Something smells bad in the environment bill passed in the special session held Monday in St. Paul.
One of the funding items lists the following: “The Impacts of Climate Change on Northeastern Minnesota.” $772,000 the first year is from the trust fund to the commissioner of natural resources for an agreement with Friends of the Boundary Waters Wilderness to work with collaborators to aggregate research, data, and other information about the impacts of climate change on the habitat and wildlife of northeastern Minnesota into a publicly available, webbased database. This appropriation is available until June 30, 2029, by which time the project must be completed and final products delivered.
Even if we were to set aside whether or not spending state funds on this was a worthy expenditure, the stench comes from a direct payment to an organization that has ties to a State Representative.
Rep. Alex Falconer (DFL) represents District 49A and lives in Eden Prairie. He is listed as the federal government relations manager for the non-profit Save the Boundary Waters. Slightly different name, yet somehow eerily similar and in our opinion interconnected for Friends of the Boundary Waters.
With just the appearance of impropriety we expected Falconer to keep an arm’s length from these funds by not voting for the bill that contained the funding language. Yet, there was a green light next to his name when the bill was voted on Monday in St. Paul.
One of the complaints about the current make up of the DFL legislators in St. Paul is many of them were or still are activists. And they have been funneling money back to the organizations where they have connections.
Whether or not Falconer broke the law or not is not up to us. But we will point out this is an example of state funds not well spent.
