called party purpose of this forum and so you can get to know the candidates and hear what their views are the following candidates have accepted our invitation starting on my left our thank you mary and thank you do the league and of course everyone coming out here and watching and sacrificing not watching the twins to play at the yankees tonight but let me give a little background on myself real i am a member of the curriculum advisory committee for modern media i'm also now on the engineering advisory committee i think that's a strong and important program i also him working with the modern media area green initiative where we're looking at identifying and implementing green and renewable technologies for modern media in the surrounding communities  i think that education is critical i'm supported by the education minnesota it is critical for our future and for a children's future if you understand the nature of the world in the in the global climate of competitive does it's it's critical that our kids get the best education possible and we have to avoid at all costs any further cuts th and it's kind of special for me because i'm a long way of modern me and a class of seventy four all four of my kids graduated from the size hall so all i said in this room many many times i've been with marriage my wife for over thirty years and we've literally been i've grew up in pine springs which is just south of miami so i mean i've been around this area my entire life now i've also served in the united states air force so when it comes to things said morris where i feel with stuff it means i know what it means to be committed so trying to defend the ideas that we all believe by and somehow that seem to have gotten missed part of the problem is we've got a got a problem right now where we are not controlled by the people who are controlled by the political parties and the special interests that has to stop it spoiler but let's get something straight here whether a person runs for office whether they will win or lose it's up to each candidate i include myself but they put forth the most compelling point that they are the best person to represent the electorate of this district i believe i am that person thank you very much but my thank you mary and thank you very much  coming out to tonight's event and to the league for hosting it i believe it's very important for voters to understand who their candidates are and what those candidates stand for i'm becky i was born and raised in minnesota i live in grant with my husband john we've been married about twenty one years and we have an eleven year old son who is in sixth grade at the middle school here and we also have a twenty month old golden retrievers lab mix puppy named ozzie we are members of st andrew lutheran church just across the parking lot i serve on the environmental stewardship team there and have been one of the crew members for habitat for humanity i also volunteer at school w scouts and i'm also a member of the mana me die area green initiative and i'm a member of the league of women voters i worked at best buy for about sixteen years mostly in advertising and marketing operations i was responsible for concept of element process improvement and managing a seven million dollars budget i'm currently working on a master's degree in public affairs at the humphrey institute i've knocked on thousands of doors since may and i've heard repeatedly that people are very frustrated with the extreme partisanship at the capitol our current senator has one of the most extreme voting records in the senate he's often one of a small minority voting no on legislation after his twelve years in government our district deserves more balanced representation i use evidence not ideology to make decisions i bring energy and commitment to everything i do whether it's competing as a as a big ten athlete at the u of m of working in a fast paced environment at best buy force volunteering in my community serving as your state senator will be no different it's time to send a fresh voice to the capitol and put good ideas to work for minnesota thank you and we have  here thank you first for the privilege of representing us in the minnesota senate and it has been a privilege and i also think all of you for coming out tonight  current senator here in fifty two was my first term and served four terms in the house of representatives prior to being elected to the senate i own a real estate appraisal firm and i'm a licensed real estate learned a lot this session being in going from the house to the senate the senate was much it's much smaller and you get more of an effort to to work with people and get to know so it's a productive session and i look forward to may two a good discussion of where we're headed in the next two years so thank you very much informed that the audio for the television dean's opening statement could not be heard i offered him the opportunity to his opening statement and he has passed on that opportunity he'd like to have more questions so we will get right to the questions for the questions the candidates will each have one minute to answer and following all the answers we will have an opportunity for rebuttal of thirty seconds and you can continue to hand in your questions archer's david i'll come and pick it up we're going to rotate the order so i'll just call on whoever's turn it is to speak and i'll try to keep track of all of that and so the first question we're going to start with becky seek m and then the other two senate candidates and we'll go to the house candidates what is your experience in building consensus among people of differing views and if elected will you work across the aisle to get things done thank you working at best buy gave me ample opportunity to build consensus especially across departments i was as i mentioned in advertising i opportunity as i said for census building and i would definitely work across the aisle i am an independent thinker i've been an independent voter in the past i have not voted straight party ticket and i think our challenges are too big this year and  in future years to not be working together i think then comes raving end of year well i think first of all and in my employment being self employed i have the have to manage people and direct them and work between the clients so working with other people comes pretty naturally to me with regard to in the senate we were able to do some things by working in a bipartisan manner well i happen to drive a truck or most of the day i mean a number of different people and part of what i've just learned over the years is you have to listen to  people have to listen to what they're saying you can't just come to an automatic decision and have a hard granite because sometimes between one side and the other you're actually gonna find the honest answer than plies in real life it certainly ou know a successful outcome a lot of what is required is just a negotiating skill i