] North Minneapolis I had a house in South Minneapolis I had a house in Brooklyn

[41:54] Park I lost the one in Brooklyn Park to foreclosure it's not

[41:59] fun housing is not an apartment housing is a house when the government starts dumping

[42:06] money in it doesn't go in to building affordable houses it goes in to building

[42:13] apartment buildings all right that's my opinion of it and I've lived in both of

[42:19] the situations So when you say housing why is housing expensive because of

[42:25] government mandates you have to have triple pane windows or you have to have this kind of insulation government

[42:32] mandates are driving up the costs of housing if you want to bring housing

[42:38] costs down let Builders build them at an affordable rate a same house same design

[42:46] built in minneap in Minnesota built across the river in Wisconsin is a whole

[42:52] lot cheaper and it's the same house w why

[42:58] government mandates thank you uh Steve

[43:03] Elkins uh thank you this is one of the the most important issues to me as I

[43:08] said earlier um you know I've got two 40-year-old daughters who can't afford to to to buy their first first home and

[43:16] um I'm I'm proud to to be a resident of Bloomington where the city council has already taken action to make it easier

[43:24] to buy uh uh to build and uh uhy by affordable housing the city has already

[43:29] uh achieved something like 34s of its affordable housing goals for the entire decade uh but there are are too many uh

[43:37] cities in Minnesota that are not like Bloomington or Richfield or the cities

[43:42] that are are attacking this issue that are um creating red tape as it were uh

[43:48] by saying if you want to build a home in our city um you you've got to build it on a third of an acre of land uh and you

[43:56] can only build if if it's faced with a stone or Hardy plank um and this is a

[44:02] nationwide issue uh these these problems are exist everywhere and it's becoming

[44:07] uh a uh an existential threat threat to our economy because it's clear from the

[44:13] National Data that the regions that are thriving are the ones that are able to provide uh Workforce housing to workers

[44:21] people are are leaving high CO High housing cost States moving to lower cost states and if we don't do something to

[44:28] uh alleviate the regulatory buildings on affordable housing we're going to be a net Loser on

[44:35] population thank you uh Bob gust so

[44:40] representative couter indicated they spent a billion dollars and it that doesn't seem to have done anything which

[44:47] tells me that a government spending money on it is not the answer I think housing is a supply and demand issue and

[44:54] I think it always is um and one of the big problems that I think we are having

[45:00] is uh Supply is being gobbled up in a lot of places by big companies what used to be uh home homes that people owned

[45:08] are now homes that people are renting and they're renting them from people and I frankly while I'm a pretty free market

[45:15] guy uh it seems to me that um we ought to deal with that with a fairly Hefty um

[45:23] Homestead benefit so that people who are renting who are buying houses to rent other people um not I don't want to use

[45:31] the word penalized but you know pay significantly more frankly um if if

[45:37] there was something where you actually limited home ownerships to actual people who are going to be in the homes the way

[45:43] some um uh townhouse associations are I I don't necessarily think that's a bad

[45:48] idea even though like I say I'm a free market guy um but to have actual owners

[45:54] in their homes would reduce the number of people trying to buy them and the supply and demand would take care of

[46:01] itself thank you next question we're going to start with Bob gust um what is your opinion on

[46:10] allowing for multifamily we're staying with the properties and homes uh allowing for multif Family Properties to

[46:17] be constructed in traditional single family zoned areas and how would this impact how does this impact local

[46:25] communities so I I believe this is my opponent's one of his primary issues

[46:30] weren't you the author of that of that proposal along that line uh Bloomington has always allowed

[46:37] duplexes in single family neighborhoods okay but but wasn't there a bill last session to do that throughout the metro

[46:45] in any event I'll I'll answer the question because and and I'm because I'm I am opposed to that idea because zoning

[46:53] uh was set up by local governments and they had in mind you know single family

[46:59] housing how many cars that would mean how many people that would mean um and so to say well you know what you can

[47:06] tear down a house and put in multif family housing completely first of all takes the those decisions away from the

[47:13] people who who made them who thoughtfully made them in the first place and uh second of all now the way

[47:20] you got in affordable housing from doing that is well it drove your property values down because you lived in kind of

[47:27] a you know kind of a quiet neighborhood and all of a sudden now it's not so quiet because you've got multif family

[47:32] housing Steve and I live on the same kind of quiet street we don't have people that much on either side if all

[47:38] of a sudden we had multif family housing um that it completely changes the character of the neighborhood and so I

[47:46] don't think it's a good idea for anybody other than local governments to be making those decisions thank you Steve Elkins yeah

[47:55] thank you as as I I said um Bloomington has always allowed duplexes in single family neighborhoods uh if you look

[48:02] closely you will see them scattered unobtrusively throughout the city and uh we're almost unique in in in that

[48:10] respect um the one I I was a city council member

[48:15] a planning commissioner for 12 years here and in that entire time I can only remember one case where a single family

[48:22] home was replaced with a duplex and the neighbors one of the neighbors I'll never forget this came and and uh

[48:29] testified that he didn't want the duplex to go in because it was so much nicer than all of the other houses in the

