Skip to footer

Officials project $1.9 billion state budget surplus in Minnesota. Nice!

Minnesota is the land of 10,000 lakes, and now it is the land of a $1.9 billion budget surplus.

|
Eric Miller/Reuters
A man carries a child on his shoulders as they search for a Christmas tree to cut at the Rum River Tree Farm in Anoka, Minnesota. The state of Minnesota faces a $1.9 billion budget surplus as it approaches a new fiscal period.

Minnesota state officials are entering the Christmas season with an unusual problem – they are projecting a $1.9 billion state budget surplus for the next year and a half.

It is a sign of a full economic recovery, and deciding what to do with the extra cash should provide a welcome challenge. Few states have faced this type of budget problem in recent years, as many states scrambled to balance their budgets after the Great Recession.

Part of the surplus projected by the state's finance officials Thursday is left over from the last legislative session. Gov. Mark Dayton (D) and the Minnesota legislature left $865 million unspent last year because they could not agree on a transportation plan, reported The Associated Press. Tax revenues that were higher than expected also contributed.

Minnesotans are known for being nice, if a little hard to get close to, say Jerilyn Veldof and Corey Bonnemain a column for the Minneapolis Star Tribune. Perhaps they deserve their good fortune, and now they can decide what nice things they want to do with $1.9 billion. 

First thing on their list is to put some of that money away for a rainy day, or even for one of those snowstorms that the Midwest gets every now and then. Minnesota law requires the government to save one-third of the surplus, according to the AP, but that leaves a not-so-modest $1.2 billion available for spending.

Next spring should be an interesting time in the Minnesota state legislature, as special interest groups are already lining up to take a slice of the newly discovered pie, MPR News reports. 

The governor said he wants to use the surplus for a transportation and construction project, as well as increase spending on early education, Tim Pugmire and Tom Scheck reported for MNPR News. The legislature – both Republicans and Democrats – want a transportation bill and tax cuts. 

"Overall this is very good news for Minnesota in terms of the economy," Governor Dayton told MNPR News.

Because of the surplus, Dayton said Thursday that he is scrapping plans for a gas tax hike that he had planned to pay for road projects, according to the AP.

Lest other states with less rosy budgetary prospects cry foul, consider this: Minnesota is the fourth "least dependent" state in the nation, according to WalletHub, which compiled financial data from 2013. The state has taken care of its own and is a net contributor to other state's citizens, meaning Minnesotans received an average of 54 cents back for every dollar they sent to Washington for federal programs. 

The state has also been reasonably successful at keeping its citizens out of poverty. The state has the eighth-lowest number of people living below the federal poverty line, so less than 10 percent of Minnesotans use the federal food stamp program, John Tierney writes for The Atlantic. From a national point of view, this makes Minnesota a state of net "givers" rather than "takers."

You've read  of  free articles. Subscribe to continue.
Real news can be honest, hopeful, credible, constructive.
What is the Monitor difference? Tackling the tough headlines – with humanity. Listening to sources – with respect. Seeing the story that others are missing by reporting what so often gets overlooked: the values that connect us. That’s Monitor reporting – news that changes how you see the world.
editor@csmonitor.com
Subscribe
Mark Sappenfield
Editor

Dear Reader,

About a year ago, I happened upon this statement about the Monitor in the Harvard Business Review – under the charming heading of “do things that don’t interest you”:

“Many things that end up” being meaningful, writes social scientist Joseph Grenny, “have come from conference workshops, articles, or online videos that began as a chore and ended with an insight. My work in Kenya, for example, was heavily influenced by a Christian Science Monitor article I had forced myself to read 10 years earlier. Sometimes, we call things ‘boring’ simply because they lie outside the box we are currently in.”

If you were to come up with a punchline to a joke about the Monitor, that would probably be it. We’re seen as being global, fair, insightful, and perhaps a bit too earnest. We’re the bran muffin of journalism.

But you know what? We change lives. And I’m going to argue that we change lives precisely because we force open that too-small box that most human beings think they live in.

The Monitor is a peculiar little publication that’s hard for the world to figure out. We’re run by a church, but we’re not only for church members and we’re not about converting people. We’re known as being fair even as the world becomes as polarized as at any time since the newspaper’s founding in 1908.

We have a mission beyond circulation, we want to bridge divides. We’re about kicking down the door of thought everywhere and saying, “You are bigger and more capable than you realize. And we can prove it.”

If you’re looking for bran muffin journalism, you can subscribe to the Monitor for $15. You’ll get the Monitor Weekly magazine, the Monitor Daily email, and unlimited access to CSMonitor.com.

Subscribe to insightful journalism

QR Code to Officials project $1.9 billion state budget surplus in Minnesota. Nice!
Read this article in
https://www.csmonitor.com/USA/USA-Update/2015/1203/Officials-project-1.9-billion-state-budget-surplus-in-Minnesota.-Nice
QR Code to Subscription page
Start your subscription today
https://www.csmonitor.com/subscribe