think to have that it's important to see where you can harmonize and where you can pull out a win win situation and i've always strived to do that and in my work if their corporate level is well and also i can say that my lenses are not tainted by any ideology one way or the other i come at things straightforward way in a straightforward way and logically and i think part of that as my training as a scientist you have to do that you have to be objective then you work at a time thank  is that working working mason to agree on things on a job site particularly when you have to get a building completed on a specific date at a specific time and that transferring that skill and that background of the legislature is really served me pretty well i found that people are really really tired of lawsuits they are tired of overrides their tour tired of vetoes and i'm very proud that the three major bills that have negotiated in the two thousand and eight health care bill the two thousand and ten low income health care bill in the year in session this year that we came together republicans and democrats with bills that the governor could sign and in the challenging months and years ahead that is going to be even more necessary because things are getting tougher not better i think that's what people are expecting us to do and i hope to have the ability in the honor to do that again thank you then are there any re that will go ahead on the next question which is a two part question but you didn't have enough to do in one minute how our day is what do you think is the most effective method of fostering job growth and what ideas do you have to jumpstart the economy and minnesota and we will start this with matt dean thank you minnesota really needs to focus on keeping the jobs that we have in minnesota here and not sending them to code ourselves korea and we want to import jobs from around the world and around the country and to do that we need to spur economic growth we need to make sure that when marvin windows wants to employ new people they're not going to solve the coda that's a minnesota miracle if three am wants to build another plant and they choose to build it here in minnesota that's america we want to foster those miracles moving forward we have good paying jobs that can support health care right here in minnesota to do that we need to lower the corporate income tax which makes minnesota the the seventh worst place to do business in any state in the country we want to be in the top ten not the bottom ten in job friendliness we need to start that at the legislature but we've got to have capital flowing to markets so that entrepreneurs in the free market system can bring people here and keep them here thank you then stand hopkinson yes  clearly one thing is near and dear to my heart is we want to have in it the business environment that is conducive to businesses staying here when we invest in education it's critical that the inventors and entrepreneurs that come down the road are able to and desire to stay in minnesota so we want to have the right mixture of taxes tax incentives but also startups need capital and i think this requires a good working relationship between the private and public sector so we can get the right amount of money in the home and the capital in the investments flowing so we can move these businesses ahead so they want to stay here in general we want to keep minnesota a great place to realize it's very simple now for a company to move from one state to another and operate you know with the internet the communication systems that we have i think the reason employers like to be here is road construction ok but that's just a short term fix the long term fix this making sure we have an educated workforce that doesn't mean getting in the way doesn't it means eliminating the roadblocks so if someone wants education they're going to be able to get it you are not going to be able to solve this issue just by having a wal mart we need an educated workforce but the same time we also have to go either way with removing some of the regulations not all of them but the purpose of governments provide that fair playing field thank you finally becki see meyer thank you well as several people have mentioned here we definitely need to be helping small businesses because they are the place where most jobs are created not only in minnesota but across the country one of the things that we can do to help them is to eliminate the sales tax that they pay on capital equipment purchases and  another big thing is to make sure that we're keeping jobs in minnesota we need to close these loopholes that these companies have to take our jobs out of state and overseas and we need to reward companies who are going to contract with local businesses and the other thing that we can do is to create some smart bonding bills and do some investment we have a tremendous opportunity to create a renewable energy economy we have the maintenance and construction projects that need to be done that will provide provide a long term public benefit we've got research that should be done at our colleges and universities and we need to sorry i lost my train  it thank you thank you then are there any rebuttal on this question i have one i guess mr dean mentioned that it's the seventh worst place to do business in the country but i guess i have a hard time believing that it sounds like a talking point to me because we have twenty five hundred fortune fortune five hundred companies in minnesota as ray mentioned they work they stay here because of  honest and hardworking workforce but also because of the quality of life here and because of the educated workforce that we have and that quality comes at a price the study that that would indicate that that is the case is a rich state poor state study that was published is published every year and would it looks at a number of factors not just taxes but also burdens on on employers that they have across the state says how if you're going to choose pick one out of fifty states where would you pick and how would we rank them and that's that's the indicators it's not just taxes but it's onery of the situations that employers make when they try to decide where they're going to build ask yourself why is three m why is marvin windows why are these place why are these manufacturers building outside of minnesota and john mccallum four years really the fundamental problem we have with the private sector people are not going to get new jobs when their employers are uncertain about our current economic circumstance and until we solidify that u b c look imagine if you have a job to expect  or over time i know why certainly but the same time we have to solidify our economic problems as soon as possible any further rebuttals they go on the third question and this will begin with the senate candidates john mccallum in your opinion what are the most important educational challenges in minnesota how would