[48:35] neighborhood it was going to uh raise the property values and he was afraid his property taxes would go up where I

[48:42] have a problem is when um uh an exclusive semi gated community in the

[48:48] exerpts is saying uh we're not going to allow uh anything but executive housing

[48:53] to be neighborhood uh in in our city we're not going to allow ow new townhouse complexes or apart apartment

[49:00] comp complexes uh starter homes that uh new families need uh because they want

[49:05] to maintain the exclusive and uh segregation uh patterns in in in their neighborhood if we don't allow more

[49:13] starter homes in communities around the the the the state um we're not going to

[49:19] be able to attract the re the workforce we need thank you Nathan

[49:25] couter oh I think uh representative Elkins uh said a lot of what I was going to say um I think the reality is that

[49:32] when it comes to this issue and local governments around the state there are good faith actors and there are bad

[49:37] faith actors and I'm proud that Bloomington is and I think always really has been a good faith actor has been

[49:43] making these decisions about what really works for the community in terms of that kind of housing density um there were

[49:50] proposals that moved forward that that were discussed and you know they were they were dissected and and and

[49:57] compromises were made about exactly where and when um certain kinds of homes should be allowable by right um and I

[50:04] think though you know those conversations uh will continue to move forward that I think that was maybe just

[50:10] perhaps too big of a conversation to have in in one relatively short legislative session um but I you know

[50:17] one thing that I have found and I have worked on this issue as as well is that at the end of the day it's import It's

[50:23] always important to remember that the approving Authority whether it's a city Council or a planning commissioner

[50:28] whoever they always have the ability to deny approvals based on the health safety and Welfare of the community if

[50:35] something will truly be unsafe for the community the city council has every

[50:40] right to deny approvals thank you lion Dale Johnson will you replate the question as it was

[50:48] uh sure what is your opinion on allowing for multifamily properties to be

[50:53] constructed in traditional single family zoned areas is how does this impact

[50:58] local communities okay multifam doesn't say

[51:06] duplex okay multifam can be an apartment with 10 different apartments in it so

[51:15] let's keep those two separate a duplex is one thing multifamily can be a lot of

[51:21] other things all right so that's how they open the door and then they trick you later all right I I I would be

[51:30] opposed to it I grew up at a home most people want to live in a home they don't

[51:37] want to live in multifam the uh the cost

[51:45] of changing things to multif family that's when the developer comes in like

[51:51] they did in Bloomington last year where a developer bought up a lot and then

[51:58] Twisted the arms of the city council to get that lot res sanctioned and split to

[52:05] two so he could build two small houses and make money do you think the

[52:11] neighbors really wanted that no and this duplexes you don't see too many of those

[52:18] over in uh uh West Bloomington where you see that kind of stuff going on is the

[52:24] area I represent east Bloomington so listen to the words thank

[52:30] you uh our next question we're going to start with lale Johnson in the 2023 legislative session

[52:38] the leg legislature voted to cover 50% of school district's special education

[52:44] cost Subs cross Subs subsidies excuse me sorry or the amount taken from District

[52:51] General funds to cover unreimbursed special education costs please please

[52:56] explain your views on this legislation well I wish I was more familiar with it I will tell you that in the last session

[53:04] the legislature put mandates onto schools but they didn't fund

[53:11] them so that's going to dump it on the people who live in those

[53:17] districts and they keep saying we need to fully fund

[53:23] education well nobody has ever said what fully funded

[53:29] means so they jacked up things that they have to have didn't provide the money

[53:35] and fully funded is like I'm going to cure cancer it's the gift that keeps on

[53:41] giving they will keep taking and our scores at our schools are going down

[53:48] they've been going down for years we're spending more money we're getting lower

[53:53] grades and in the last few years there's been a 40% % increase in the principles

[53:58] and assistant principles in the state of Minnesota but not an increase in the

[54:04] student body so why are we spending more for principles and assistant principles

[54:09] when they're watching less kids and Bloomington is closing a school we need

[54:15] to think about do what there really is about if education is not working and it needs to

[54:22] be fixed thank you uh Nathan cter well this I feel like I've been

[54:30] saying this all night but this may be my favorite question of the night this is really I mean just a really a critically

[54:35] important question to ask the the term that a lot of folks would use to describe the special ed cost subsidy is

[54:42] unfunded mandate the federal government I think rightly says districts you have

[54:47] to provide these services to students with special needs I'm a parent of a kid on an individual education plan I've

[54:54] been through these meetings but the reality is that the feds while requiring this have never come even close to

[55:01] providing the funding that really is needed to actually provide the services I wish they would but I don't exactly

[55:08] hold my breath on Congress stepping up anytime soon we do need to do better we do need to fully close the special

[55:14] education cross subsidy ideally the federal government would do it but if not that is not an excuse to leave these

[55:20] kids Behind These are students who need the need these supports need these services our schools have an obligation

[55:27] to provide them and it's going to be better for everybody if we do and yes that does mean we need to provide the

[55:32] funding to make sure that happens thank you Bob gust I feel like representative cter

