MN House 49A and 49B candidates air their views at forum

Candidates for Minnesota House seats in Districts 49A and 49B met face-to-face in the Eden Prairie City Council Chambers on Thursday, Sept. 12 for a forum sponsored by the League of Women Voters of Minnetonka-Eden Prairie-Hopkins.

About 50 people filled the room to hear candidates’ opinions on taxes, healthcare, education and more. While the candidates expressed some agreement on issues, both Republican candidates focused more heavily on calling for tax cuts, while the Democrats emphasized issues like childcare subsidies and health care.  

The candidates for House District 49A are Republican Stacy Bettison and Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party candidate Alex Falconer. The district’s seat is open, with incumbent Laurie Pryor, a DFLer, choosing not to run.

In House District 49B, Republican Wendi Russo is challenging DFL incumbent Carlie Kotyza-Witthuhn, first elected to the seat in 2018.

Eden Prairie is split between the districts, with the northern portion of Eden Prairie, as well as a section of southern Minnetonka, in District 49A and southern Eden Prairie in District 49B. Highway 5 serves as a rough boundary between the districts.

In opening remarks, the candidates for 49A took opposite approaches to addressing the record of incumbent Pryor, with Falconer saying, “Her tireless efforts have helped create positive change.” Bettison, on the other hand, encouraged voters to ask themselves, “Is Minnesota better off now than it was eight years ago, when Pryor began her term?” For Bettison, “The answer is no.”

Minnesota House members are elected to two-year terms. All four 2024 candidates are residents of Eden Prairie.

Following is a report of the questions posed by moderator Deb Brinkman of the League of Women Voters St. Louis Park, as well as candidates’ responses. The forum’s questions were chosen from those submitted by the public, either in advance or during the event. Some of the candidates’ answers have been paraphrased for length and clarity. The forum is broadcast in its entirety in the video linked below.

Q: What are some current issues or concerns that will directly impact your district?

Some of the most clear differences of the night in the candidates’ priorities came in the answers to this question. Russo focused on taxes, Kotyza-Witthuhn on childcare affordability and affordable housing, Bettison on education and Falconer on affordable healthcare.

While Bettison and Koyyza-Witthuhn addressed education, they did so from different perspectives. Bettison said mandates imposed on schools are impeding instruction in reading, writing, math and science to raise student proficiencies in those areas. Kotyza-Witthuhn said schools have been underfunded for years. 

Three of the four candidates addressed taxes in their response, with Bettison saying people are concerned with property taxes and Kotyza-Witthuhn saying she had worked for property tax relief for seniors. Russo talked about the effect on senior citizens of not only property taxes, but also tax on Social Security income. 

Q: What are the priority pieces of legislation that you would enact, should you be elected? Do you have a top priority?

Falconer said his top priority would be opening up MinnesotaCare health insurance as a public option. “Everything within the healthcare system has become too expensive, and we need to do what we can to drive that down. I think MinnesotaCare would be the way to go as far as moving toward an eventual universal healthcare system.” 

Bettison said her top priority would be ensuring children are able to succeed in their education. “We know that what we are doing right now is not working. We know that the mandates are really taking away from teacher time, and they’re taking away from principal time in terms of doing what they want to do.”

Russo said she also finds schools the most urgent concern. “The mandates coming top-down, one size fits all approaches do not work for every district. We need to allow local educators, the local school board, to make those decisions about what money they need, where it needs to go, and we need to remove some of those mandates that the educational system really cannot afford to do right now,” she said.

Kotyza-Witthuhn said her top priority would be working for passage of a bill to expand childcare subsidies, on a sliding scale, to households earning more than $60,000 a year. “By giving folks money back to spend on food and housing and the necessities, and a little bit of fun every once in a while, we can really help the average Minnesota family.”

Q: Do you support the freedom of healthcare choices, or would you vote to restrict access to reproductive healthcare, including abortion and fertility treatment, in any way? Please explain.

The question passed first to Kotyza-Witthuhn, who was the lead author of the Protect Reproductive Options (PRO) Act in the 2023 legislative session. The Minnesota legislation, she said, “allows people to make their own self-autonomous decisions about their own reproductive healthcare, and the way that we worded it – the language is really important – is that we included IVF, we included fertility treatments. We included all of these things, because when you talk about reproductive health, it’s not just about abortion.” Kotyza-Witthuhn said she would not vote to restrict a person’s right to choose.

The other three candidates all cited this Minnesota legislation as protecting a woman’s right to choose abortion and called themselves pro-choice. Republicans Bettison and Russo, however, also said they would support limitations on third-trimester abortions. Russo, the child of a teen mother, added that she would like to see increased funding and support for teen parents, as well as a decreased timeline and cost for adoption.

