Legislators Dahms and Torkelson give updates at Town Hall meeting

Approximately two dozen residents and community members attended last Tuesday’s Town Hall meeting to  hear from State Senator Gary Dahms (R – Redwood Falls) and State Representative Paul Torkelson (R – Hanska). 

Paul Torkelson opened the meeting discussing the upcoming legislative session which will begin on February 17. He explained that they did the budget last year and the budget is in place. “There may or may not be a supplemental budget presented  by the governor,” said Torkelson adding, “It’s not for sure. We do have a small surplus in place right now, but when you look out to the next biennium, we have a deficit. So I don’t think there’ll be an urge to do a lot of additional spending, although there may be some particular items that need to be adjusted.” 

He further explained that this is the year they typically do a bonding bill and he feels that it’s likely that they will do a bonding bill this year. 

“We did one last year, but it was a reflection of them not having one the year before. Last year’s bill was focused mostly on infrastructure, roads, bridges, wastewater, drinking water, the sorts of things that I think bond is appropriate use for,” said Torkelson. 

He also touched on Governor Walz’s decision to withdraw from the race for governor. 

“My advice is to stay tuned, because it’s going to create a lot of lane changing and shuffling among the Democrats. As you may know, we do have about 12 Republications that have shown an interest in the governor’s race, so it’d be an interesting year in that respect.”

He then introduced Senator Gary Dahms who spoke about the murder of Rep. Melissa Hortman and her husband, Mark Hortman, along with the shooting of Minnesota State Senator John Hoffman and his wife Yvette Hoffman. Dahms called the shootings really, really unfortunate and that Hortman worked hard in the legislature. 

Dahms spoke on the fraud that has been discovered. “The estimates right now are in that nine million dollar area and that is very serious money.” He continued saying, “I think it’s 14 different areas now that are being investigated. Fortunately, the federal government has come in and are doing a lot of the investigations because, in many cases,  they have money that they have given the state of Minnesota in those areas. 

He then gave an example saying “ for instance, in Medicaid, about 35% of the Medicaid that’s given out in Minnesota comes from the federal government. So if there’s fraud found in Medicaid, then the state of Minnesota is responsible to pay it back. So if we got a million dollars in Medicaid fraud, we’d be responsible to pay 35% of that back.” He did clarify that he doesn’t know how much they’re looking at to be in the Medicaid area, that it was an example. 

“There are so many ways that people can find to fraudulently get money from the state of Minnesota it is really unfortunate,” Dahms said adding, “ I think right now, we rank the number one in the United States for fraud, and that’s really not the banner we want to be waving. So we’ve got a lot of work to do on that.”

Dahms continued explaining that they’ve begun working on it. “The House has a fraud committee and we have a fraud committee. I think the House’s fraud committee is much more active than what ours is, but things are moving along.”

The legislators then opened with the meeting for questions addressing the impact of federal spending on state budgets and the challenges of managing new programs like Minnesota Paid Leave Act. Concerns about property taxes, daycare fraud and more. The meeting concluded with a discussion on local road safety issues and the importance of staying informed.