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‘We know what the problem is’: Forum offers perspectives on racial disparities in Minnesota

By Ibrahim Hirsi, MinnPost
Original article published January 28, 2016

If there was one message that Angela Glover Blackwell and several local leaders wanted to stress Wednesday at a forum on race and equity in the Twin Cities, it was this: The need “to get the equity agenda right.”

Speaking to more than 1,000 people at the Hilton Hotel in downtown Minneapolis, Blackwell, a renowned social justice advocate, chronicled the era of legalized segregation in the United States, current challenges facing minority communities and barriers that prevent them from the traditional paths to economic prosperity.

“We’re at a different moment in this nation,” said Blackwell, founder and CEO ofPolicyLink. “The challenge has never been greater.”

The challenges she highlighted include the recent episodes of police violence as well as widening economic and education disparities — calling for state leaders and influential individuals to act quickly.

Blackwell noted that as the population of communities of color continue to increase at a much higher rate than that of their white counterparts, America will soon depend on minorities to sustain its economic security and world dominance.

“There is an urgency about getting the equity agenda right,” she said, “And it’s not just for the people who have been left behind; it’s for the entire nation.”

She added: “The fate of the nation is dependent on what happens to people of color. There will be no democracy, there will be no middle class, there will be nothing to be proud of if the people who are going to be the future are not prepared to be the future that we want.”

In the search for answers to the dire educational and economic disparities among Minnesota’s communities of color, Blackwell — who’s based in California — praised leaders in the state for their efforts to look for those answer wherever they can.

“So many of you have been to the equity summits,” she said. “Your state always has the largest delegation at our summits and I’m always so thrilled the way that people have picked it up.”

Creating opportunities

Glover Blackwell, who was the event’s keynote speaker, explained that equity has been talked about in the United States for a long time, though it hasn’t been achieved. She pointed out the signature note of many job applications that say, “We’re an equal opportunity employer.”

Angela Glover Blackwell

She added: “What that often means is, ‘You know, you can get here and if you can be competitive, we’ll give you an interview.’ What it doesn’t pay enough attention to is what does it take on the educational front to even be competitive for what’s happening here.”

Many in communities of color, Blackwell said, don’t have the educational qualifications to compete for good jobs. And those who have the proper degrees don’t have the right networks that would help them land their first jobs.

“Equity requires that we’re looking at all of that because we’re not creating the conditions if we’re not thinking about it that way,” she said. “So, equity makes us really have to dig deep. And when we think about the equity agenda, we think about digging deep.”

She added: “It makes all of us have to develop strategies that we have not developed before, strategies that are going to lead all on the path.”

‘Listen much harder’

Sarah Caruso, president and CEO of the Greater Twin Cities United Way — which organized the forum — suggested that creating equality might require inventing new systems or re-writing the current laws to reflect every U.S. citizen, including those of color.

She added: “Maybe we need to take on really hard issues, like what’s going on at the school board and why is North Minneapolis continuing to be so isolated.

“We need to listen much harder. We need to listen to younger people. We need to listen to Black Lives Matter. We need to listen to people who are experiencing this every day and make sure we’re as close to it as possible.”

‘We know what the problem is’

The forum also featured six panelists representing governmental and nonprofit organizations in Minnesota.

Panelist Shawntera Hardy, who serves as the deputy chief of staff for the Office of Governor Mark Dayton, noted that America has normalized the practices of racial inequality, allowing barriers to paralyze communities of color.

Ron Harris, of the Neighborhoods Organizing for Change, added that real investments in the communities of color are indispensable in order to defeat inequality. “We need to stop studying and admiring the problem. We know what the problem is.”

Like some of the leaders on the panel, Harris blamed the disparity and inequality issues on the current systems, which he argued had been set up in the first place to serve white people.

“The reason why we have these gaps … and disparity outcomes in the first place is that it has been an enormous amount of extraction from people of color,” Harris said. “This nation was built with the genocide of one race and the slavery of another.”

Ilhan Omar, director of policy and initiatives for the Women Organizing Women Network who is also running for a seat in the Minnesota House, said she believes that the answer to inequality and racial disparities is partly capacity building and providing resources to the affected communities.

Read the rest of the article here. 

Metro area janitors say contract fight is about more than pay

By Kristoffer Tigue, MinnPost
Original article published January 26, 2016

Sonia Cortez works 40 hours a week cleaning offices, restaurants and recycling plants for St. Paul-based Marsden Building Maintenance at just below $15 an hour. But it’s still not enough to pay for her monthly bills while helping to put her daughter through college, she said. “You cannot live with this money,” she said. “Believe me.”

Cortez is one of roughly 4,000 contract janitors unionized under Service Employees International Union Local 26 (SEIU) whose three-year contract with metro employers expired on Dec. 31.  Currently SEIU janitors make $14.62 an hour, but union officials said they hope to raise the wages of their members to $15 an hour.

The wage increase wouldn’t just be a symbolic win, said SEIU executive board member James Matias; it would mean an additional $12.5 million for the janitors each year, money that would make a small dent in the income gap for Minnesota’s people of color.

“Most janitors are folks of color,” Matias said. “To bring that [extra income] into communities of color? That is huge.”

The union also hopes to make some strides on increasing the amount of paid earned sick days their members get, Matias said. Currently, SEIU janitors get three paid sick days a year, and many have families who need the time to be able to stay home to take care of sick children who aren’t able to attend school during the day.

Collective bargaining at issue

For workers’ rights and social justice advocates, the importance of the negotiations goes beyond wages and paid leave, however — it represents an opportunity to confront the continuing rollback of collective bargaining for workers across the state. “Collective bargaining has been shrinking since the ’70s,” said Greta Bergstrom of TakeAction Minnesota. “Today far fewer working class people bargain collectively.”

Bergstrom points to Uber and the taxi industry as an example. While Minnesota’s taxi companies used to be unionized, now they’re losing out to new companies like Uber who independently contract drivers, undercutting the traditional industry by driving down costs.

The same thing is happening in the cleaning industry, said Brian Merle Payne, executive director of Centro de Trabajadores Unidos en Lucha (CTUL). The workers’ rights advocacy group works with janitorial staff in the retail cleaning industry, he said, which is staffed almost entirely by nonunionized, independent contractors who make an average of $9 an hour.

It’s becoming common practice for retail cleaning companies to avoid providing janitorial staffs with benefits or wages above the state minimum, Payne said, and those companies often try to encroach on unionized janitors’ turf to get their contracts.

That’s why establishing contracts like the one SEIU is currently negotiating is so important, he said, because it raises the bar for the whole industry. “It could pull up the standards for everybody,” he said.

Bergstrom said Minnesota’s current minimum wage of $9 an hour (for large employers) — which will rise to $9.50 an hour on Aug. 1 — still isn’t enough. “While it’s really important that we’ve secured the $9.50 an hour, everybody knows that’s actually still not keeping up with cost of living,” she said.

Read the rest of the article here.

Filed under
Organizing a New Economy

For MinnesotaCare, a death warrant or a new lease on life?

By Glenn Howatt, Star Tribune
Original article published January 22, 2016

Roberta Brown considers herself a member of the “disappearing middle class” — a marketing consultant with a successful small business who nonetheless finds the cost of health care increasingly beyond her reach.