[55:40] submitted all the questions tonight so um the obviously the uh the

[55:47] incumbents are much better able to speak to legislation that was passed and why they did it um but what I would say is

[55:55] is um I've reviewed all the legislation that they've passed during the two years

[56:00] that the Democrats controlled both houses and this might be the only one that I think was a good idea at least

[56:07] the only one that's ever been brought to my attention um i' I'm all in favor of

[56:13] education and spending on education however we rarely spend smartly on

[56:20] education somehow um there's always a way where where money goes to admin

[56:26] administrators and money goes here and money goes there but it just never really seems to get to where it's

[56:31] supposed to be and that's why we have to keep increasing the funding and increasing the funding so I'm fully on

[56:37] board with the idea of the the state should step in and help with that um I

[56:43] just think that as we've seen in a lot of situations the oversight is not always great it's not really done the

[56:49] way maybe the private sector would do it in a very efficient way but other than that I'm I'm okay okay with it thank you

[56:58] Steve Elkins yeah I can keep my answer short on this one this one uh the um Federal requirement that we um provide

[57:05] special education services is the epitome of a an unfunded mandate and

[57:10] essentially we took a big down payment on making it a funded mandate and so I

[57:15] fully support the the funds that we devoted to that thank you um next question we start we'll

[57:23] start with Steve Elkins recent media reports have suggested that many of

[57:28] Minnesota's charter schools are failing financially and educationally and in

[57:34] many cases are exacerbating the the achievement Gap are these concerns

[57:40] legitimate if so what legislative remedies would you support to address

[57:45] this problem not an area of specialty for me but um I've uh long supported the

[57:51] charter school movement but clearly the reporting by the Star Tribune in the past week is uh clearly uh indicated

[57:58] that the uh oversight over many of our Charter Schools is inadequate uh and uh grievously

[58:05] inadequate and so I would you know strongly support um strengthening the oversight over uh over Charter Schools

[58:12] it it appears to me that uh from the reporting that uh some of the sponsoring

[58:17] organizations um uh themselves are not really qualified to be doing that uh

[58:23] note that in in Bloomington U both of our daughters went to Hill Crest community school which is effectively a

[58:30] a Bloomington School District sponsored Charter School in in all but name but it

[58:35] has always been uh um you know very admirably managed uh with the heavy

[58:41] input from the uh the teachers at the at at the site and um so I don't not all

[58:46] charter schools are are bad but definitely agree that we the oversight desperately needs to be

[58:52] improved thank you uh Bob gust I'm afraid I don't really trust all the

[58:58] media reports um I'm sure that there are some charter schools that are not doing as well as they should uh in general

[59:06] I've always thought Charter Schools were a good idea a number of years ago um I

[59:12] had a case um in case I didn't say it I've been a lawyer for 40 years and um

[59:18] uh TCF Bank was on the other side and I so I was an adversary with Bill Cooper who was the head of TCF Bank and he uh

[59:25] he and some other people had started some charter schools and and uh they they talked them up and as far as I knew

[59:32] those schools were doing great and have always done great um and so the fact

[59:39] that uh there there might be some out there that have a problem sure let's

[59:44] let's address it but let's uh let's not reject Charter Schools just because there're there are some reports that

[59:50] there are some that are having problems thank you um Lion Dale Johnson

[59:57] Charter Schools uh I'm not real familiar with them I do think they are good ideas

[1:00:03] uh when I grew up they started busing and they moved busing into North

[1:00:09] Minneapolis I went to Patrick Henry High School and all of a sudden we had to have people going out to the suburbs and

[1:00:16] the suburbs coming in it didn't fix education my sons went to public schools

[1:00:23] in Minneapolis when I lived in South Minneapolis they went to a montauri

[1:00:30] style Minneapolis public school that school always outranked all

[1:00:37] the other schools in Minneapolis why because of the way they

[1:00:43] were teaching not because everybody in seart neighborhood was super smart it

[1:00:50] was a very very diverse neighbor neighborhood so we keep wanting to

[1:00:55] reinvent the on education instead of well you know uh phonic really worked

[1:01:01] good back there 30 years ago uh why don't we stick with the stuff that's working and if a charter school is being

[1:01:09] run as a nonprofit that can be a big problem because the nonprofits are kind of uh

[1:01:19] there's too many nonprofits in this state already they need to be looked at thank you Nathan and culture uh well

[1:01:27] I agree that I think we need to have a a really serious conversation about the future of of charter schools in the

[1:01:33] state of Minnesota um and I I do think um that does that will call for some uh

[1:01:39] strengthening of both oversight and and the regulatory infrastructure that currently exists around Charter Schools

[1:01:45] um it's worth remembering that Minnesota was actually a leader in establishing charter schools in the first place some

[1:01:51] 30 or 40 years ago under governor perit and you know I I've read the same news report that that everybody has and and

[1:01:58] of course deeply dismayed by what they're showing um but in in some ways I

[1:02:03] was not terribly surprised the reality really has always been that CH some Charter Schools work extremely well and

[1:02:10] some simply do not and you know the those of us who follow this issue know that that's true for traditional Public