you try to solve such challenges with education let's sort out the pram and if a child does not know how to read how to write how to do math by the third grade and have those fundamentals set in stone we are doing them we are dooming them to a life of failure because they can't progress further than the other part is we wait too long before we actually take corrective action with a child in school we wait whether it's the end of the porter end of the semester what we all need to do in the education field is shorten it up into one and two weeks eight minutes following the military schooling model which basis is to get two shots now brad if you're in the biggest challenges facing our state right now our funding and funding we have the first whammy comes from the state shift that the school funding shift and the second one is that this state is not living up to its promise when they when they took funding off of property taxes those are the first two challenges that we have another big one that we have is the enormous achievement gap that needs to be closed we need all kids to do  well some of the other things i think that are a challenge are with with the rush to accountability with no child left behind where we are doing too much teaching to the test and we need to make sure that kids are learning how to have different skills rather than just learning how to take good tests i guess i'll stop there thank you and then and here well i think first challenge for educators must be the  inability of the state to keep from micromanaging the schools think we'd be better off a lot if we didn't tell them everything to do may be just general guidelines and secondly i think the big problem is the inequity in the funding that we've been funding is divided up between schools if it's not done in a way that is that credible at least and i kids really need to be prepared we have to be sure that we get everyone graduating i've even proposed the idea that we not allow people to drop out i think that's a throwback to the olden days but everybody needs to be to get the skills to have the high tech jobs of the future so they can get the good jobs and of course be taxpayers and pay revenue  d that will solve many of our problems so that you know the challenges are to get the funding and make sure we put programs in place that prepare our children for the future thank you thank you i don't agree with president obama i know a lot of his policies in the poor guy is not having a very good couple months so i want to kind of give him a shout out for some of the really good reforms that he proposed in the areas of education in particular accountability and really trying to have funding attached to results in our schools and also to his race to the prop top program could have given minnesota between two hundred fifty and five hundred million dollars for schools had we had we decided that we wanted to pursue that and we did commit to an application unfortunately and this brings me to the answer the question the the thing that you run against is road blocks from the people in the institutions that don't want to change and education is one of those areas where we are changing resistant and we're going to have to challenge some of those modes of thinking if we we've got to hold the teachers accountable for the performance of the child before you hold the teacher responsible for that entirety also have to include the amount of participation they have each parent puts into th child's education else but go on to the next question and we'll start with the fifty to be candidates and math dean project the still water bridges need to be replaced since probably very shortly after it was put in and i was door knocking in the cry what area of stillwater a long long time ago and the woman was quizzing me about you know the did i understand this proposal and that proposal and this proposal and when i had satisfied her that i knew everything that there was to know about the bridge she got a newspaper article showing me her deceased husband was appointed to the bridge replacement commission and i forgot what data was but it was a very very yellow piece of newsprint very long time we do need a new bridge we need a solution but we need to keep the existing bridge safe and  that's what senator vanderveer and i have been really pushing we realize that the funding for this bridge needs to be federal first and we need we need that to be come a priority until it does we're not likely to see that in it between now and then we need to keep the existing bridge safe then hopkinson well yeah i'm in favor of putting them in the bridge in i don't see that it will have much of environmental impact we're talking about a footing or two in the water which probably will actually create some habitat and of course any of the emissions from tailpipes will be that much higher off the ground to route the traffic down through stillwater is as a nonstarter it's in speaking with the mayor mayor who risky of stillwater many residents services to go down into their own town because of this sort of destination traffic going from home to work i think that a bridge thoughtfully put in the right exits and entrances up on either end will provide adequate access to stillwater and and support the businesses and i think that in all of it beauty is in the eye of the beholder but you know a lot of bridges are considered landmarks so i don't see that that's a huge issue so i think the bridge going thank you and becky seek mayor thank you but i think thirty years is probably long enough to wait for the bridge  it's not certainly not getting any safer areas as needed to i am concerned about protecting the scenic i'm saying crave river they're protected river way and one of the bigger things is the cost of the project is enormous it's somewhere around six hundred seventy million dollars which is an awful lot of a lot of transportation money going into one project but i think at this point we can't go back and and redo rather the problem actually goes to the people there are sitting here at this table we have people who have been in office on the republican side they've had their shot to try and get it done unfortunately they haven't got it done at the same time my friends on the exact position i wanted to to make that clear and i don't want it we don't want to get into liberal and conservative on everything and i think that it's the bridges we've we've been talking about it for decades if we needed it forty years ago i think it's a pressing issue today i think it's again it's an objective one in this is an example of how i can be objective about these things team has it's it's a bridge that  states we need some federal leadership on this thing we've got enough federal leadership to connect minneapolis and st paul with a billion dollar train that replaces buses that currently function we don't have a functional way to get from many of our from minnesota to wisconsin and back we have a