From Amber Collett, Communications Associate

I recently sat down with Rachel Bents, a St. Paul resident who has decided to try to live car-free (without her own personal vehicle) in Minnesota. (more…)

From Barb Thoman,  Acting Executive Director

The Twin Cities regional highway system continues to expand – it grew another 1 percent between 2000 and 2008 and is the 8th largest of the 25 most populous regions. When we look at lane miles per person, our highway system is 30 percent larger than Los Angeles and 30 percent larger than Portland, Ore. (more…)

“This afternoon we will take the Skyline Trail, the trail that more than any other gives us a feeling of distance and space.  Vistas of wilderness will be ours, frozen swamps and lakes and winding trails through the woods.  Along that trail towards sunset the light effects are more striking than anywhere else, for here the whole country lies before us.”

- Sigurd Olson, The Singing Wilderness, 1956

Sigurd Olson is a giant in Minnesota’s conservation history as one of the leading voices during the mid-1900s for the preservation of wild places like our beloved Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness and Voyageurs National Park.  He was also a literary acclaimed writer, penning his classic, The Singing Wilderness, in 1956, a must-read for any environmental activist.  So respected was Olson that his likeness is one of only a few busts displayed within our State Capitol.  It seems almost providential that Olson’s bust stands guard to Capitol Committee Room 107 where most of the Senate environment and conservation issues are addressed. 

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John Tuma’s Capitol Update for May 18, 2010

“I rolled off the pony in a heap.  I staggered toward the stockade gate and fell headlong through the door of a house, where I lay in a stupor for hours.”
- Sam Brown, Fort Wadsworth, Dakota Territory, 1866

Sam Brown was a legendary frontiersman.  He was the son of Major Joseph R. Brown, for whom Browns Valley was named.  That valley lies between the headwaters of the Red and Minnesota Rivers on the western border of Minnesota; right at the tip of that little bump you see on the state map on our western border.

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John Tuma’s Capitol Update for May 14, 2010

“It’s very confusing, and very wonderful.  People disagree, they get angry — and they do it in public and nobody dies.”
- Idil Abdull, May 11, 2010

On Wednesday, Warren Wolfe of the Star Tribune provided us with one of the more pleasant stories from the State Capitol, that of 36-year-old Somali-born Idil Abdull.   She is a citizen lobbyist from Burnsville working to make some changes in a bill to protect Somali autistic children.  “Lobby of one: Making sense of Legislature” provides an interesting perspective of our American legislative experiment in democracy, Minnesota style, through the eyes of a newcomer to our land of immigrants.  Ms. Abdull provides us with a refreshingly honest citizen’s perspective. 

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John Tuma’s Capitol Update – Supplemental Edition for May 11, 2010

Did you know that May 11 is Statehood Day in Minnesota?  This is the day Congress ratified Minnesota’s acceptance into the Union back in 1858.  The great state of Minnesota is 152 years old today.  In typical historical fashion, the Minnesota legislative session is in the midst of its traditional end of session train wreck this rainy and gloomy Statehood Day.  Here is a brief update on where the Minnesota Environmental Partnership’s (MEP) legislative priority issues are on this Tuesday morning as the session careens to its sudden end.

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John Tuma’s Capitol Update – May 7, 2010

“The administration of government has become more complex.”
- US Chief Justice Charles Evans Hughes, June 1, 1931

Every aspiring attorney throughout this land of the free has to read in their constitutional law class this quote from the opinion in the landmark federal Supreme Court decision of Near v. Minnesota, which is viewed as a foundational case for the freedom of press. “Landmark decisions” are the rare cases that are truly game changers on our political or social fields of competition. Minnesota was the birthplace of the set of circumstances that gave birth to this great landmark decision regarding the freedom of press.

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John Tuma’s Capitol Update – April 23, 2010

“The time has arrived for the Democratic Party to get out of the shadow of states’ rights and walk forthrightly into the bright sunshine of human rights. . . our land is now, more than ever before, the last best hope on earth.  I know that we can . . . begin here the fuller and richer realization of that hope – that promise – of a land where all men are truly free and equal . . .”

- Hubert H. Humphrey, 1948 Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia, PA

In the American political and governing structure, party conventions often become the critical moment in time that set in course great changes in the history of our nation and become launching pads for great political careers.  In 1948, the Democratic National Convention that gathered during the second week of July, in typical midsummer hot, steamy East Coast weather, was a convention that changed the structure of our national political landscape and helped launch the career of one of Minnesota’s greatest political leaders.

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This was no April Fool’s joke.  On April 1, 2010, Minnesota Center for Environmental Advocacy Communications Director Chuck Laszewski not only authored an essay about bicycling down the Mississippi River for Conservation Minnesota, but also tapped one out for Minnesota Public Radio extolling the glories of outdoor baseball in Target Field.  Thanks and congratulations, Chuck.

By Lynne Bly, transportation connections director, Fresh Energy

Over the past few months the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development has held dozens of listening sessions and has been requesting comments about its upcoming $100 million Sustainable Communities Grant Program. (more…)