“I don’t know if I could afford it if I had to go out on my own,” said Brown, 57, of Minnetonka. “What is going to become of all of us if we don’t have health insurance?”

Brown is one of 120,000 Minnesotans who rely on MinnesotaCare, the pioneering low-cost health plan created in the early 1990s — a program whose future is now in doubt.

Though it was created with bipartisan support, MinnesotaCare is under fire today from Republican lawmakers, who say it has become obsolete and should be replaced by private insurance. Last year, the Minnesota House voted to scrap the program altogether.

When lawmakers deadlocked over that proposal, the Legislature and DFL Gov. Mark Dayton appointed a task force of 29 health care heavyweights to study MinnesotaCare’s future and other health care challenges facing the state — a group that is now poised to go in quite a different direction.

The task force, which will hold its final meeting Friday in St. Paul, will vote on a proposal to expand MinnesotaCare, adding 41,200 people and raising the eligibility ceiling for incomes to 275 percent of the federal poverty level, up from the current 200 percent.

Advocates say that, despite passage of the Affordable Care Act at the federal level, lower-income Minnesotans still need help to cope with rising premiums and deductibles, which often require consumers to pay thousands of dollars for care before insurance benefits kick in.

“Too many working Minnesota families can’t afford … private health coverage,” said task force member Elizabeth Doyle of TakeAction Minnesota. “This is an opportunity to ensure that working families in the state have access to health care that they can afford.”

It also would help people like the self-employed Brown, whose income can fluctuate above and below the current MinnesotaCare eligibility cap.

Read the rest of the article here.

Ellison, city leaders advocate for Working Families Agenda

By Nate Gotlieb , Sowthwest Journal: Southwest Minneapolis' Community Newspaper
Original article published January 22, 2016

Minnesota’s low-wage workers are stretched thin in part because of low wages, pay gaps and wage theft, panelists said Tuesday at a forum hosted by Congressmen Keith Ellison and Bobby Scott, a Democrat from Virginia.

The six panelists spoke about Minnesota’s lack of paid sick, family and medical leave as well as instances of wage theft and the need for fair-scheduling practices. Minneapolis City Council Member Lisa Bender (Ward 10) and Council Vice President Elizabeth Glidden (Ward 8) also spoke in support of the measures at the forum held at Richfield City Hall.

Minneapolis Mayor Betsy Hodges first unveiled a Working Families Agenda at her State of the City Address in April 2015. The City Council later passed a resolution directing city staff to develop policy proposals supporting paid sick time, fair scheduling, wage theft prevention. They were also tasked with studying the impact of establishing a minimum wage regionally and locally.

City leaders dropped the fair scheduling proposal, which would have required employers to give workers 14 days notice of their schedule, after significant pushback from the business community. A city-appointed Workplace Partnership group is currently studying paid sick time proposals and is expected to report to the City Council will its findings Feb. 24.

Tuesday’s forum united a coalition of nonprofit leaders and politicians who appeared eager to pass legislation and ordinances on these issues. They spoke of the continued issues facing their working-class constituents, noting Minnesota’s growing racial divide.

Scott, the most senior Democrat on the House Education and the Workforce Committee, criticized Republicans for ignoring issues facing workers while working to limit unions and provide tax breaks to the wealthy. He said he is encouraged by the Working Families Agenda in Minneapolis and movements like it nationally.

“You are obviously leading the country in this regard,” he said.

The state Legislature increased the minimum wage in 2014 as well as the Women’s Economic Security Act, a series of bills that worked to reduce the gender pay gap and expand family leave for mothers, among other measures. The state does not have laws requiring paid sick days and family and medical leave, however.

“People find themselves stretched very very thin with very few options to make ends meet every month,” said panelist Chris Conry, economy program manager of Take Action Minnesota.

Panelist Veronica Mendez of Centro de Trabajadores Unidos en Lucha (CTUL), which organizes low-wage workers, spoke about instances of wage theft that her organization has seen. She advocated for workers to receive a pay stub from their employers and said workers need to be part of conversations surrounding enforcement mechanisms.

Other panelists spoke about fair scheduling, sick leave and the ways unions help workers. Ron Harris of Neighborhoods Organizing for Change spoke about a proposal for 11 hours between shifts as well as the importance of giving workers enough hours.

“If you don’t have a fair schedule, you don’t have control over your life,” he said.

Panelists also touched on Minnesota’s racial disparities, noting tough conditions for many minorities. Median income for black households in Minnesota dropped $4,500 from 2013 to 2014, from over $31,000 to just over $27,000, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. The data also showed that 38 percent of black Minnesotans live in poverty, up from 30 percent in 2008.

Read the rest of the article here.

Filed under
Organizing a New Economy + Women & the Economy

Panel hears from both sides for easing drug-crime sentences

By , Albert Lea Tribune
Original article published January 4, 2016

A Minnesota commission has heard both support and concern for easing the penalties for possession and drug dealing ahead of an impending vote on drug-sentencing changes. 

The Minnesota Sentencing Guidelines Commission received emotional testimony Wednesday as members weighed a proposal for drug-crime leniency. The main plan before them would cut two to three years off sentences for first-degree drug sales and reduce the severity levels assigned to first-degree drug possession and second-degree drug crimes. There would also be flexible sentences for other crimes and considerations for treatment for chemically dependent defendants.

People with prior felony convictions spoke of their trouble escaping addictions that made them into criminals. Faith leaders and other backers of an overhaul said drug laws have been too draconian and exacerbated racial disparities in the prison system.

Randy Anderson, a three-time felon in recovery for a cocaine addiction, told the panel that the assumption that all dealers are dangerous is ludicrous. At the height of his addiction, he was charged with possessing more than 1,000 grams of cocaine.

“I didn’t burglarize, I didn’t assault anyone, hell, I even paid my taxes,” Anderson said.

Robert Small, executive director of the Minnesota County Attorneys Association, said law enforcement is worried about sending the wrong message to drug dealers and users.

“At a time when the heroin trade is thriving in our communities, it is just not right to be reducing the sentence for anyone in the distribution chain and who is bringing this poison into our communities,” Small said.

The commission intends to vote next week on the plans to revise drug sentences. The leading proposal is from Minnesota Supreme Court Justice Christopher Dietzen. The changes would take hold in August unless the Legislature blocks them.

Analysts said the proposal would free up prison space, up to 523 beds by 2028.

Dennis Flaherty, executive director of the Minnesota Chiefs of Police Association, said incarceration is a tool to protect public safety.

“Longer incarceration of people is designed for who those we are afraid of, not just mad at,” he said.

Nathaniel Doehling, director of TakeAction Minnesota’s Justice4All Program, said before the hearing that the time is ripe for change.

Read the rest of the article here.

Filed under
Criminal Justice Reform

Study: 42 percent of Minneapolis workers don’t have paid sick time

By Erin Golden, Star Tribune
Original article published November 10, 2015

About 123,000 Minneapolis workers don’t have access to paid sick leave, according to a new analysis from the Washington, D.C.-based Institute for Women’s Policy Research.

The report, released Thursday, says that number amounts to about 42 percent of Minneapolis residents ages 18 and older. It also notes that Hispanic workers are the least likely to have sick time, with 68 percent lacking access to paid leave. By contrast, 49 percent of black workers, 42 percent of Asian workers and 37 percent of white workers don’t have paid sick time.