billion dollars for a train from minneapolis and st paul we need some leadership from the federal level to get us some money to get a connection between wisconsin and minnesota and that's that's i think where we need next bottles and then we'll start with the santa candidates this time with gray vanderveer explain why you would or would not support bipartisan commission to carry out redistricting  believe i would support a commission that was truly set up independent and bipartisan to do the redistricting because they don't believe we could do much worse job than budget slater's been doing mission would be put together and what influences that would have as to whether we could really go on a independent commission or whether their recommendations would end up in court and always address this one last night my answer is kind of the same this is actually the job of the legislature and they need to get it done it's that simple whether it's bipartisan independent commission politics thank you i would definitely be in favor of an independent commission depending on how those people were chosen but we need people who understand geography that can make decisions on where the best breaks are in accordance with the population i think we cannot have another a great example of a really badly gerrymandered district is a six district if you look at a map and looks like a boomerang it's it's just ridiculous this time around i hope we can get it right i think an independent commission is the way to go i think taking it out of the legislature would be something we had to give a try if they haven't gotten it done in the past and let somebody else give it a trying and get it right and try to pull and pull the politics out of it it's a numbers game should not be a political game thank you ben hawkinson well if we could set up a board that's truly independent bipartisan it may be difficult but i think possibly we could get involved people  various sectors of society temporary commission because it is hotly debated these these districts i think though philosophically it probably doesn't make as big a difference this will come out in the wash i think if we can work it out we may want to consider having cities of a certain size have an all inclusive rule so we were not cutting  communities in half or in thirds and so forth thank you matt dean but certainly support any process that is open fair and transparent and that will yield a fail or a fair result we had  among americans in the legislature one in the senate one in the house we won't have any in israel and they're both retiring but if you think about not it's not all of the fairness that we might think about here in washington county and others if you live in a mong community or african american community in minneapolis might be very very important to you the you can vote for somebody who really represents you in your neighborhood in and your community and and i think it's very important to be very very thoughtful about different groups and communities not just about geography and numbers and moving ahead so that process doesn't need to be very very thoughtful but it also open and transparent however we need to do that i don't think most people care if we do it in the legislature or through a commission as long as it's open and transparent fair about solution the state of minnesota is going broke we are really down in the cloth we've been peed on our coach questions and we have really tried to cut as much as we can we punted as much as we can with shifts and a lot of that is flowing down to the counties and also to the cities how we distribute money to cities for local government aid is not fair particularly to areas in the suburbs i would support distributing those funds instead of having the legislature decide which cities and counties to have that go to and have them and have us decide you know what what should be purchased and to the proportion that we need to purchase for small towns really let local officials make those decisions so with that that those funds could be blocked granted to county commissioners and then have them decide how they want to spend the money their elected officials and they can probably make better spending decisions and we can at the state so that's one idea that's been proposed that i think is one worth considering you then talk and said well we have to stop playing games we the taxpayers play it pay the taxes whether there are state taxes  local property taxes or federal taxes so if the state wants to play a shell game and shift burden onto local municipalities and an unfunded way which we still have to pick up the tab  that we pick it up in a sort of regressive way because property taxes are not very selective you regardless of who owns the property of pay that tax and that has no bearing on your income so we have to i think we really have to rethink how we're what our budget is and what we want to do if we want to have education then we should pay for it not and not do a shell game of moving things around and putting on more burdens to to this  local municipalities if you down the column well this actually goes back to the founding of our state revenue stream going ok we're dependent upon and income tax it's clear that the the problem is those cities have cut to the bone they're well into reserves there is no more it's not just the cities it's a school district it's the counties the state basically has to get the budget and act correct down the talent ok becky seek mayor thank you definitely the cuts to that and aid to the to the cities and counties is a big problem because so many of the services that counties provide are mandated by the state the county still need to provide those services whether the state gives them the money to perform those services or not as stan mentioned that we results in the only way the counties can raise revenue is to raise your property property taxes  property taxes are a very regressive form of taxation they hit small businesses especially hard and people on fixed incomes so that's definitely need to need to be addressed thank you from the state so while most of us in the suburban parts of the metro it very little or none in the state so all the services of these cities provide around the property tax so one we need to look at play out and determine whether we can get the system fair and then you know whether we're going to continue to do it  well new revenue and definitely need to be on the table because our budget hole is so large that i don't we can't cut our way out and we can't tax our way out so we are going to have to have new revenue on the table and i think people who try to tell you that we can do it all through cuts are either sharing fairy tales or wishful thinking there's that's just five point eight billion dollars is an awfully big number i think we need to take a look at at income taxes and add and tax fairness because currently when you group all taxes together the tax burden on the