[1:02:17] Schools as well and so um I you know I think we are going to have to have a conversation but um I mean I I would

[1:02:23] just point to the fact that Charter Schools were build as an alternative to traditional public schools with fewer

[1:02:30] mandates thank you um our next question we're going to start with lionelle

[1:02:36] Johnson how do you see the place immigrants play to the economics of Minnesota and the

[1:02:44] district can you define immigrants uh I believe the question is

[1:02:50] for you to define imig immigrants okay I am the grandson of four immigrants from

[1:02:56] Europe my parents uh were first year first born in America I have twin sons

[1:03:05] that I adopted from Moscow Russia they're immigrants my grandparents came here

[1:03:12] from Europe from Sweden and from Hungary and they came to Ellis Island and they came here

[1:03:18] legally and my sons came into America legally so if you are talking about

[1:03:24] immigrants that come here legally great hopefully they have something positive

[1:03:30] to add to our culture our economy and are willing to accept and understand

[1:03:37] that they're not living in Bolivia anymore they're living in the United States and we might have different

[1:03:43] Customs than they do and they should respect where they are and pledge

[1:03:49] allegiance to our flag if you're talking about people who have entered this country by already breaking a law

[1:03:55] strictly against it and I'm against the state of Minnesota spending any money at

[1:04:01] all to support that thank you Steve

[1:04:06] Elkins uh thank you uh you know every economic study on immigration that's

[1:04:11] ever been done have is you know very clearly showed that immigration provides a a a net uh Improvement to our economy

[1:04:20] um we need more workers we need to admit them legally uh we need to allow them to work they are more likely than uh native

[1:04:28] born Americans to start new businesses uh we have a severe Workforce shortage

[1:04:33] in um nursing homes uh Personal Care attendance traditionally first

[1:04:38] generation immigrants have filled many of those jobs and so when we uh choke off the supply of uh of immigrants uh we

[1:04:46] find ourselves in a situation where nursing homes are turning away uh patients not because they don't have

[1:04:52] rooms but because they don't have uh employ es to staff them so I I you know

[1:04:58] our our immigration system is a mess it's largely a federal issue but I think

[1:05:04] that we should be doing everything that we can to uh assimilate immigrants into our economy and put them to

[1:05:11] work thank you um Bob gust I think we have an obligation to

[1:05:17] take care of people who are already in Minnesota before we start taking care of the rest of the world um I can't

[1:05:24] disagree with the idea that um uh there are some jobs that um seem to be more

[1:05:30] dominated by uh immigrants and apparently because nobody else wants to

[1:05:36] do them um and I I from personal experience my father was in assisted living for four years and pretty much

[1:05:43] all of his attendants were Somali and they were all very nice and pleasant um

[1:05:49] and that doesn't necessarily mean that we need to be bringing the whole world

[1:05:54] to our doorstep step because we have a lot of people here who have needs um and

[1:06:02] frankly the immigrants do tend to push down um wages the illegal immigrants

[1:06:08] push it down even more um and it seems as though we're spending an awful lot of

[1:06:13] money on uh immigrants it is the case that um you have a lot of businesses

[1:06:19] started by immigrants but that's because there are some people who come here and there's a special type of visa for

[1:06:25] people who are going to put up a certain amount of money and so that's not necessarily like they came here as

[1:06:31] immigrants and decided to go into business it's more like um they came here with the business and and that was

[1:06:37] the the reason that they came here so as I said before we're pretty crowded already I I think you know immigration

[1:06:44] is fine but we it's it's not the end all thank you Nathan

[1:06:50] Coulter well we have always been a state that welcomes immigrants whether it is folks who came from Scandinavia or

[1:06:58] Germany 100 100 150 years ago folks who moved up to the Iron Range Eastern Europeans to mine our iron uh or our uh

[1:07:06] Somali and M and Lao Neighbors From the last few decades I I think there

[1:07:12] probably is pretty broad agreement that our federal immigration system is nothing short of deeply deeply broken

[1:07:20] and unless and until Congress steps up to fix that I think we need to recognize

[1:07:25] that pushing people down forcing them to live lives in the shadows treating them

[1:07:32] as less than human helps no one I'm actually glad to hear that uh there is

[1:07:39] an agreement on quote an obligation to take care of people who are here in Minnesota the reality is that immigrants

[1:07:45] of every legal status are people and they are here thank you uh next question we're

[1:07:54] going to start with Nathan coulure um the growth of the internet and protection of personal data is a

[1:08:00] continued concern what role does a legislature play play in protecting our

[1:08:06] privacy oh well I will concede this is a little bit outside of my wheelhouse um I

[1:08:12] my knowledge of this issue is is admittedly pretty limited I would hope that this is an area that the federal

[1:08:18] government would step up and and uh provide the kinds of regulations I know um technology and

[1:08:26] data sharing and all of this other stuff I don't have my phone in my pocket right now um but all of this is is proceeding

[1:08:33] and growing at at an incredible rate um I I think that's going to be really one

[1:08:38] of the great challenges of of any governing body over the next few years is what are we doing to to safeguard