Workers with the lowest rate of access to paid leave are those in service occupations, construction and maintenance, the report said. Part-time workers were also unlikely to have sick leave, with only 25 percent of those working less than 35 hours per week receiving that time off.

By contrast, 70 percent of workers who put in 40 hours a week have sick leave.

“We found that some of the most economically vulnerable are the least likely to have paid sick days,” said Jessica Milli, study director for the Institute for Women’s Policy Research.

Milli said the breakdown of who does and doesn’t receive sick leave is similar to what her group has found in the entire state of Minnesota and in other communities across the country.

The information was presented by TakeAction Minnesota, one of several groups that has recently been advocating for citywide paid sick leave and other workers’ reforms proposed as part of Mayor Betsy Hodges’ Working Families Agenda.

Read the rest of the article here.

Filed under
Organizing a New Economy

Vision Duluth brings community together

By Kati Anderson, Northland News Center Now
Original article published October 21, 2015

Duluth, MN (NNCNOW.com) — Duluth community leaders came together on Monday to launch a campaign called Vision Duluth.

The group is comprised of nine Duluth organizations that came together less than a year ago to work towards a more equitable community.

The group has gotten input from community members on what they would like to see changed or improved on in the city.

Organization members have created an all–inclusive conversation to identify disparities.

Some common disparities that were identified include how income, access to food, and access to quality education varies depending on what part of the city you happen to live in, but this is just the beginning of the conversation.

“We’re listening to people say, ‘I don’t make enough money to help my family live, I can’t go to the grocery store because I don’t have a car to drive in, or I don’t have a decent place to live and I don’t feel safe in my neighborhood.’ We’re giving them an opportunity to talk about these things and that’s what it’s all about,” said Candy Hershner, the Executive Director of the Center Against Sexual and Domestic Abuse.

The next step is to have community leaders hear the message and then it’s hoped that change for the better stems from that.

Read the rest of the article and watch the video here. 

Vision Duluth will work to address social concerns

By Peter Passi, Duluth News Tribune
Original article published October 21, 2015

Nicole Williams has called West Duluth home for about 40 years now, and in that time she has made significant progress. She overcame homelessness and found stable housing. After learning to cope as a single mother, Williams now is happily married. And as other parts of her life fell into place, she earned a college degree.

“My vision for Duluth is better wages, because you can’t live on $9 an hour,” she said.

Williams was just one of many residents to join in shaping an initiative called Vision Duluth.

The initiative began with nine community organizations joining forces in an effort to promote equity in Duluth. At the core of the effort were TakeAction Minnesota, CHUM, SOAR Career Solutions, Program for Aid to Victims of Sexual Assault, the YWCA-Duluth, the American Indian Community Housing Organization, Community Action Duluth, Education Minnesota and the Duluth AFL-CIO Central Labor Body.

Leading up to the official launch of Vision Duluth Monday, the group contacted 8,000 residents throughout Duluth via email, social media, face-to-face encounters and eight community conversations over the past nine months.

Organizers knocked on 800 doors and engaged in 256 individual conversations with neighbors in Spirit Valley, Denfeld, Lincoln Park and Park Point.

“We brought together a variety of stakeholders from all different communities, people who often aren’t heard from, and we found out there’s a lot of commonality. There are a lot of common barriers and things we’d like to do together,” said Liz Olson of TakeAction Minnesota.

Karen Perry, a resident of Gary-New Duluth, said she jumped at the opportunity to provide input, recalling advice she had received from a friend, Xavier Bell. “He told me: If you’re not at the table, you’re on the menu … So when I found out what Liz (Olson) was doing, I realized she was bringing us to the table, those of us who are usually on the menu,” she said.

After listening to people’s concerns, organizers synthesized the prevailing issues identified and then checked back with initial participants to make sure they had accurately captured the essence of what people had shared.

Olson said Vision Duluth aims to tackle “equity issues writ large.”

She called Monday’s event a first step for an organization advocating on behalf of change. Vision Duluth hasn’t yet put together a list of demands, but it is working to build support for an agenda chock full of efforts to promote social and economic equity.

One of the group’s top priorities is to advocate for living-wage jobs that come with basic benefits, including paid time off, Olson said, noting that more than half of Duluth’s workers lack the ability to take so much as a single day off with pay, even when they are personally ill or called to care for a sick child.

Olson acknowledged that Vision Duluth will likely face pushback from certain business interests concerned about the potential economic impact of greater regulation and said generating broad public support for new standards will be essential.

“We need to elevate the problem and show people that change needs to happen,” Olson said.

Reforms will take time, but Olson said she and others hope to move swiftly.

“We approach this task with a real sense of urgency, because it’s about real people’s lives,” Olson said.

The group aims to address a host of other non-work-related issues, as well.

Read the rest of the article here. 

Getting our message to the governor

By Vina Kay, executive director of Voices for Racial Justice, Minnesota Spokesman-Recorder
Original article published October 8, 2015

“I have never been in a situation where we got more time with the governor than scheduled.” So said my colleague Dan McGrath of TakeAction Minnesota as our morning meeting with Governor Mark Dayton was wrapping up.

TakeAction’s Justice 4 All organizer Justin Terrell had arranged a photo op with the governor to deliver 100 letters from inmates at Lino Lakes Correctional Facility asking for support of voting rights restoration for Minnesotans who have been released from prison (current Minnesota law calls for disenfranchisement until completion of probation).

This was a meeting long in the making. We had it scheduled for last spring, toward the end of the legislative session. But budget negotiations caused the governor to have to cancel our meeting then. That call came the morning of our scheduled meeting — disappointing for all involved, but especially for two people who have a real stake in this issue.

My friend at Lino Lakes Correctional Facility and the initiator of our BRIDGE partnership and this ongoing column is Kevin Reese. He had organized the writing of letters from his fellow inmates. The stories in those letters speak to the human costs of losing the right to vote and the deep desire to be connected and participating in our community.

And Kevin’s 12-year-old son, also Kevin, was going to be the deliverer of those letters to the governor. So after reminding him to dress up a little and be ready to go, it was disappointing to cancel that spring morning.

But the morning of September 23 was different. Young Kevin was ready to go when I picked him up, dressed sharply, and with a strong message for the governor. We practiced a little as we walked to the governor’s temporary office with a group of fellow organizers and advocates. His father’s letter was at the top of the pile, and he was ready to ask the governor to read these letters and come visit his dad and the other men at Lino Lakes.

Kevin and I stood close together as the governor walked in and shook our hands. Then it was Kevin’s turn. He delivered his message as planned, and the governor seemed to listen to Kevin’s quiet voice. But then the governor kept listening, asking me and Kevin about his dad.

I told him about the 11 years of incarceration and the three more to go. I asked him to be part of the next BRIDGE workshop that we are planning now. “It would be good for them to hear from you that you support voting rights restoration,” I told him.

Finally, I asked the governor for a note excusing young Kevin from missing school that morning. He jumped at the chance to write a note to the Olson Middle School principal and took that time to really connect with Kevin.

It was then that I saw two people who could not be more different open up to each other. As he was writing the note, Governor Dayton told Kevin about his own struggles.