middle class and the lower income people is higher especially the middle class is higher than people in the upper income bracket when you include state and local taxes so that's something that stuff going to need to be addressed so i guess i would start with tax fairness thank you brae vanderveer well that is a massive amount of money to be sure it's about twelve hundred dollars somewhere in there for every man woman and child in the street and we're going to attempt to resolve the through taxation and over only at the first question that comes to mind is how much will be enough when i've been out there proposing his we have a much greater reliance on the sales tax to reduce the property tax reduce the income tax because a sales tax and i know tom morris said drop it down below seven i say hey go ahead bump it to ten if a gnat's everything else down and that's actually what we're high see because it's all have be transparent you can't do it through cuts alone we've cut in cut and cut we laid off teachers right in the last we left some of our most vulnerable citizens without health care that is not that is not an answer the we're going to have to look at additional revenue in one way the thing i would promise that i would work to do that to as fairly as possible but the end of the day we recognize that all of us are grownups we're going to have to step up to the plate it's better that we do with our children our grandchildren this is something we can and must do as long as it's implemented fairly everybody has a little skin in the game i think we can be all right that the thing we should focus on is just around the corner we have one of the greatest economic opportunities presented to us in terms of moving ourselves in the new technology and that's what i've worked for  well it is true that if we look at our current budget forecast center and our obligations that we put in front of ourselves we do have a five and a half billion dollar budget deficit but if you look at raw facts we spent thirty billion dollars and then that will last two years if we look ahead we've got revenues coming in of about thirty two billion that's about seven percent increase so we will spend in the next by any i'm seven percent more than we did in the last by any i'm without tax increases and so what tom emira said is well what if we spent six hundred million dollars more in k twelve and we spent about a half a billion dollars more in h h s and we worked in some of the other areas to try to live within our means most people think that that is in the realm of reality and that is we're not just minnesota is but all states are states like california which is currently wrestling this week if you look in your newspapers you'll see that they're they're addressing this i would ask the folks up here if they if they support  you know tom members plan if they support mark dayton supplant or if they support tom horner's plan because there's only one that balances are there any re well tom hammers plan doesn't come close to balancing the budget which is we're we're in a hard place in unfortunately the shortfall of some federal money it may get a little incrementally worse in the years ahead so we're going to have to be realistic about it if we can find places to cut further that's fine but it's also a question of timing the further cuts are going to be much more difficult to come by and probably won't be able to be had quickly thank you well the fact of the matter is that mark dayton plan is a billion and a half dollars short and it will result in minnesota being the highest taxed state in the country tom horner's plan is two point eight billion dollars short and they have no proposal to explain to us minnesotans how they explain how they plan to close that gap between know in the election and i think it's up to all of us to really have a thoughtful discussion about where this money is going to come from and if they are not going to increase those taxes what are they years part of the problem with the shortfall is we started two years ago with a three billion dollars shortfall it's now gone six billion dollars sure sounds like a trend to me and part of when i'm looking at is good dumped it's getting dumped on the school districts it's getting dumped on the cities it's been dumped on the counties and if we go down the the tax cut in road take a wild guess what's going to happen you will see your property taxes what have you done and what will you do to support renewable energy initiatives if you look at how we spend money in the state of minnesota i spend a lot of time on the bonding committee so we travel all around the country and all around minnesota and look at our main skew buildings in our our buildings through all of the jails and in all our public buildings and we do a very very good job of implementing cost savings within construction techniques and if you look at the morris campus for example they generate about half of their energy through wind and increasingly now through bio mass they want to move to one hundred percent of their electrical usage at the college through alternative energy but one of the one of my friends on the other side of doubt asked probably the best question which is if you if we're generating this much greenhouse gas and this muster is through fossil fuels and this much is certain renewables we want to close the gap isn't it a lot cheaper to lower the amount of energy that you use through insulation and through a lot of boring things than it is to increase the renewables and the answer is yes and so i've been see the movement to renewables as i mentioned as a real key to our future and our economic well being we have the opportunity now to not only install solar panels and  in windmills but to design and manufacture that equipment here design and manufacture photovoltaics the same with biotechnology the nano technology robotics and what have you we have to bring manufacturing back to minnesota and part of that is going to be this renewable have high speed rail to duluth and chicago more light rail and buses run on in all cells and hydrogen mandate for utilities those come from renewables because it puts a challenge in front of them that if we achieve those provides some stability and  security for our economy and their industry and jobs i think you know we need to look a little closer at what we're calling renewable i was surprised to learn that the sun wasn't considered truly reputed purely renewable source sold i think some of us have different ideas as to what might be renewable and there's been some politics fried into it so that you know the versus metro on some of that competitiveness but overall i think it's a good move forward i think we need to have a sound mix which should include nuclear and all  thinking on this big massive scale and i think where the real solutions kind of happiness once we can get whether it's solar wind and all those or not be the two real primaries once we can