Q: According to the Minnesota Department of Education, the number of students meeting grade level standards in reading and math has declined. Can you explain what you see as the problem and what you think the solution is?

Bettison said school districts are overwhelmed with trying to find staff and resources to meet mandates and said mental health is a factor in the decline of student achievement and needs to continue to be addressed.

Falconer said schools need more funding, and said teachers are placing too much emphasis on teaching to the test rather than teaching critical-thinking skills.

Russo said schools should partner with parents for accountability and consider holding students back a grade if they have not mastered skills. Throwing money at a problem, she said, doesn’t always solve it.

Kotyza-Witthuhn said schools are still seeing effects on student performance from COVID-19 pandemic disruptions in education and said Minnesota schools are recovering from chronic underfunding.

Q: Many are concerned with gun violence in our schools and communities. What legislation, if any, would you support to meet the need for safe schools and communities? Do you support secure storage proposals?

Kotyza-Witthuhn said she originally ran for office as a Mom Demanding Action, referencing the national organization that works to enact stricter gun control laws, and supports safe storage laws. As participants in the state’s foster care system, she said, her family was required to keep weapons and ammunition in separate locked storage.

Russo said she supports safe storage laws on the basis of recommendations from law enforcement, and also said existing gun laws should be better enforced, including imposing a five-year sentence for those convicted of illegal possession of a firearm. “There’s a revolving door of crime that is permeating, and it starts in the cities and moves out to the prairie,” she said, while also calling for support of law enforcement. “The law enforcement is our partner. They are our friend, and the faster that we really serve them and really respect them, I think the better results we’re going to get.”

Bettison said she is gravely concerned about mass shootings, particularly in schools, and supports safe storage laws and red flag laws, in which firearms may be taken from people believed to be a potential danger. She also reiterated the need to address mental health challenges.

Falconer said he is a dad demanding action who supports safe storage and red flag laws, saying there are plenty of commonsense ways to store weapons and ammunition away from children and out of the hands of people who would harm others.

Q: As Minnesota continues to move toward green energy, what solutions are needed to make the sources reliable? What legislation would you propose to prevent energy shortages like what they’re experiencing in California, and would you support policies that would speed the permitting of new energy projects? 

Falconer said he would like to expedite the state’s move toward a goal of offering carbon-free electricity to consumers by 2040, with his suggested methods including helping homeowners add solar arrays, investing in solar and wind farms and passage of legislation to make it easier for transmission lines to deliver green energy. “Climate change is an existential threat to us all,” he said.

Bettison said she would also favor an expedited permitting process for green energy initiatives, calling environmental concerns a guiding light in determining who she has cast her ballot for in previous elections. Kotyza-Witthuhn said it’s important that regulation keep pace with technology and that Minnesota needs to continue to upgrade its energy infrastructure. Russo, too, said she favored speeding the permitting of green energy projects and also wants to make sure Minnesota has sufficient energy stored for cold winters.

Q: Minnesota’s income tax brackets range from 5.35% to 9.85%. The states surrounding Minnesota all have lower income tax brackets, such as North Dakota, South Dakota, Iowa and Wisconsin. Do you think that the legislature should make it a priority to lower the tax brackets in the state to provide relief for the middle class?

Russo said high-income earners are leaving the state and eroding the tax base, and that the state’s 9.8% corporate tax rate, the highest nationwide, is preventing businesses from moving to the state and hurting gross domestic product. Reducing taxes, she said, would stimulate the state’s economy.

Kotyza-Witthuhn focused her response on existing tax credits, which she said could be expanded to create tax cuts for middle-class income earners. Specifically, she mentioned Minnesota’s child tax credit and a tax credit for K-12 education that allows deducting the cost of some school supplies, and also mentioned a renter’s tax credit.

Falconer said he would support lower income taxes for middle and lower class families, but that taxes are a balancing act, with public dollars invested in the common good. “I understand taxes can be a big burden, but the benefits of living in a state where we prioritize education, healthcare and infrastructure are clear, and we enjoy a higher standard of living than almost anywhere in the nation,” he said. Falconer also said Minnesota has a good business climate, with Fortune 500 companies, small businesses and an ethos of entrepreneurship.

Bettison also said she would support a middle-class tax cut but that it’s also necessary to examine spending. A high priority for her would be eliminating the state income tax on Social Security income.

Q: If you advocate for reducing taxes and cutting the state budget, specifically what programs would you cut? And similarly, if you advocate increasing the budget, what increase in taxes would you advocate for which groups?