“I have struggled with depression and alcoholism my whole life, Kevin. But I have worked hard and it has gotten better. You would think that because I grew up wealthy, everything would be easy,” he said. “But I struggled with an alcoholic mother, and it was really hard. Kevin, I imagine it’s hard for you to have your dad in prison, but it will get better. Be strong.”

I could see that young Kevin was really listening to the governor. The nervousness that he felt earlier seemed to melt away. Now his eyes were large with compassion and connection.

Read the rest of the article here.

Where does redemption come into the picture?

By FABRIZIO MONTERMINI, MN Spokesman and Recorder
Original article published September 14, 2015

Mass incarceration has imposed such staggering human and economic costs on our communities that conservatives and liberals are finally reaching a consensus on the need to reform the criminal justice system. Momentum is building for a congressional bill that would eliminate or reduce mandatory minimum sentences for some nonviolent drug offenders.

This effort is welcome, and surprising, but depressingly inadequate. The Bureau of Prisons estimates that there are 95,000 federal drug offenders. Even if the bill could apply retroactively, it is so limited in scope that many would not qualify anyway.

It’s hard to see how the bill could affect even four percent of America’s 2.2 million prisoners going forward, let alone many of the 10,000 who are serving life sentences for nonviolent offenses.

I suspect the bill has gained bipartisan support for three reasons. First, it’s so easy to implement. Second, it only targets the least dangerous offenders. Third, there have been so many stories that have given us permission to feel empathy for those whose lives have been destroyed by lengthy prison terms for relatively minor crimes.

But limiting action to uncontroversial cases won’t have much of an effect on mass incarceration. We need greater efforts to expand our capacity for empathy by humanizing the tragedies that all people face through encounters with our adversarial system. We need a more nuanced language to express how its single-minded focus on increasingly harsh prison terms as the only means of justice makes it fail to consider human needs everywhere, from victims and their families to offenders.

I am haunted by the wish that our system had offered me a way to consider and address my victims’ and their families’ needs more fully, or had given us an opportunity to engage each other more humanely. But by placing outcomes and processes over people, it offers little in the way of redemption. As long as this continues, it will be difficult to talk meaningfully about reducing sentences for a broader range of crimes, and with it the incarceration rate.

This is true even though modern American sentences are much longer than those of most other countries, and longer now than they’ve been historically. Between 1972 and 2007, the number of prisoner-years per murder increased nine fold, while the overall incarceration rate quintupled, according to research by the late William J. Stuntz.

But at a certain point, increasingly long sentences fail to have much deterrent effect or much positive impact on public safety. I don’t know many people in prison who calculated the potential length of a prison term prior to committing their crime.

And people naturally become more risk-averse as they age, which reduces the need to keep them locked up. Dana Goldstein at the Marshall Project reported that crime rates for all serious crimes drop sharply after age 30, yet we’ve seen a 550 percent increase in the number of prisoners over age 55 since 1990.

Lengthy sentences also tend to exacerbate the serious physical, emotional, and mental costs that prison already imposes on prisoners. I’ve seen my friends with long sentences develop a real sense of desperation and hopelessness as they struggle to find meaning in the unchanging purgatory that stretches before them.

Prison does a poor job of helping us feel agency or hope, because it is not structured in a way that shows society values our lives. There are too few opportunities that facilitate introspection or growth, that teach marketable skills, or that help us to restore and deepen relationships with loved ones — in a word, that make us feel like human beings with dignity.

In some European countries, prisoners are initially sentenced to shorter terms, with the option for parole boards to add more time if warranted. In the United States, however, the floor for prison time is fixed at a very high level, with virtually no adjustments possible for prisoners who prove they no longer need to be behind bars.

This may be because we have a hard time thinking of alternatives to incarceration when someone breaks the law. But they do exist, and they are effective. The New York Timesreported that every dollar spent on drug diversion courts in New York from 2009-2013 yielded $3.56 in savings by reducing the number of people who ultimately went to prison or committed another crime.

Read the rest of the article here.

Caring for older adults: Local forum kicks off statewide discussion on elder policy

By Anne Polta, West Center Tribune
Original article published September 14, 2015

WILLMAR — For some of the participants in a forum this week on aging, less red tape and better access to needed services would be a change for the better.

Others wanted to see better rural models of caring for older adults and more community awareness and education about the issues that come with aging.

TakeAction Minnesota, a grassroots organization that works for public policy change, launched its latest initiative Tuesday in Willmar — a campaign to reshape how Minnesota approaches the twin issues of aging with dignity and supporting the caregivers of older adults. The effort will be carried out statewide.

“We’re trying to start a network of people talking about this,” said Jane Price, of TakeAction Minnesota. “We need to start this conversation.”

About 40 people showed up for a town hall meeting Tuesday, hosted by the health ministry of the Church of St. Mary, to help begin the process of identifying issues, concerns and potential solutions surrounding the graying of the population and its growing impact on the state.

There’s some urgency. Within 20 years, the number of Minnesotans older than 65 is projected to double to 1.4 million. Most will continue to live in their own homes, cared for by unpaid family members, neighbors and friends who will be called on to perform increasingly complex tasks.

“Minnesotans are living longer. That’s the good news,” said Art Price, who volunteers along with his wife, Jane, with TakeAction Minnesota’s senior caucus.

The bad news, said Price, is that longer lifespans also expose aging adults to chronic conditions and diseases that can disable them and reduce their quality of life as they grow older.

“We need to think about what it means to age,” he said.

In small-group discussions, forum participants took turns sharing their own experiences and concerns.

Some of the roundtable conversations got down to everyday details. In one group, there was frustration with grocery store policies that provide motorized scooters to shoppers — but don’t allow them to take the scooters into the parking lot so they can get their purchases to their vehicle. Others spoke of a shortage of services on weekends.

There was more: Difficulty knowing how to find the right services and where to start. A shortage of sustainable options allowing residents of small rural towns to age in place. A lack of advocates for older adults without family or other relatives nearby. Dilemmas for adult children who risk their own financial future if they retire early or switch to part-time work in order to care for an aging parent.

But there were also stories of success. One woman had family support while caring for her father through Alzheimer’s disease. “I did the pills and my sister did the bills,” she said. Because her father was prepared and had a health care directive spelling out his wishes, the experience was less difficult, she said.

There were calls for supporting professional caregivers with training, good pay and respect, and for recognizing the limits to what family caregivers can provide.

Elizabeth Lienisch, organizing director with TakeAction Minnesota in St. Paul, said one of the goals is to move the discussion from talk into action.

“What we’re doing is listening for what works and what doesn’t,” she said. “The more we talk about this, the clearer things are going to become about what the problems are and what the possible solutions are… This is really the beginning of the conversation, not the end.”

Read the rest of the article here. 

Clinton pulls in big dollars in Minnesota, but state’s progressives are waiting to be convinced

By Allison Sherry , StarTribune
Original article published September 4, 2015

Dan McGrath and his organization’s people are the shoe leather and the passion that could carry Hillary Clinton to victory here.

McGrath’s progressive activist group, TakeAction Minnesota, has more than 60,000 e-mail addresses and 15,000 dues-paying members from every congressional district in the state. His 35-person team aggressively walked precincts four years ago and is widely credited for the sound defeat of of the photo ID amendment that was on the state’s ballot in 2012.