[1:08:45] personal information and data and and making sure that it's it's only in the places that individuals want it to be

[1:08:52] and and I certainly would would um support actions to to protect that thank

[1:08:59] you alale Johnson the uh the internet is uh not a state of Minnesota

[1:09:05] issue as uh the gentleman to my right said it's a federal issue uh if the

[1:09:13] state starts to get into it you're going to have a hodgepodge and their ability to deal

[1:09:21] with something that is at a federal level is just going to get mucked up uh nobody wants to have the internet go

[1:09:29] nuts and have your protections uh out there for everybody I just was at a

[1:09:35] seminar yesterday about fraud and the internet it was a very good seminar I've

[1:09:40] seen it twice now but it's not a state of Minnesota issue so I would not worry

[1:09:46] about it at the state of Minnesota unless somebody could show me how that was going to be effective and not be

[1:09:53] contrary or interfering with the federal government it's just not a state

[1:10:00] issue thank you Bob gust so I think this is an important

[1:10:06] issue although I I'm not sure I have a solution for it um other than maybe sort

[1:10:11] of personal or through various businesses I if if you ever notice so I

[1:10:17] have a friend who uh never had any interest in going on a cruise he just thought that was terrible and just as a

[1:10:23] test uh with his phone near him he said honey how would you like to go on a cruise and all of a sudden he started

[1:10:30] getting on Facebook ads popping up to go on a cruise and sort of realized that

[1:10:36] someone was listening to him and uh and that and and I kind of noticed the same

[1:10:41] thing you know I would uh go online to search for something for my dog and all of a sudden I start getting those kind

[1:10:48] of ads I basically just quit Facebook as a result of that um because I didn't

[1:10:53] like the that interference with my privacy unfortunately my campaign people told me I had to have a Facebook account

[1:10:59] so I'm back on Facebook but um um it it is uh a problem and I actually was a

[1:11:05] recent victim of uh kind of an Internet fraud I'm kind of embarrassed about it

[1:11:11] somebody sent me an email asking me if as a favor I could uh buy them something because their credit card had been

[1:11:17] declined and I didn't ask enough questions and bought somebody a $250

[1:11:23] gift card uh but I I it's it's a serious issue I don't know the answer to it I

[1:11:28] kind of agree that it's you probably have to deal with it on a on a federal level because I mean what are you going

[1:11:34] to do as a state that won't be covered thank you um all right we're going to do a lightning round oops except first we're

[1:11:42] gonna hear hear Steve Falcons then we'll do because uh this is an issue that I've

[1:11:48] been working on for five years now and I uh agree with the others that

[1:11:54] uh this really is is an issue that the federal government that Congress should take up but Congress can't punch its way

[1:11:59] out of a paper bag right now so I have worked um with state legislators uh and

[1:12:05] what's now counting up to 19 other states to uh pass uh this year what will

[1:12:11] be when it becomes effective next July the strongest uh consumer data Privacy Law that has been passed in any state in

[1:12:18] in the in the country I spent the uh last 25 years of my career uh working in

[1:12:24] data management uh so I was very well positioned to take this on so a year from now uh you will have the right to

[1:12:31] know what data a company uh has about you to know uh to get a copy of that

[1:12:36] data if there are errors to have it corrected you will have the right to uh prevent companies from selling your data

[1:12:44] uh to use it for targeting advertising that follows you around on the internet um if your data is used to make a

[1:12:51] consequential decision about you related to uh uh insurance or housing or

[1:12:57] employment uh you will have the right to uh review that decision the data that was uh uh uh used in it to challenge the

[1:13:05] the results and to know what you might have done better to uh get a better score the previous time so I'm very I'm

[1:13:11] very proud of this work uh other start states are starting to copy some of the provisions that I included in my bill uh

[1:13:18] but you will a year from now be present protected by the most uh strongest bill

[1:13:24] in the country thank you um now we're going to do a lightning round and so with the lightning round these are just

[1:13:30] like yes or no questions or I support I oppose um and you can perhaps give a

[1:13:36] very short short brief uh phrase afterwards and that will give the um

[1:13:42] voters an opportunity to reach out to know that they should reach out for more information on one of these um issues if

[1:13:48] they have more questions for you all right so we're g to startop start with Bob gust first and do you support or do

[1:13:55] not support laws ensuring endof life

[1:14:01] options in general I support them okay uh Steve Elkins I

[1:14:07] do uh lion Dale Johnson uh I'd like to see how it's written okay and Nathan Coulter with the

[1:14:16] proper safeguards in place yes okay um do you support tougher gun laws

[1:14:24] um and if so give your priority tougher gun law that you would support lion Dale

[1:14:30] Johnson we have a second amendment and currently the uh legislature is trying

[1:14:36] to make insane rules around guns really quick quick uh answer so was that was

[1:14:42] that quick enough no not quite what you want so yes or no and then if you don't or if you do support

[1:14:49] it what would be the priority law that you would support so I don't I don't support the current dire

