I think there's a lot that we can all be proud of in Minnesota as one of their some debate as to not Alaska so as a divided legislature but we like to think of ourselves as the only state in the country that currently has a divided legislature and in these very partisan times that is challenging but we found a way to craft a budget that works for most Minnesotans which I think we can all be proud of we show the country that it can be done.

I'm sort of a half-full optimistic kind of a person and I left the session feeling that way too there are a lot of really good people on both sides of the aisle trying to do the right thing for our state and that was really heartening to me.

As a physician it's really important to me that people get the health care that they need so figuring out how we can get everyone access and make it affordable is the ultimate challenge for our state and for our country right now and addressing the disparities that exist in healthcare in our country is excuse me in our state specifically is a big challenge that we have to take on because that's the future of our state and if we care about Minnesota we got to tackle that.

The drug price transparency Act was is one way of trying to figure out why the cost of prescription medications is so high right now... the idea of the bill is to ask the pharmaceutical companies to explain their pricing so for drugs that come on market at a very high price or drugs that have been on the market or are newly acquired and increase exponentially over 12 and 24 month period we're asking those companies to report to the health commissioner why... this is not to demonize pharmaceutical companies they've done many great things for many of us and we need them but they've also made a lot of money in their industry.

There's a devastating example of Alex Smith this young man who died 26 years old because he was rationing his insulin because he couldn't afford it that shouldn't happen in Minnesota.

I have so much respect for Chris Eaton who's a senator who lost a daughter to this epidemic and Dave Baker representative who the Sun - this epidemic he's a Republican she's a Democrat and they've worked together for years now trying to find solutions to this problem they are just driven to make sure that other families don't go through what they did.

We were able to craft and imperfect but but a pretty strong build that really does a lot toward prevention and treatment... we lost I believe 422 Minnesotans last year to this epidemic and I want to see that number that's all over the state that's just not and that is all over the state.

Education as we all know is the future of our state one of the reasons that we are such a successful state and we're the home to so many Fortune 500 companies is we historically have had such a well-educated workforce companies want to come here and we need them to come here because we want good jobs for our people we need to grow the economy.

Increasing the number of teachers of color I think is an important goal when we're talking about that kid there's a lot of evidence that kids learn best when they are taught by people who look like them and have a similar background so we we have very we have relatively few teachers of color in our state compared to how many kids of color we have that's an opportunity for us to improve.

Health really only about 20% of our health has to do with health care going to the doctor in the hospital 80% of it has to do with the social determinants of health so transportation nutrition pollution the environment all those things factored in and that's true for education too if you don't have stable housing and a hot meal it's pretty hard to learn.

Our roads are in serious disrepair I think we've got a C and a D on our roads and bridges and to the point where they've determined that Minnesotans on average spend about $1,000 a year repairing the damage that our roads have done to their cars so we're kind of losing money in the end either way.

I think a transitional fix is to increase the gas tax I did favor that and I think there needs to be a way to make it somewhat more progressive because it can be a regressive tax so there has to be a way to give lower-income people a break on that but in general if you use our roads you should pay for our roads I think.

If we supposed to do that if we scheduled more regular repair and perhaps look for alternative alternate funding sources it's tricky we have a lot of needs in our state and we're a relatively high tech state and we need to keep a balance there I think part of the reason the Minnesota is such a great place to live and work is because we invest in our state but we don't want our taxes to get so high that we scare people away.

Women and all people are not discriminated on the basis of gender and so the bill in the house asked to put it on the ballot in Minnesota that did not pass the Senate so it won't be on the ballot but we'll try to to come at it again next time I trust the people of Minnesota and I think it's a reasonable question to to place.

I think rank-choice voting is a real opportunity for us the way it works is if people if one candidate doesn't get more than 50% of the vote it automatically goes to a factor in the other choices so the voter will rank their top three candidates for example so the effect of this is to have candidates campaign to everyone and not to a smaller percentage of the electorate it tends to make elections more civil there's less attacking there's less negative advertising.

This bill just allowed communities to decide whether or not they wanted to do rank-choice voting this is not a statewide initiative so I think it's a great way for communities to try it out and I think there's real potential for improving our democracy with it.

The climate crisis is really it's sort of become a cliche expression but it is the existential threat that we face it's an emergency and so we have to act.

It's actually interesting because they've learned that wind has now become cheaper than coal and so from just a pure business standpoint they want to do wind energy because it's cheaper for them and clearly it's better for the environment.

There's some really exciting research that's being done where they're used they're capturing carbon from the atmosphere and recycling it to power things I know it so it's important that we invest in those areas because we're we're close to teetering to a point of no return.

I actually authored a bill to increase the fee on watercraft which was five dollars for three years per boat which seemed pretty low to me and has been that since about 1986 so I proposed raising that so that we could raise revenue to to prevent and treat the spread of aquatic invasive species so I proposed $20 over three years actually and wait with you know compromise in politics we landed on $10.60 for three years.

As we have more precipitation there's more runoff from agriculture from lawns so we have increased pesticides and fertilizers salt and sediment going into our lakes and rivers that create that and then the warming waters with the warming climate creates algae blooms and then the pollution is toxic to aquatic life.

One of the small changes that was made under the Dayton administration that was helpful was creating buffers around farm areas that are next to two waterways too and and that when there are native plants and a variety of plants planted they they create a filter for water and they actually clean it out before it hits it hits the the bodies of water.

I did support those measures Kay they are I actually liked the approach that was taken to just focus on these two bills that have actually majority support all over the state ninety percent of Minnesotans favor universal criminal background checks so there's real consensus on these issues.

The other extreme risk protection orders help law enforcement remove guns from people who are a danger to themselves or others and we've had experience in other states with this and we've got data now that show that it has decreased the risk of suicide particularly suicides one of our major problems with gun violence.

We lost four hundred and almost 50 people last year to gun deaths suicide in Minnesota Minnesota yeah in Minnesota alone so most Minnesotans agree that these are measures that we should be taking.

The best thing we can do is have a healthy educated workforce that's a huge piece and so investing in health and investing in education is a part of that.

The question was posed what would do the most to improve the VIS misen vironment in Minnesota decreased the personal income tax rate decrease the business tax or decreased capital gains I believe the third choice was overwhelmingly it was income tax businesses see that they want to have more of their money in their own individual pockets so that they can make those investments.

The angel tax credit I think is is an important part of attracting new businesses to our state and I think that's a that's an innovative way to that does what it creates a tax credit for people who invest in new tech there's sort of a list of startups that are supported this way.

It shouldn't come down to three people making the final decisions in the end the way did I think we'd all like to see more transparency we'd like to see those negotiations happen in a more public way.

There were some chairs of conference committees who just refused to participate and I guess I don't think that's the way it should be I think there maybe should be some requirement and maybe if you don't show up to conference committee you don't get to vote.

The joke was there's no such thing as a special session anymore because they're all special because we seem to almost always have a special session now and that that's a problem that's not that's not what our Constitution calls for we should be able to get the work done in the time allotted.