actually get those part is solar and wind are also supplemental they are not a constant you don't want to have a medical procedure using solar or wind energy specially if it's about eleven o'clock at night because your odds are not thank you as a member of the area green initiative i've been proud to support a local community when turman project right here the installation would take place just up the hill from where we are sitting i helped raise about forty thousand dollars in individual contributions towards this project the energy would go to use to help the schools there would also be an anemometer placed on the top of the wind turbine that would measure wind speed and other data that can be used at the high school and at that building a renewable energy economy is something that is very important we are behind other midwestern states in this endeavor it's important to bring back the engine manufacturing jobs we you know things that that we can't pay of existing health care plans how would you cover their health care needs well the bottom line is i believe we have to figure out a way that we expand m so they each person most owner has at least basic fundamental health care and i know that you would not see this socialized medicine single payer but we've got that right now just take a look of your v a in the united states military service that space fleet government run health care but the same time you've got to have a healthy healthy workforce because no one's gonna hire someone to secure their job so it goes hand in hand thank you seek my ear i think covering are the most vulnerable in our society is definitely something that we need to do as a state i am a proponent of doing a real honest to goodness  independent study on what it would look like to have a single payer system let's you know have some real honest discussion about that and see if that's something that we can do if that's financially feasible or not so we can move on from that discussion if it's not financially feasible we need to make sure that we are controlling costs by not sending people to the emergency room for health care that's the most expensive place to get health care especially on things that if they would have been caught sooner and someone could afford to go to the doctor it would cost a lot less money so we definitely need to find a way to cover all minnesotans men women children married unmarried working non working and i guess that's about i think there's no question that health care is a real concern for people because that should be it most of us realize that if we get certain loser jobs we've got a serious problem very serious and  on the other hand if people are sick anywhere in the world we have all the money in the world they come here for health care but having the best health care and not being able to access it doesn't do you much good so we need to look at health care all over again i have legislation to propose a plan to provide coverage that to everybody but they would purchase it themselves or if it would be means tested and it would be covered by you know the other programs but we're out of time then hakan said well it's a complicated issue and i think it is going to require coordination and cooperation between states and the federal government we we have a nucleus of an answer here in minnesota because people don't realize our insurance companies blue cross blue shield and health partners and so forth operate on a not for profit basis and they do so very effectively and they do compete so i'd like to see that integrated of that concept looked at when we get  the health care reform act coming in into it's into existence it's been kind of phased in and i should point out that that has been mischaracterized as a takeover of a government takeover of health care and nothing could be further from the truth so it's better that we do it straight out right out directly thank you matt bean thank you folks who are currently accessing health care through the general systems medical care program in minnesota make about eight thousand dollars a year and less the vast majority of them have persistent mental illness chemical addiction and chronic illness at the same time and they are there care is very expensive and they're they're very hard patients to to care for we've got four metro hospitals that are charting a new path on ordinated care to try to get them out of the ars and to try to get them to come to their clinics and to get coordinated care the goal for low income safety net health care should be to get people who are sick and unproductive well and productive again a lot of times that means chemical and mental health and simply turning that over to the federal government through the medicaid system will just chuck them out of the clinics and back into the ers and it will take away the coordinated care that these people so desperately need and that's why i'm going to be continue to push coordinated care for particularly low income folks across the well i know we're talking about how we pay for this pay for that but let me get to the real crux of the medical issue i don't want to government bureaucrat determining my health care i don't want to insurance company bureaucrats determining my health here i want my doctor and myself to determine my health care then haakanson that's right in you're not going to have anyone determining your health care other than  doctor and i want to point out that i'm not saying we're going to nestle tuck everybody into medicare i'm saying that minnesota has some good programs where we're putting together incentive programs when it's insurance companies negotiate with the providers so that you know they don't just automatically cave in to giving them annual increases but give them performance space so that they're looked at based on  go to the next question start with matt dean there's a lot of talk about creating jobs there are initiatives out there to support people with disabilities and learning skills to find and keep it job and them to become tax paying citizens in their own communities do you support this community based service system and would you support expanding recent innovation certainly folks with disabilities have a lot to offer in minnesota and we want to make sure that number one that our kids who have are having difficulties in school and who may have disabilities i think by and large we do a great job of making sure that they get the best possible education and so that they can enter the workforce at some point in their life and that's a that's a goal that we have as parents that we want to see your children do well and we want to see make sure that they can enter the workforce we also have a great programs in minnesota to help integrate folks with disabilities and we need to be able to continue to offer the tax incentives to those folks and also the health care incentives that they need to be able to continue to to to hire these folks but really the most