[1:14:55] okay thank you uh Nathan Coulter yes and the answer to that would

[1:15:00] be uh safe storage law would be my priority all right thank you uh Steve Elkins uh yes we've already passed um

[1:15:09] quick Universal background checks and uh red flag laws I support the safe storage

[1:15:14] and I would be willing to vote for assault weapon ban as well uh Bob gust U not really um there there are

[1:15:23] some limited things like red flag laws that if there was a way for them to not U be abused they might be a good idea

[1:15:30] perfect okay on to the next one um if you are elected and the erra amendment

[1:15:36] to the Minnesota Constitution comes up for a floor vote how will you vote uh

[1:15:41] we're GNA start with uh Steve Elkins I Will Wait vote in favor of it Bob gust I

[1:15:48] will listen to the debate I will think about it from what I know about it right now I would vote against it thank you uh

[1:15:54] Nathan cter I will vote Yes just like I did this year thank you and lion Dale

[1:16:00] Johnson not it I would not vote Yes it is curred form okay all right so let's

[1:16:07] see we have one more quick question and then we're going to go to our final

[1:16:12] question um what are your views on the use of

[1:16:18] traffic cameras and let's start first with Nathan Coulter it was really hoping you'd start

[1:16:25] with Steve on this one but um I you know I I think they present some some fairly

[1:16:31] concerning constitutional questions um I think you know since court rulings came

[1:16:38] down on those years ago technology has advanced um I think there are some opportunities where they can be fairly

[1:16:44] efficient um but much the way I always prefer to talk to a real person when I need to call up someone on the phone um

[1:16:51] I just have a general sort of hesitance when it comes to relying on technology that way so um I frankly would just need

[1:16:58] to learn a lot more about them all right thank you lion Dale Johnson I believe

[1:17:03] that if you're going to tr it for using to write out tickets that's been tried out on the east coast and found that it

[1:17:09] doesn't work and it's unconstitutional thank you uh Steve Elkins uh it's not unconstitutional It's

[1:17:17] very effective every place that they're used there have been dramatic reductions in accident rates and the the privacy

[1:17:24] concerns easily addressed thank you Bob gust when it was

[1:17:29] ruled unconstitutionally here it was because of some uncertainty because someone else could have been driving

[1:17:34] your car I think the easy way to deal with that is is to just give the car a ticket the same way if the car is in an

[1:17:41] accident the person who owns the car is responsible for it even if someone else is driving so if you lend your car to

[1:17:46] somebody else they drive through a red light you get a ticket the ticket goes to the car and it's your responsibility

[1:17:52] so I'm what what are we doing agreeing here yeah where that that is the way it would but I will clarify if they're not

[1:17:58] unconstitutional they're just not authorized by state law are we

[1:18:04] elaborating sure I'm going to let everybody can have a a one another

[1:18:09] second to elaborators okay well I I believe out on the East Coast it was found unconstitutional and

[1:18:16] removed 30 seconds 30 seconds no 30 seconds okay uh let's move on to our

[1:18:22] final question then um before our closing statements is there any topic

[1:18:28] that we didn't discuss tonight that is a priority for you that you would like to talk about um this is your opportunity

[1:18:34] and we're going to start with Bob gust so I would like to talk about um The

[1:18:40] High Cost of Living and inflation um if you um you see commercials for my my

[1:18:47] opponents uh and the Democrats in general they always have a plan they're always going to form a commission

[1:18:52] they're always going to do something to bring down cost costs but what they fail to acknowledge is for the most part

[1:18:58] costs are way up because of things that they've done um when you demonize traditional forms of energy when gas

[1:19:05] triples in price everybody's costs go up it's not just your cost to drive the to

[1:19:10] the grocery store it's the farmer's cost to produce the food it's the cost to drive the food to the processing center

[1:19:16] it's the cost to drive it to the grocery store and everything is way up because

[1:19:22] primarily because of energy costs and so I think in this day and age when

[1:19:28] we're already being over taxed it'd be nice to be have some ability to pay for

[1:19:34] things and um and there's a a blame like there's it's corporate gouging well no

[1:19:41] corporate costs are have gone way up in part because of energy and in part because of mandates and so I think that

[1:19:49] to to give people back purchasing power we need to get we need to stop demonizing traditional energy and uh we

[1:19:56] need to stop with the mandates thank you uh Steve Elkins yeah

[1:20:02] I think that the cost of living is is is huge especially with relation to housing

[1:20:07] and uh and health care which I spend a lot of time uh working on but beyond that the other thing that I would want

[1:20:13] to talk about is that uh I find myself increasingly uh getting involved in

[1:20:19] making sure that as we uh um Implement new programs in the legislature that they get um implement it effectively we

[1:20:26] have had a tendency to come up with a good idea and then just kind of throw it over the wall to the administration to

[1:20:32] uh uh Implement and uh a couple of been a couple of cases like the you know

[1:20:38] replacement of the minars driver vehicle services system that I was very involved in the replacement and found that I was

[1:20:46] able to make a significant difference uh uh in the successful implementation of it accessor just uh by you know studying

[1:20:53] what had gone wrong with L menars discovering that there were um Provisions in the legislation that made