But as Clinton prepares to address a summer meeting of the Democratic National Committee in Minneapolis on Friday, along with presidential hopefuls Bernie Sanders, Martin O’Malley and others, it becomes clear she has some work to do — even in a state that hasn’t gone for a Republican presidential candidate since Richard Nixon in 1972.

Ask McGrath what he thinks of the candidate many once assumed would become the nominee and his mouth turns down.

“The Democrats are letting the opportunity slip through their fingers,” said McGrath, who, despite his deep well of man-on-the-street resources, has not been asked by any presidential candidate for support. “As Donald Trump is offending most of America every day, the Democrats are not really providing a very compelling inclusive alternative vision. … They are not breaking through, and that’s both a source of concern and a source of frustration.”

In Minnesota’s money race, Clinton dominates. For the second quarter of this year, Minnesotans donated more than $780,000 to all presidential candidates — Democrats and Republicans. Of that, Clinton picked up more than 70 percent — $559,700. Sanders, by comparison, garnered $49,000. On Thursday, Clinton struck a joint agreement with the DNC to help raise funds for the national and state parties that could be used in the general election.

Progressives not convinced

Clinton also has locked down many of the state’s most influential Democrats, including Gov. Mark Dayton, U.S. Sen. Amy Klobuchar, U.S. Sen. Al Franken and former Secretary of State Joan Growe.

But the nationally known “Wellstonian” progressives are waiting to be galvanized.

“If I was giving advice to the Hillary Clinton campaign, I would find a way for some random to come into it,” said Rep. Keith Ellison, who represents Minneapolis and chairs the Progressive Caucus in Congress. Ellison has not yet endorsed anyone. “My advice would be to let people see her for who she is. You can’t ever be scared. If you can’t be who you are in office, why do you want to be in office?”

Some DFL activists blame the media’s fixation on the large and loud Republican field. With 16 prominent GOP presidential hopefuls clawing at the nomination daily in the four early primary states and on cable television, some say it’s hard for Clinton’s occasional speeches and messages to break through the noise.

“It is early. We have to remember that. This is the month of Trump,” said Jeff Blodgett, founding director of Wellstone Action, one of the state’s leading progressive advocacy groups. “I don’t think huge numbers of people are tuning in.” Blodgett, who was the Minnesota campaign manager for President Obama’s 2008 and 2012 races, said that right now, “I think it’s the political talking set that is very engaged in this stuff and is making a judgment about her candidacy.”

Minnesota DFL Party Chair Ken Martin, who is among Clinton’s supporters and fundraisers, said: “The race is really up for grabs in this state. I would say right now the race is between Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders.” The Vermont senator, an independent vying for the Democratic nomination, has held large public rallies in the state twice in the past several months.

Clinton will not attend any public events while in Minnesota, although she will go to a private fundraiser while here. Sanders said he plans to hand out ice cream to delegates who are hoping to attend the national nomination convention. Former Maryland Gov. O’Malley planned to swing by the State Fair in the afternoon.

Read the rest of the article here. 

Filed under
Movement Politics + Democracy & Voting Rights

Members named to new state Task Force on Health Care Financing

By Joe Kimball, MinnPost
Original article published August 5, 2015

Gov. Mark Dayton today named 11 members to the newly-formed state Task Force on Health Care Financing, which will look the future of health care programs in Minnesota, including MNsure and MinnesotaCare.

The Legislature authorized the task force, which will begin meeting in August and report its findings in January.

In addition to the members named today, the group will include Commerce Commissioner Mike Rothman, Health Commissioner Dr. Edward Ehlinger and Human Services Commissioner Lucinda Jesson.  Also on the task force will be the MNsure executive officer, currently Allison O’Toole in an interim position, and legislative appointees.

Those appointed today by the governor are:

  • Lynn Blewett – St. Paul, Director, University of Minnesota State Health Access Data Assistance Center
  • Elizabeth Doyle – Minneapolis, Associate Director/Policy Director, TakeAction Minnesota; Member from Broad-Based Nonprofit Consumer Advocacy Organization
  • Monica Hurtado,  – Minneapolis, Health Equity/Racial Justice Organizer, Voices for Racial Justice; Member from Organization Representing Consumers of Color.

Read the rest of the article here.

Task force to review MinnesotaCare, MNsure takes shape

By Christopher Snowbeck, Star Tribune
Original article published August 5, 2015

The chief executives at Allina Health System and a trade group for health insurers are among those named to a new state task force that will consider the future of Minnesota’s public health care programs including MNsure and MinnesotaCare.

Gov. Mark Dayton on Friday released his 11 appointees to the task force, which was created through legislation earlier this year to tackle thorny questions about financing and operating the state’s health care programs.

The task force will be the arena for debate over the future of MNsure, after Republicans and DFLers couldn’t agree during the legislative session on major changes for the state’s health insurance exchange.

Republicans have called for dropping MNsure in favor of the federal government’s HealthCare.gov website. They’ve also called for fundamental changes to the MinnesotaCare program, which provides health insurance for lower-income Minnesotans.

DFLers have talked about seeking federal innovation waivers to address coverage “cliffs,” where people with small income gains move from comprehensive coverage in MinnesotaCare to ­private plans with large deductibles. As a result, people can find themselves with unaffordable medical bills even though they have health insurance coverage.

The 33-person task force is scheduled to begin meeting in August, and report its final ­recommendations to Dayton and lawmakers by Jan. 15. The Legislature appropriated $500,000 for actuarial reports and research that would assist the task force in developing recommendations.

Like other appointees named by Dayton on Friday, Dr. Penny Wheeler, the chief executive at Allina, and Jim Schowalter, president of the Minnesota Council of Health Plans, will serve terms running from Aug. 5 through Jan. 16, 2016.

Lynn Blewett, a health policy expert at the University of Minnesota, and Larry Schulz, the chief executive at Lake Region Healthcare in Fergus Falls, also will serve on the task force.

Dayton’s other appointees include: Elizabeth Doyle of TakeAction Minnesota; Monica Hurtado of Voices for Racial ­Justice; Sheila Kiscaden, an Olmsted County commissioner; Sahra Noor of ­People’s Center Health Services; Dr. Marilyn Peitso of CentraCare Health; ­Rosemarie Roach of the Minnesota Nurses Association; and Dr. Todd Stivland of Bluestone Physician Services.

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New State Budget Comes With Higher Costs for MinnesotaCare

By , CBS Minnesota
Original article published July 31, 2015

ST. PAUL, Minn. (AP) — Minnesota lawmakers kept MinnesotaCare intact but not without a cost that will trickle down to some of the more than 100,000 low-income residents on the program in the form of higher monthly premiums starting in August.

The increases kicking in Saturday vary based on income, and those making less than 150 percent of federal poverty level — roughly $17,600 for a single adult — will escape the increases altogether. But others will see bill increases from as low as an extra $8 a month to as much as an additional $30, according to a letter from the Department of Human Services sent to lawmakers earlier this month.

And by January, those rises will be coupled with undetermined increases to co-pays, deductibles and other charges.

The increases were part of the state’s new health care budget passed this year, a way to shore up a historically volatile funding mechanism and compromise with Republicans who sought to do away with MinnesotaCare altogether.

