Two organizations that represent Minnesota cities outside the Twin Cities region hope the Legislature will address several challenges facing their member cities, including stress on Emergency Medical Systems and infrastructure needs.
The Coalition of Greater Minnesota Cities and the League of Minnesota Cities, whose requests often overlap, are asking that funding for those two areas be included in this year’s bonding bill.
Funding for EMS
One of those requests is for around $120 million to help EMS programs function.
“Over the last two years, our communities have been literally ringing alarm bells about the fragility of the system,” Bradley Peterson, CGMC’s executive director, said during a Zoom call about the organization’s legislative priorities. “Reimbursements from Medicare and Medicaid and private insurance are simply not keeping up with the services provided. The fee-for-service model is, frankly, in many of our communities, not sustainable.”
Also on the call was the mayor of Virginia, a city where demand for EMS services is high. The Iron Range town has 38 full-time fire EMS employees that cover around 640 square miles in northeastern Minnesota, mayor Larry Cuffe Jr. said.
A total of $3.8 million from the city’s budget goes toward EMS, though last year the city only recovered around $1 million from Medicare reimbursements. For the last seven years, Cuffe said the city’s EMS program has run at a deficit.
He said the support the state offers to essential services don’t apply to EMS systems. And while the state allows the city to increase taxes on residents for those services, there isn’t overwhelming support for that idea.
“The citizens of Virginia are bearing the cost of the entire coverage,” Cuffe said. “It is imperative that the state acts now because if this is a crisis, that will have life- threatening long-term consequences for our children, for our families and for our communities at large.”
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Other cities are experiencing that same stress. In other areas of the state, EMS systems face staffing shortages, with many people leaving the profession, Bradley said.
“The challenges to the sustainability of our EMS services are mounting. This already fragile system is at a breaking point. EMS closures and consolidations have been on the rise throughout the state since 2001, and without state investment the future will continue to look bleak,” Rick Schultz, the mayor of St. Joseph, said during the CGMC press conference earlier this month.
The coalition has asked for $120 million for EMS systems. Several other associations, like the League of Minnesota Cities, have backed their proposal.
“We’re hearing about services in Greater Minnesota that are contemplating shutting down. In the metro area, we have a lot of frustration around accountability for response times and other issues,” said Anne Finn, the intergovernmental relations director for LMC. “I think the most pressing need here is the need for funding.”
There’s currently an EMS task force in the Legislature. Last week, the task force met and discussed challenges with reimbursement rates. Grant Hauschild, DFL-Hermantown, said at the task force meeting that the problem is uniquely affecting rural areas because in areas that don’t have private EMS systems, the responsibility of paying for licensing falls on cities.
“I do think that this is a distinctly rural challenge … from a financial perspective it feels like the weight is on our rural communities,” he said. “There is certainly a short-term crisis that we need to figure out – my hope is this session – at least for some of those most targeted areas where this is a big crisis.”
Infrastructure and pollution control
Both CGMC and LMC are asking for the bonding bill to support the infrastructure needs of the cities, putting funds aside for municipal water and wastewater infrastructure, roads, bridges, and other projects.
The coalition has asked that the Legislature focus on pollutant mitigation – improving the wastewater systems to prevent pollution. It asked for $299 million to go toward water and wastewater programs.
“It’s a big number, but it’s a big need,” Peterson said.
One potential project that could benefit from that funding is a wastewater treatment plant in Albert Lea. Its city administrator said the aging plant needs around $80 million for upgrades – and wastewater infrastructure grants and loans would help offset the cost.
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The governor’s proposed capital investment plan – which was presented to the capital investment committee last week – sets aside $109 million for water infrastructure loans and grants, with $18 million for new grants to address contaminants in drinking water.
Finn said the LMC advocates for large pots of funding for infrastructure that cities can spend how they choose.
“The bonding bill this year, we understand that there is limited debt capacity for the state so we have to be realistic about how large or not large the bonding bill’s going to be,” she said.
The LMC has 12 legislative priorities this session. Housing is one of the other top ones. The league wants to work on policies that allow cities to address their specific housing needs with more resources, and they want to prevent policies that may create overly broad statewide mandates related to housing.
Focus on the basics
Peterson said the CGMC is urging the Legislature to focus on the issues of infrastructure and EMS delivery issues as the cities are still working on implementing the bigger policies that passed last year.
He asked that issues of development, zoning and housing wait until 2025 – and that local leaders be given some time to fix what they find to be pressing in their communities.
“From our perspective, for 2024, what the Legislature needs to do is pump the brakes on significant new policy and focus on the basics: pass a bonding bill that invests in core infrastructure around the state to shore up our EMS system and do very little else that’s going to impact cities or city operations,” Peterson said.
Ava Kian
Ava Kian is MinnPost’s Greater Minnesota reporter. Follow her on Twitter @kian_ava or email her at akian@minnpost.com.