[1:21:00] it impossible to do that project and so by diving into those kinds of issues I

[1:21:05] was able to help ensure that that project went smoothly uh and successfully and I'm finding that there

[1:21:10] are lots of opportunities like that out there currently working with the Department of uh Human Services to see

[1:21:17] how we could do a better job of uh keeping track of their clients uh uh

[1:21:22] keeping track doing a better job of uh of Eligibility and um I'm finding I'm

[1:21:28] getting a lot great deal of satisfaction out of doing work to make sure that government programs are implemented more

[1:21:34] effectively thank you lion Dale Johnson uh immigration uh immigration is

[1:21:39] a topic for me all right illegal immigration is costing everything and

[1:21:46] everyone costs are up because we are taking money from legitimate citizens

[1:21:52] who work for a living and spending it on people who are not here legally oh we

[1:21:58] need immigrants we need legal immigrants and we don't need to be dumping that

[1:22:04] burden onto taxpayers uh the immigration system everybody says it's broken it's broken

[1:22:10] ever heard anybody say how to fix it no uh and inflation which is not a state

[1:22:18] issue but inflation is caused by the current government in Washington and and

[1:22:24] our removal of the gold standard and the Federal Reserve running which is a

[1:22:30] business not a federal government entity the printed money and just dumped it

[1:22:36] into the economy that's why your money is not worth much that's why inflation is out of control and the the hurting

[1:22:46] our oil and natural gas IND uh Industries which are the life blood of

[1:22:52] the of the whole system when they punish our ability to use those sources of

[1:22:59] energy they're hurting all of us thank you and Nathan coulure well

[1:23:05] there are a lot of things I uh I would have loved to have a fuller conversation about tonight uh we have not talked

[1:23:10] about protecting reproductive Freedom we have not talked about strengthening and protecting our democracy um but I'm

[1:23:16] actually going to go in a direction that you probably aren't expecting a Democrat to go in and that's to talk about taxes

[1:23:22] the very first bill that we passed last year my very first bill that I voted on as a member of the Minnesota house was a

[1:23:28] $100 million tax cut for businesses the tax bill that we passed last year and

[1:23:34] this is something that I have talked to Folks at our at doors right here in Bloomington about and folks are loving

[1:23:41] it a child tax credit that it's estimated will cut childhood poverty in Minnesota by onethird cutting income

[1:23:48] taxes on Social Security such that only the richest one quarter of seniors will

[1:23:53] pay any any income tax on social security at all significant one-time and

[1:23:59] ongoing property tax assistance to nearly 600,000 motans we also increased

[1:24:05] the senior property tax deferral program and reformed our renters credit um all right thank you so much

[1:24:13] now it's um all now that all the candidates are invited to make closing remarks one

[1:24:20] minute each and we are going to start with elale Johnson thank you I am not a career politician I

[1:24:27] haven't spent the last 10 12 20 30 years as a politician I spent 30 years in the

[1:24:33] printing business I know what it's like to work at a place where if you don't do it right you go

[1:24:39] broke here in your politicians they don't go broke because

[1:24:46] you keep giving them money and they keep taking it they're not asking you where you want to spend it and are they

[1:24:51] spending it where you want it to go uh I stand up for workingclass families

[1:24:57] I have been through lots of different things in life that maybe somebody who's just you know had it all laid out for

[1:25:05] them doesn't understand they don't understand bankruptcy they don't understand foreclosure they don't

[1:25:12] understand international adoption I know those things and I speak for the average person the working

[1:25:20] family and I know their pain and I will represent them so vote for me thank you

[1:25:26] Nathan couter well thank you again to the League of Women Voters for hosting us so well as you always do and thank you all

[1:25:34] of you who are watching either here in person or online over the last two years we have made immense progress on things

[1:25:41] that I know our neighbors in Bloomington value historic life-changing investments

[1:25:46] in early childhood k12 and higher education protecting our democracy and

[1:25:52] reproductive freedoms help for property taxpayers and so much more we need to

[1:25:57] protect those successes and build on them for every Minnesotan thank you thank you Bob gust so I'm afraid I'm

[1:26:05] going to have to spend a little of my time addressing reproductive Freedom since it was mentioned four times in the state of Minnesota in 1995 in the Gomez

[1:26:13] decision uh the Minnesota Supreme Court found the Minnesota Constitution protected the right to abortion so it's

[1:26:21] not an issue in this election it wasn't an issue in the last last election or it shouldn't have been because it was

[1:26:26] already an established right and the reversal of the doubt the Dow decision reversing roie Wade really had no effect

[1:26:32] here whatsoever I'll just close by saying I've been uh a lawyer for 40

[1:26:38] years um I've been proud of the fact that my clients trusted me to represent

[1:26:43] their interests and trusted me to represent their interests Above All Else including my own interests I'm running

[1:26:50] because I want to represent West Bloomington I think I know what West bloomington's priorities are and I don't

[1:26:57] think they're consistent with what our legislature has done some of what our legislature has done I'm sure they they