MinnesotaCare enrollees and advocates of the program are still weighing the satisfaction of maintaining the program against the increased costs contained in a new health care budget. And there’s the lingering question of the program’s future as its main funding source is set to expire by the end of the decade.

Even after the premium increases, MinnesotaCare costs remain well below prices on the private marketplace. But Sarah Greenfield, the health care program manager for a coalition of union and advocacy groups called TakeAction Minnesota, said even a small increase will hit many of the working poor residents on MinnesotaCare hard.

MinnesotaCare covers those who can’t afford private insurance but make too much to qualify for Medical Assistance, Minnesota’s version of Medicaid. The top earners on the program bring in less than $24,000 a year.

After losing his job three years ago, John Hesch works part-time as an anger management clinic coordinator. Getting MinnesotaCare was a financial lifeline when he wound up in the hospital for six weeks due to diabetes complications. Hesch is at the top of the income spectrum for MinnesotaCare, but he’s still bracing for a $30 hike to his premiums — up to $80 monthly.

“That’s a 60 percent increase,” he said. “That’s going to be more of a hardship.”

The state’s Department of Human Services hasn’t yet formally notified enrollees about a premium hike — that notice will go out with the August invoices. The department expects to finalize new, higher co-pay and deductible amounts for MinnesotaCare plans in October or November.

Greenfield said saving MinnesotaCare was a big victory but she was still puzzled by the cost increases.

“It’s perplexing and concerning that we would increase costs for low-income workers and their families at a time when we have a surplus,” she said, referencing the nearly $1.9 billion surplus lawmakers had to work with this year. “I think that’s what scares enrollees: What does that mean about a year when we don’t have as strong of a budget?”

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Enough of the individualistic rhetoric; the real causes of worker poverty are systemic

By Kathleen Cole, MinnPost
Original article published July 28, 2015

One of the defining features of American political culture is our commitment to individualism. We are individualists in at least two senses of the word. First, we support the rights of individuals. We believe that there are some rights that belong to individuals that no government or other entity has a right to infringe upon. We are also individualists, secondly, in that Americans are more likely than people in other countries to explain social problems in terms of individual behavior. We prefer explanations that focus on individual behaviors rather than social structures and institutions that largely determine options and influence outcomes.

Nowhere is this preference for individual explanations for the causes of social problems more evident than in American rhetoric about poverty and economic success. Jeb Bush’s remarks in New Hampshire are an excellent example. At a campaign stop, Bush said:

My aspiration for the country — and I believe we can achieve it — is 4 percent growth as far as the eye can see. Which means we have to be a lot more productive, work-force participation has to rise from its all-time modern lows, means that people need to work longer hours and through their productivity gain more income for their families. That’s the only way we’re going to get out of this rut that we’re in.

Let’s unpack Bush’s comment here. According to Bush, we’re having some economic problems — slow economic growth, low worker productivity, and Americans families who aren’t bringing in enough income. According to Bush, the individual behavior of American workers is to blame for these problems. Ultimately, for Bush and others like him, poverty can be explained away by attributing it to the failure of low-income people’s individual work ethic.

Bush’s rhetoric may be compatible with our individualist political culture, but as an explanation for our economic problems it fails miserably. And it fails precisely because it focuses on the individual behavior of American workers, rather than the economic and political institutions within which they find themselves.

Two reports about working people in Minneapolis published by Neighborhoods Organizing for Change (NOC) illustrate the structural challenges Minneapolis workers face when providing for their families. These reports offer a clear and direct challenge to the rhetoric Bush is promoting.

For “Our Time Counts,” NOC surveyed more than 500 hourly workers in North Minneapolis about their work schedules, compensation, and benefits like paid sick days. Fifty-one percent of the workers NOC surveyed make $10 an hour or less. “Nearly 40 percent of workers surveyed are working part-time schedules, which is 34 hours or less per week.” People working only part-time and at low wages are struggling to provide for their families. To them, Jeb Bush would say, “work more hours.”

But as NOC’s report demonstrates, these vulnerable workers can’t work more hours. It’s not that they don’t want to. In fact, 78 percent of part-time hourly workers and even 58 percent of full-time hourly workers reported that they would prefer to work more hours than they are currently assigned. However, hourly workers have little to no control over their schedules and cannot simply choose to work more hours.

Often, they are scheduled for on-call shifts, meaning they must be available to their employers to work a shift, but they are not guaranteed work that day. The employer may choose to not call them in and the worker then loses that opportunity to gain income from a day’s work. In addition, hourly workers are often sent home early before the end of their scheduled shift. On-call shifts and sending workers home early save the employer money, but have negative effects for the workers who lose income and cannot adequately budget due to unpredictable earnings.

Some might argue that part-time hourly workers should simply get a second job if they want to be able to provide a decent life for themselves and their families. However, NOC’s research demonstrates that most workers are not free to find secondary employment. Many of the workers NOC surveyed are required to have “open availability,” which means they can be scheduled to work at any time, day or night. The challenges workers face due to open availability policies are compounded by schedules that change weekly, or even daily. “Over half (55 percent) of all hourly workers surveyed reported that they receive their schedules a week or less in advance.” Subject to open availability policies and without a set schedule, coordinating a work schedule with a secondary employer is prohibitively difficult. Unpredictable schedules and open availability policies are, then, significant impediments to secondary employment.

NOC’s other recent report, “It’s About Time,” illustrates the transit challenges that low-income workers face that make secondary employment virtually impossible. In Minnesota, people of color are disproportionately employed in low-income jobs. In addition, low-income people of color are significantly more likely to rely on public transportation to get to and from their places of employment. As NOC’s research demonstrates, workers using public transportation to commute to work pay a significant time penalty for doing so. “Every year, Black and Asian transit users spend the [hourly] equivalent of about 3.5 weeks of work more than white drivers on their commutes alone. For Latino transit users, it is nearly 4.5 weeks.” As NOC points out the transit penalty has deeply problematic effects on workers from communities of color. “That means that for a month a year more than white drivers, transit commuters of color are unavailable for working, helping children with homework, helping parents get to the doctor, running errands, volunteering in their communities, or participating in their churches.”

NOC’s reports demonstrate important ways in which the individualist rhetoric around poverty in America obscures the causes of poverty among low-income workers. Low-income workers are vulnerable to economic exploitation by their employers. They do not earn a living wage and have little control over the number of hours they work in any given week. Our labor laws and economic policies at all levels — city, state, and national — put the interests of employers over workers. To say to the most vulnerable among us “work harder” is to ignore the structural challenges low-income workers face. It’s an individualistic oversimplification of the problem.

The Minneapolis City Council has an opportunity right now to address the real causes of poverty among low-income workers by adopting a comprehensive package of worker protections, like fair scheduling requirements, mandated earned sick and safe time, and — most importantly — adopting a $15 an hour minimum wage so hourly workers can provide for themselves and their families.

Read the entire article here.

Hundreds march on Minneapolis City Hall for worker rights, higher wages

By Joey Getty, WorkDay Minnesota
Original article published July 22, 2015

Hundreds of workers marched from the US Bancorp Center to Minneapolis City Hall Wednesday, calling on the City Council to support a citywide $15 minimum wage and guarantee workers paid sick time, fair scheduling and increased protection against wage theft.

