TO THE EDITOR:

A recent letter writer questioned the commitment to leadership displayed at the Capitol last session and accused us of being too partisan in our positions.

I believe leadership is about getting the right deal for our area and our state, and that is not necessarily always the easiest deal to reach.

One such example is our education funding debate from this past session. We all agreed that schools needed more money, but there were many different plans put forth for how and how much. We defeated one of the first plans offered by Reps. Dorman and Greiling because, though it did contain increases, I and most legislators felt we could do much better.

And in fact, we did. We came out with near-record increases in per student funding. Here are the actual numbers in case you havenít seen them:
North Branch $557 per-pupil
Forest Lake $543 per-pupil
Chisago Area $540 per-pupil
Rush City $601 per-pupil

The same is true for Local Government Aid. By continuing our reforms of the LGA system, we were able to increase LGA distribution over what cities and towns were already expecting over the next two years.

Chisago City, Lindstrom, Rush City, Wyoming, North Branch and Taylors Falls will all receive more LGA in 2006 than they would have had we taken the quick way out and not reformed the LGA formula.

I find that criticisms about being too partisan are equally short-sighted. Partisanship plays well in the media and makes for interesting stories, but the fact is that most of the issues we face here are not partisan issues. Hundreds of votes are taken every year and the vast majority of them are very bipartisan. I often find that when someone says I should be more bipartisan, what they really mean is I should abandon all of my beliefs and adopt theirs wholeheartedly.
That his hardly a cooperative attitude.

Being truly bipartisan and holding out for the better deal isnít always the easy thing to do and often brings a barrage of criticism.

This year was certainly an example of that, but even if the process needs fixing I am still pleased with the product we all agreed upon. I think the people of Minnesota can be very pleased when they look at the overall big picture and see the positive results.

Pete Nelson
District 17B,
State Representative

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