important thing in terms of being able to hire folks with disabilities the same as everyone else they need access to employees and to do that they need access to credit and they also need to be able to take a risk in moving forward and right now employers across the state of minnesota are not able to say that they're willing to take a risk to hire a new employee that's what we need to change and haakanson well i'm in favor of any program that helps to increase the number of people that are employed and then we have more tax payers and we have more revenue certainly that's the kind of thing that makes sense because it's an investment in the future and this is money that is well spent so i don't have a real long answer on this but it mirrors kind of what stan is saying in that the more that we can have every person be as self sufficient as possible the better it is for them and the better it is for the rest of us because as paul wellstone said we good teachers lose their jobs what plans do you have to keep teachers in classrooms we have worked very hard to minimize the impact t k twelve oafish the budget shortfalls there have been no direct cuts to the heart of the budget because most of us so that we demand more and to work our way through this and we will work our way through it the people in minnesota are hard workers and creative and we've gone through hard times before but we don't want to as we struggle through here have you large group of kids that are behind or did not have the same opportunities that everyone else had so we've worked very hard to try and do that the state is very short of money and it was a difficult decision but  short change all of us and you can put whatever kind of pretty picture of bob hope and all the taxes while he will just shift to shift all the money all we can raise taxes where people can afford to live here anymore the bottom line  we actually have a teacher shortage and we have we've got a number of them unemployed we have to look at the funding mechanism to put those teachers to work and yeah i'm biased i happen to think the modern me they teach some of the best in the state becky c meyer first of all i'd like to think that high school student print coming i think it's awesome that you came tonight and that you are engaged i'm a big proponent of civic engagement so good for you secondly i think education is definitely one of my top priorities because a quality well funded education is the best thing that we can give our kids and to give our future with the state  i've said a couple times before tonight the most important thing that we can do to keep schools from having to continue to cut teachers and cut curriculum and have these enormous class sizes is we've got to make sure that we're properly funding education we've got to stop doing school payment chips and we've got to make sure that the state lives up to its commitment of full funding thank you then haakanson well as i said in my opening remarks education is very important to me i know the critical importance of the i've said it for the soothing if we look at a world competitive market our children have to have the best education there is just cannot be any further cuts in that area in fact we're going to have to build back and hired back some of these teachers because we need in stillwater i understand that there are classrooms of gandu over forty students per teacher that's that's not acceptable so again if push comes to serve if we have to dig a little bit deeper as long as we can do this through the pain reasonably fairly  k we just cannot afford to step back any further on education thank you back dean thanks for the question it's a very very good one and education is a priority in the state of minnesota and almost half of our state budget goes towards education and as we at the capitol grapple with trying to properly fund our schools we sometimes hit roadblocks and i'm going to say something that's a just a little tiny bit controversial education minnesota's the biggest funder of political contributions at the capital they also get in the way of suburban schools and i hear for that from your teachers i hear that when they opposed teach to the top which cut as i said two hundred  fifty million dollars in the state of minnesota from the federal government i hear that when they oppose when they push a statewide teacher's health program that will hurt your teachers and cut money from the school district and i opposed it when the the head of the union actually sat at the head of our committee table not at the testifiers table but at the committee table and intimidated legislators in the state of minnesota i think that's wrong and it's not fair to students in this district and people like me and others are and parents are starting and teachers are starting to say that's enough haakanson well i think you know my experience with education minnesota is that they're looking out for the students best interest it's  is it's it of the things that have happened to education are really untenable the cannot we cannot afford to cut any more teachers i know them to be a good organization is working hard to make sure that our our kids get the best respect i don't see one i don't that related to a child's education what it was about was for the members fairness i understand events the job of the union but you've also got to remember what you're actually working for the that it is a very difficult environment to work in and we need to support teachers but when the proof they push things that really hurt my district my kids my teachers and my area i need to first but the number of counties be reduced for greater efficiency have a service delivery and why don't we just go right down the line on this question yes or no possibility yes the column can't give a yes or no to that because my view there would be up to each individual county i agree with the comment about sharing services and making things more efficient but i believe that that's that's not a yes or no question and needs more thoughtful consideration re vanderveer i believe it would be up to the r in general sense yes i don't have a problem thank you see fire i agree with stan i'm not a big fan of expanding gambling and i'm also not a fan of the current proposal but i would be willing to consider it if it if the money wasn't going to pay for essential services because i think we can do better than that as a state fanfare i thank you again for the pervert privilege of representing us in the minnesota legislature really has been an honor and i believe that what we have coming up in the next two years or four years or oh never mind it takes for us to work through this is going to be a challenge that in our generation i don't believe any of us has seen i have never spent in a situation where the economy is like this and it it appears to be there appears to be no quick expansion going on and no easy way out so whoever goes down to the legislature is whether they like