The march and rally was organized by members of NOC,(link is external)Neighborhoods Organizing for Change; CTUL(link is external), Centro de Trabajadores Unidos en Lucha/Center of Workers United in Struggle; 15Now MN(link is external) and Working America(link is external), a community affiliate of the AFL-CIO. NOC members led the march with a group of drummers and dancers as hundreds of workers and advocates followed through the downtown Minneapolis streets.

At the steps of city hall, Anthony Newby, executive director of NOC, spoke about a recent NOC study that surveyed more than 500 workers in north Minneapolis.

Click here for the rest of the article. 

Hourly workers, advocates march on Minneapolis City Hall to demand better scheduling, pay

By Erin Golden, Star Tribune
Original article published July 22, 2015

Hundreds of hourly wage workers and advocates marched through downtown Minneapolis and to City Hall on Wednesday, urging the city to adopt laws that would mandate paid sick leave, more predictable scheduling and a higher minimum wage.

Marchers with Neighborhoods Organizing for Change, Centro de Trabajadores Unidos en Lucha (CTUL) and other workers’ groups gathered on the steps of City Hall, where a handful of people shared stories and organizers unveiled the results of a recent study of north Minneapolis workers.

The speakers told of working for low wages, often while sick or running on little sleep after working late-night and early-morning shifts, back to back.

Rod Adams, a former employee of two restaurants, said he was ordered to keep working at one after he suffered a serious injury from a kitchen knife, and was often required to work closing hours followed by opening hours at the second business.

“Why should you have to work two or three jobs?” he said. “Why should you miss out on time for school? Why should you miss out on time with your family?”

Anthony Newby, executive director of Neighborhoods Organizing for Change, said a recent study his group did of more than 500 workers on the North Side revealed that many face similar challenges. More than 40 percent of the people surveyed said unpredictable work schedules — often not provided until the day before, or even hours before a shift — contributed to financial problems. More than half the hourly workers surveyed said they received schedules a week or less in advance.

More than 60 percent of the workers said they had to come into work sick because paid sick leave was not offered by their employer.

Marchers later moved inside City Hall, where dancers performed and a drum line echoed around the building’s main entrance. Leaders called on six City Council members who turned out for the event — Lisa Bender, Jacob Frey, Elizabeth Glidden, Cam Gordon, Alondra Cano and Andrew Johnson — to pledge that they would canvass neighborhoods on behalf of workers’ issues and cast their votes for workers’ policies.

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Low-income families face health price hikes because of MinnesotaCare cuts

By Adam Uren, BringMeTheNews
Original article published June 9, 2015

Health insurance premiums and out-of-pocket costs for thousands of people on low-incomes will increase because of cuts to MinnesotaCare that were approved this week.

Although a GOP-led attempt to repeal MinnesotaCare didn’t make it through the latest legislative session, the Health and Human Services budget bill that was signed on Friday by Gov. Mark Dayton does feature cuts that will mean price increases for workers using the subsidized health program.

The Minnesota Budget Project says that the bill requires the program to generate an extra $65 million in the 2016/17 two-year budget cycle and $96 million in the 2018/19 cycle – through premium increases and a hike in out-of-pocket expenses borne by service users.

Minnesota’s Department of Human Services told BringMeTheNews that the actual price changes won’t be decided until June 30, but did provide information that indicated they could potentially add hundreds of dollars to family budgets starting Aug. 1.

The changes will affect people on MinnesotaCare who earn between 150 and 200 percent of Federal Poverty Guidelines (FPG), which ranges from a household income of $17,505 for a single person, to $80,180 for a household of eight people.

In an example supplied by the DHS showing how premiums could increase (which comes from sample figures and is not a prediction), someone earning between 150 and 159 percent of FPG would see a $7 increase on their monthly premium– a rise of around a quarter on what they’re paying now.

Those earning more could see their annual premiums rise by hundreds of dollars. Those earning 200 percent FPG pay $50 a month to MinnesotaCare currently in premiums, in the example given this would rise to $68-a-month, or $216-a-year.

Liz Doyle, of TakeAction Minnesota, wrote in the St. Cloud Times Monday that MinnesotaCare, the state’s “Basic Health Plan,” is a vital service for farmers, self-employed workers, students and young people who are “starting out in life and work hard for their income without the benefits of employer-provided insurance.”

As of March this year, there were just under 105,000 people enrolled with MinnesotaCare.

Click here for the full article.

Big premium increase requests show volatility in health care market

By CHRISTOPHER SNOWBECK, Star Tribune
Original article published June 8, 2015

Hike requests come after insurers lost $300M on policies for individuals.

Big premium increases that Minnesota insurers proposed last week reflect losses they’ve been taking in a part of the market targeted by the federal health law.

Insurers say they collectively lost more than $300 million on policies for individuals who buy coverage on their own last year because subscribers had more costly health problems than expected.Higher rates on that coverage would help close the gap, though the size of the increases will attract attention amid scrutiny of the effects of the Affordable Care Act. If regulators were to approve the full amounts, average premiums would increase by more than 50 percent for about 179,000 people, and by more than 10 percent for another 60,000.

Insurers say they are making adjustments now that they have more experience under the health care law, which will cover a chunk of first-year losses.

“This just shows the volatility that we’re experiencing in the first few years of the Affordable Care Act,” said Lynn Blewett, a health policy expert at the University of Minnesota. “Eventually, it will work itself out into a more stable market.”

Observers say the proposed increases are driven largely by factors that are unique to the individual market, and don’t point to similar jumps for employer groups and government programs that cover roughly 90 percent of Minnesotans.

But the individual market, which includes the state’s MNsure exchange, grew by about 53 percent last year to about 292,138 people, according to the Minnesota Council of Health Plans. Low rates that some people initially found on MNsure have already started to go away.

Golden Valley-based PreferredOne made a big splash in 2014 during the first year of the exchange, but had to pull out of MNsure for 2015 after low rates proved unsustainable. The company increased premiums by an average of 63 percent for 2015, prompting thousands of subscribers to take their business elsewhere.

With the federal information released last week, other Minnesota insurers signaled they need to boost premiums, too.

“They didn’t do a good job of estimating health care costs for that population in the individual market,” said Roger Feldman, a health insurance expert at the University of Minnesota. The hope, Feldman said, is that the increases for 2016 reflect a one-time correction.

Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Minnesota, which is the largest insurer in the individual market, announced proposed average increases of 54 percent and 55 percent for policies that collectively cover about 179,000 people.

Blue Cross says it lost $135 million in the individual market during 2014 — a figure that would be significantly higher without financial safety nets for insurers that are built into the health law.

Between 2013 and 2014, people buying into individual market policies at Blue Cross went from having health costs significantly below average, the company said, to above-average expenses.

Some increase was expected with the phaseout of a high-risk pool for Minnesotans with health problems who previously couldn’t buy individual market policies, said Scott Keefer, vice president for public affairs and communications with Blue Cross.

But the company also saw a greater-than-expected influx of subscribers with health problems from employer groups.

“So, in some respects, we can look at this and we can say that there’s almost the equivalent of a second high-risk pool effectively coming into our membership from the group market,” he said.

