Marcia Avner

As I told the Sunshine dog while she rolled in the mushy snow this morning, we’re seven weeks into the legislative session with little movement yet on raising the revenues we need to make essential investments in Minnesota’s future.

This week Dr. Frank Cerra,Senior V.P. for Health Sciences and McKnight Presidential Leadership Chair at the U of M’s Academic Health Center, (and an engaging witness!) addressed the House Government Operations, Reform, Technology and Elections Committee on the need for funding biomedical science research. His case: Minnesota can choose to continue to be a national leader and maintain a competitive advantage in this field, or Minnesota can become “a fly-by state.”

Congressman Jim Oberstar (DFL) from Minnesota’s 8th Congressional District, Chair of the House Transportation Committee, told Minnesota legislators that if they don’t raise the gas tax, don’t come up with the revenues needed to meet the match required for federal funding, even he couldn’t help get transportation and transit funding for MN.

It isn’t just nonprofits sounding the call for investments that are essential to our state’s present and future well-being. The varied messengers are quite clear. We can be a fly-by/drive-around state or we can be a national leader. Minnesota has exciting possibilities that we will miss if we don’t act on the reality that taxes allow for investments that are the only way we really grow, hold our competitive economic position, and ensure that people do well in MN.

Nonprofits and other community members need to move quickly to tell legislators that we want the investments that make us strong and help us achieve a good quality of life for everyone. If we need to raise revenues, this is the time to do it. People voted for getting things done, and you get what you pay for!