it or not going to have to work together with everybody to accomplish what needs to be done and we need to balance our budget we need to fulfill our obligations but the government has and we need to do it in a way that is still an official and respectable to the people minnesota and the taxpayers so i think well i'm not looking forward to the hard part of  reexamine what we expect from government because if it's going to be all things to all people and it's probably going to consume all things all the people so you know we need to think clearly define what we want government to do and what its role and then it down to the business of making it do it in a way that we can afford and still be competitive jobs growth of the country you thank you for the opportunity to be here tonight and as you can see you have some clear choices in your candidates for state senate i'm the only candidate in this race who's been out knocking on doors across the district i've knocked on thousands of doors since may and asking you what your priorities are and i've heard a mouthful an earful i should say you told me that you're tired of partisanship you are tired of extreme views you're concerned about jobs you're concerned about education you're concerned about small business you want fiscal responsibility and you want a balanced approach to solving our state's budget issues i share your concerns i hear what you're saying and those will be my priorities as well at the state capitol i will bring my energy my experience and my roll up your sleeves work ethic to the capital to put good ideas to work regardless of which side of the aisle those ideas come from our challenges are too great to expect anything less i'm becky seek meyer and i'm working hard to earn your vote in november you can learn more about my campaign online at w w w dot becky for senate dot com thank you very much for coming tonight and have a great and you can't beat the innovation when you're handcuffed by no no tax pledge is by be holding to special interest tax because those are basically painting you into a corner and you can't get out of that corner but even more importantly it's about leadership now here tonight you've heard a lot of buck passing on for free by the people who are currently only known as so it's all someone else's fault by god isn't a time we had somebody who got elected who said things are screwed up it's my responsibility that's my pledge as your state senator whether goes right or wrong i will be the one responsible and with that my name's senate district fifty two for senate i would appreciate your vote and support thank you you those are your three candidates for senate and district fifty two and now our two i have a knowledge of law and science and this is something i can bring to the legislature i think it's important because we know that so many laws are impacted in affected by scientific questions also as i i'll pledge to approach problems in a straightforward honest manner without ideology tainting me one way or the other i also have a knowledge of businesses large and small and i know what's needed especially for entrepreneurs for them to start their business and to grow and prosper and i would work hard at the legislature to make sure we have the best environment possible for them it would be tragic if we make the needed investments in education as we should but only to have someone down the road start i want to come up with an invention and start a business but take it elsewhere and lose out on that investment as far as the shortfall it's going to be tough and anybody tells you that we're going to cut our way out of that  not being forthcoming but i'll pledge to make sure that whatever happens we do it in a fair and equitable manner so that we can distribute the weight of that and then we forward because i want to end with this we have a great opportunity right around the corner with this new technology i can't stress it enough we have a great opportunity for economic growth the greatest we've sixteen in generations and we want to be sure that minnesota is positioned to get its fair share of all of this new technology in infrastructure and in vehicles and this and energy thank you very much and thank you for coming tonight and thank you to the league for hosting this as by way of my opening for those of you who can now hear it my name is matt dean and this is my serving in the legislature i live in the blue and white house on highway ninety six which is probably going to be called the mars house forever with my lovely wife laura enter three kids marta jack and jean that's all i really needed to say from the beginning of the that's the most important thing in moving forward and really as we move forward  into the next legislative session as we like to governor and move forward we're really really in tough times if you go around and talk to families and you talk to small business owners people are very very worried they're very very angry and they want to see some leadership i've never seen anybody have never seen folks quite as angry as they are right now quite frankly and people feel very much detached they see that the government is operating by one set of rules and probably a political class around them that seem to do better no matter what happens every single year and they see themselves their small business and their family paying more and getting last year after year the anxieties go up the problems go up and the expectations go up for paying for that government political class that needs to and and we need some serious reform brought an opportunity and i agree was standing on this issue we really do have an excellent opportunity moving ahead in really challenging the agencies and the bureaucracies that have really gotten us to where we are today we have an excellent opportunity because we don't have the opportunity to put passing the buck and push it down the road any more we're going to have some difficult difficult decisions no matter who gets elected in the next session and in the next who's going to be in the next governor we're going to have to tackle some problems it's go time we're not alone this in the state of minnesota we need other states but you know what we've got the best state in the country facility thanks to their way of ramsey washington cable commission for the production staff who worked on this production thanks to the league of women voters fallen tears who are archers and timers and cetera the cable replays of this program will be seen on channel sixteen until the election every monday at eight am every wednesday at four thirty pm every friday at twelve thirty pm and then we will be having our candidate forum for candidates in grant city council and also moderate i school board on tuesday october twelfth at seven pm and school board starts at eight fifteen it will be right here to meet i high school in the black box theater from the corner so i'll remember to vote november second tonight