[1:27:02] thought they were doing the right thing but a lot of it was not what we wanted thank you Steve Elkins I would also like

[1:27:11] to once again thank the league for providing us this opportunity to address you uh and in closing want to just

[1:27:17] reiterate my support for respecting and uh defending women's reproductive

[1:27:22] freedoms uh pursuing Common Sense gun safety reforms uh protecting our

[1:27:28] tradition of free and fair elections uh I want to spend a few minutes uh you know going back to where um Mr Gus

[1:27:35] started with the uh the budget surplus and how it was uh disposed of so the

[1:27:40] Lion Share of the ongoing Surplus was spent providing resources for

[1:27:46] Education I'm sorry I'm sorry is okay we still okay keep going

[1:27:54] keep going okay uh for workers in education nursing homes Personal Care

[1:28:02] attendance uh child care I think that money uh was money well spent um

[1:28:07] representative cter also mentioned that $3 billion in tax relief uh from a

[1:28:12] variety of forms I don't need to repeat that uh and the much of the rest of the money was spent on one-time Capital

[1:28:19] Investments we've only passed one budget Bill sorry one uh bonding bill in the last four years um had huge investments

[1:28:28] in uh uh in in upgrading outdated uh uh it systems so I think that the and and

[1:28:35] we've maintained the cost of govern thank you I think there was a slight problem with the timer but

[1:28:41] uh I'm I think you know what I I I would say let's give everybody 30 more seconds

[1:28:47] everyone else 30 more seconds we we I think went over your let you finish your thought um and then if uh you want 30

[1:28:54] more seconds you are welcome to 30 more seconds well I'll just say mean if uh you if voters send me back to the

[1:28:59] capital my and my commitment to you is that I'll continue my track record of representing blooming Bloomington voters

[1:29:05] with Fidelity in an effective bipartisan manner that produces results and I'll continue to make work to make state

[1:29:11] government more effective efficient thank you thank you so much all right everybody else can have 30 more seconds Bob gust would you like 30 more seconds

[1:29:18] um I I'll just say uh Steve alkins is not a bad guy he's just a guy who voted for a lot ofad

[1:29:26] ideas thank you Nathan Coulter well thank you um really I continue to be

[1:29:31] just profoundly grateful for the opportunity to serve our state and Community where I grew up and where my

[1:29:37] kids are growing up I'm asking for your vote because your vote is more than just expressing a preference your vote is an

[1:29:44] investment someone recently called it a kind of prayer for the kind of future you want to see I'm asking for your vote

[1:29:52] to get to work again thank you thank you and lion Dale Johnson listen

[1:29:57] to what they say you keep hearing reproductive

[1:30:02] Freedom as has been said there is no reproductive Freedom being attacked in

[1:30:11] Minnesota don't give me 15 seconds these guys have all gone more than that the uh

[1:30:17] the right to an abortion is built into the Constitution but these people want to keep bringing that up because their

[1:30:23] policy are failing reproductive Freedom thank you means the ability to take the life

[1:30:30] that's growing inside all right thank you so much all right and and listen the

[1:30:35] voters have every right to come up and ask you more questions about your uh your stance on the different issues and

[1:30:42] um they if they feel that they did not get as much information that they wanted um and and thank you to so much to the

[1:30:48] timers it's a difficult job and we do appreciate it so um hope we made it feel

[1:30:54] a little bit fairer um by giving everybody a little more time um so here

[1:31:00] we go thank you candidates for participating in this forum and for your willingness to part participate in the

[1:31:06] doc uh Democratic process for running for office um and loving your communities enough to do it thank you to

[1:31:12] the city of Bloomington for technical for the technical expertise and the use of the um council chambers thank you to

[1:31:18] the League of Women Voters Bloomington for supporting this forum thank you to tonight's V this evening's volunteers

[1:31:25] this forum has been video recorded in its entirety and can be viewed unedited

[1:31:30] on YouTube uh links will be posted on the city of Bloomington website and on the legal Women Voters Bloomington

[1:31:37] websites it will also be rebc on Bloomington cable TV until election day

[1:31:44] um welcome and thank you to the Future online and cable TV

[1:31:49] audiences um one quick thing about voting um on the November ballot

[1:31:55] Minnesota voters will be asked to reauthorize or end a constitutional amendment allocating 40% of State

[1:32:03] Lottery proceeds to the environment the environment and nature or natural

[1:32:08] resources trust fund over 50% of the voters must vote Yes to approve

[1:32:14] constitutional protections or Pro the to approve constitutional protection of the system leaving the question blank counts

[1:32:22] as a no vote so please be sure to look for the amendment and vote and again leaving the

[1:32:29] question blank counts as a no vote remember to vote on or before Tuesday

[1:32:34] November 5th uh early voting starts uh on Friday the 20th for information about

[1:32:40] registering to vote voting early or voting in person visit the Minnesota secret Secretary of State's website

[1:32:48] www.mn votes.gov audience you are invited to visit inform Al with the

[1:32:54] candidates and League members immediately following this forum this concludes tonight's Forum audience you

[1:33:00] may applaud the candidates

[1:33:06] [Music]