Q: Do you support how the legislature handled the surplus? And if there’s a surplus, if you are elected, do you have a strategy for how you will handle the surplus?

(Editor’s Note: These questions are grouped together due to the overlap in candidates’ responses.)

Both Bettison and Falconer said they would need to do research to determine areas where the state budget could be cut. However, while Falconer said he thought the state’s budgetary surplus was spent responsibly to close gaps in education funding, Bettison disagreed.

Budget cuts are needed, she said, because of what she called irresponsible spending of the surplus and budget growth under the DFL’s control of the Minnesota House, Senate and governor’s office since the 2022 general election. 

Bettison said she does not think the surplus was spent responsibly. ”In 2022 the DFL promised a host of tax cuts that ultimately did not pass, even under their trifecta,” she said. “These included fully exempting Social Security from taxes. Minnesotans got a partial exemption. There was supposed to be substantial, permanent property tax relief. Minnesotans got on- time tax relief. There was supposed to be middle class tax cuts. That was nowhere to be seen in the DFL budget. There was supposed to be $2,000 rebate checks for all. Rebate checks were much smaller and limited only to certain Minnesotans.”

Russo attributed the surplus’s existence to tax rates being too high and said she felt it was spent with a lack of transparency. Excess state money, she said, could be used for infrastructure projects affecting nursing homes and colleges and universities, as well as funding first-responder programs.

Kotyza-Witthuhn said the DFL-controlled Legislature’s institution of a requirement that the state budget forecast allow for inflation will lead to accurate forecasting of future spending and contribute to fiscal responsibility. The state surplus, she said, was spent in a considered manner, with much of it going to one-time funding of programs that will be reviewed to determine priorities for ongoing funding. 

Q: Do you support Minnesota becoming a sanctuary state for immigrants? What is your opinion of the North Star Act and its provisions relating to cooperation with federal immigration authorities and enforcement of civil immigration laws?

(Editor’s Note: The term “sanctuary state,” while not legally defined, is generally understood to refer to a jurisdiction that limits full cooperation with federal immigration officials.)

Bettison said that, while supportive of legal immigration, she does not support Minnesota becoming a sanctuary state.

While not directly answering the question of whether he supported sanctuary state legislation, Falconer said he supports legal immigration and also said the state should support existing immigrants. “What we have right now are people that have been here for decades, that their lives, their families, their relationships are all built here. They’re working. They’re contributing to our economy. And we need to do what we can to responsibly protect them, not deport them to a country that they don’t know any longer, that their kids have never lived in.”

Kotyza-Witthuhn agreed with Falconer that focus should be on existing immigrants and said proposed sanctuary state legislation, as written, was “dead on arrival” in a DFL-controlled Legislature. Minnesota taxpayers, she said, end up absorbing the costs incurred by immigrants who access healthcare services but are unable to acquire health insurance due to their immigration status. 

Russo also referenced healthcare, saying she had concerns about the state having sufficient infrastructure in the area to address the needs of an increased number of immigrants who may be attracted to a sanctuary state. “My husband is an immigrant, and I’ve been speaking to a lot of immigrants in the community. They were not given a lot of free things along the way, and they want to make sure that Minnesota citizens still come first,” she said. “We do want to legally bring in our new citizens who are immigrants, but we also want to make sure that it doesn’t put a strain on what we currently have with our health care or any other social services.”

Q: Given the fraud that has occurred in government programs in our state over the past several years, how can governmental oversight of these programs be improved, and what will you do to ensure that taxpayers are not being defrauded?

All four candidates called for increased oversight of governmental programs in the wake of scandals like that of the Feeding Our Future organization, in which COVID relief funds were spent fraudulently for personal gain of the organizers, rather than feeding children as intended, 

Kotyza-Witthuhn said, ”It’s completely unacceptable when bad actors take advantage of a system that is meant to help Minnesotans,” while Bettison called for accountability for such happenings, in particular from Gov. Tim Walz. “These things happen? Well they shouldn’t happen, and what are we going to do to make sure it doesn’t happen again?” she asked.

Russo said oversight is needed to ensure tax dollars are being spent effectively. In response to a previous question, she had commented, “You know, we don’t mind paying taxes, but when the money’s not being overseen properly and not being allocated to the social programs that we agree to, that’s when we start getting mad.”

Falconer said he supported installing positions similar to the state education department’s office of the inspector general, which Kotyza-Witthuhn said had been implemented in direct response to the Feeding Our Future fraud case, for all state departments. “I will support these sorts of positions within every department, just to make sure that we’re cracking down on fraud, making sure that loopholes are closed and making sure that taxpayers’ dollars are being spent as they are supposed to be, and that we’re doing right by the taxpayer,” he said.