Minnesota House of Representatives Priorities

Tell those running for the Minnesota House of Representatives what our two advance priorities are for the upcoming legislative session. Now is the time to get promises of support from the candidates from office. Please reach out to the candidates from both major parties, even if you have a preference it is important we educate and get commitments from all candidates and not just the one we may like.

Here is the process:

  • If you are not sure exactly what MN House of Representatives District you live in (It will be a number and an a or b, 15a or 15b for example) visit this handy tool: https://www.gis.lcc.mn.gov/iMaps/districts/ enter your address and get the information. Come back here.
  • Scroll down on the list below and find the candidates for your area and copy their email addresses or click on the link to send them an email. Suggested language below.
  • If you get a response please let us know by sending an email to [email protected]

Suggested Language:

Greetings,

I live in your district and see you are running for the Minnesota House of Representatives. As a potential constituent, I wanted to share that one of my top priorities is our Veterans in Minnesota. Below is a summary of two priorities established by the MN Commanders Task Force (CTF), a group made up of the 8 Congressionally Chartered Veterans Service Organizations in Minnesota. It is my hope after reviewing these you will consider letting me know if you will support these if you were to win the election.

Disabled Veterans Property Tax Value Exclusion:

The CTF is asking for state lawmakers’ support in updating the amount of the exclusion and making important changes so this valuable benefit does not erode again over time. It has been over 12 years since the exclusion amount was set at $150,000 and $300,000. We all know what property values, inflation, and increases in local property tax have done over the past decade. Over that time, this has become a less and less valuable benefit for our most severely disabled Veterans.

What I ask you to support:

Set the amounts at $200,000 and $400,000 and fix it to increase with inflation in the housing market. We also ask to remove the “equal or lesser value” language in the statute, to ensure surviving spouses can properly use their benefits.

Hunting and Fishing Licenses for Disabled Veterans:

When you look at other states known for their outdoor activities like hunting and fishing, we see benefits intended to show appreciation and get Veteran back to the outdoors. Minnesota has lagged in this area and for over 10 years the CTF has had this as something they would like to see changed to provide our Veterans with similar opportunities.

What I ask you to support:

Change MN DNR’s license fees for Veterans 50% or greater service connection to a greatly reduced cost license (set at the minimum amount for the license to qualify for federal excise funds is $3). Keeping this nominal fee reduces the fiscal impact by $21 a license ($3 from Veteran, $18 from Federal Tax), with the DNR showing to expand eligibility for this to over 40,000 disabled Veterans is less than $160,000 out of the over $1 billion annual budget of the DNR.  I also ask that all Veterans be recognized in MN by setting the out-of-state license price for non-resident Veterans to the resident license price.

Please let me know your stance on supporting these two important proposals if you were elected to represent our area.

Regards,