Increased pharmacy costs with the launch of more expensive specialty medications are having a particularly sharp impact in the individual market, Keefer said. On a per-member, per-month basis, prescription drug costs jumped by 47 percent, Keefer said, between the first quarters of 2014 and 2015.

Proposed increases might look big on a percentage basis, he said, but are based on premiums that in the Twin Cities were significantly lower than in other cities in the Midwest.

“Given the volatility and the turmoil that we saw in [2014] and what we’re seeing right now suggests to me that the market was significantly underpriced from the get-go,” Keefer said.

HealthPartners, UCare, PreferredOne and two divisions at a Milwaukee-based company called Assurant Health also filed proposed rates with increases of more than 10 percent. Assurant Health didn’t say how many people are covered by its filings, but proposed rates from the other three companies would impact more than 60,000 people combined.

In the wake of last week’s filings, insurers noted that financial safety nets built into the health law will offer less help to health plans in 2016, before going away completely the following year. The programs for reinsurance, risk-adjustment and what’s called “risk-corridors” could let Minnesota insurers recover more than $150 million in losses from 2014, but there’s uncertainty about how much money actually will be delivered.

Without factoring those programs, the Minnesota Council of Health Plans estimated in April that health insurers collectively lost about $316 million last year in the individual market.

“When there are losses that are in excess of 30 percent of total revenues, we have a problem,” said Jim Schowalter, the group’s executive director.

The proposed premium jumps announced last week sound big, Schowalter said, but many Minnesota consumers could find the increase offset by larger tax credits available through the MNsure exchange.

Over the next several months, state regulators will review the rate proposals to see if they are justified. The rate review process goes on behind closed doors, and can result in final premium prices that are substantially lower.

This year, the process is somewhat more public since preliminary rates weren’t available before final approvals in previous years. So, the state Commerce Department will be doing its job on a bigger stage, with Gov. Mark Dayton calling last week for a “rigorous review.”

Health law supporters say they’re disappointed by the rate requests, but argue insurers remain profitable overall and have large financial reserves.

“It is important that we have public scrutiny — and expert scrutiny — over those claims about losses, and those proposed increases, because they will weigh very heavily on enrollees,” said Sarah Greenfield of TakeAction Minnesota, a St. Paul-based consumer group that backs changes under the Affordable Care Act.

Click here for the full article. 

The Politics of Offense and Defense

By , American Prospect
Original article published May 8, 2015

Until very recently, the political cultures of Minnesota and Wisconsin seemed pretty much in step. In the 1930s, both Minnesota’s Farmer-Labor Party and the Progressive Party of Wisconsin anticipated the New Deal with their own brands of progressive populism. After World War II, both states shifted to the right as Farmer-Labor joined the Democrats and Wisconsin, more drastically, traded Fighting Bob La Follette for Joseph McCarthy in the Senate. Yet by the following decade, senators like Wisconsin’s Gaylord Nelson and Minnesota’s Hubert Humphrey led the charge in Washington, D.C., for environmental protection, civil rights, and an expanded social safety net.

Since then, both states have become reliably blue strongholds in federal races and each has had about the same number of Republicans and Democrats in the governor’s office. The two states’ progressive streak in Congress has been kept very much alive by the careers of Senators Paul Wellstone and Russ Feingold, and more recently, Al Franken and Tammy Baldwin.

But in the past few years, the states’ political pathways have started to diverge—sharply. While Minnesota has once again become a progressive laboratory under Governor Mark Dayton, passing landmark legislation on marriage equality, minimum wage, and progressive taxes, Wisconsin has veered in the opposite direction. (See “The High Road Wins”, by Ann Markusen, part of this package on the Great Lakes states from The American Prospect magazine’s 25th Anniversary issue.) Republican Governor Scott Walker has enacted voter ID, rejected Obamacare funds, and seriously undermined workers’ rights statewide. What gives?

…

“TYPICALLY WHEN WE think of coalitions, we think of a big table with a bunch of organizations who all care about the same thing and are interested in doing the same thing,” says Dan McGrath, executive director of TakeAction Minnesota. “Well look,” he adds pointedly. “That form of organization is designed to play defense.”

About a decade ago, progressive organizers in Minnesota had a different idea. Recognizing the need for a broad-based, but also deeply organized, progressive alliance, leaders of Progressive Minnesota and the Wellstone-era Alliance for Progressive Action began holding regular meetings. What they aimed for was a coalition based less on immediate goals and more on deeply shared values—an organization that could develop a long-term political infrastructure and then fight for change on its own terms.

It was a particularly dark time for the Minnesota left. Wellstone’s 2002 death had left an indelible scar on the state’s progressive movement, while his successor in the Senate, Republican Norm Coleman, positioned himself as a staunch Bush ally. At the same time, Republican Governor Tim Pawlenty—no Scott Walker, but bad enough—pushed through a conceal-and-carry gun law and cut funding for education and social programs. Michele Bachmann was ascendant. Republicans began to talk of Minnesota as a swing state.

They started to ask themselves what they wanted their state to look like and how they could get there in the long term.

In order to counter the Republican takeover, says McGrath, organizers realized they had to look beyond Coleman and Pawlenty and toward larger issues of economic and racial justice in the state. They started to ask themselves what they wanted their state to look like and how they could get there in the long term. “The way this type of coalition is constructed is very different,” he says. “It’s really about aligning around shared values—a shared vision. And really respecting the unique strengths of different organizations around the table.”

Within a few years, that table included groups like CTUL, a workers’ center; ISAIAH, a faith-based community coalition; and Neighborhoods Organizing for Change (NOC), a former ACORN chapter dedicated to racial justice. The coalition’s increasingly broad scope allowed it to unite community organizing, legislative work, and policy analysis under the same umbrella and to balance short-term campaigns with more long-term struggles for social change. Building this kind of infrastructure means that TakeAction is “designed to go on the offense,” says McGrath.

Click here for the full article.

MinnesotaCare’s Future At Stake In House GOP Budget

By , Associated Press
Original article published April 29, 2015

House Republicans put a health care program for tens of thousands of low-income Minnesotans on the chopping block Tuesday as the centerpiece of a budget bill that aims to put up half of the $2 billion in tax relief GOP lawmakers hope to offer.

The House was debating a bill Tuesday night for Minnesota’s health and human services spending — the largest slice of the state’s $40 billion budget. A vote wasn’t expected until later in the night.

….

A group of about 20 protesters gathered outside the House chambers to call on lawmaker to keep MinnesotaCare in place. Even with additional tax credits, enrollees would likely face much higher out-of-pocket costs, said Liz Doyle with TakeAction Minnesota, a coalition of unions and advocacy groups.

Click here for the full article.

TakeAction responds to proposal to cut MinnesotaCare

By Tom Weber, MPR
Original article published April 27, 2015

A Republican proposal to eliminate MinnesotaCare would save about $563 million over two years by getting rid of the program, which provides health insurance for people who make too much money to qualify for Medicaid, but not enough to afford their own insurance if they aren’t offered any by an employer.

Earlier this week, we spoke with Republican Rep. Matt Dean about the proposal. The House bill would move MinnesotaCare enrollees to MNSure and help them pay for a plan.

But the idea has opposition, including Gov. Mark Dayton and most DFLers. It’s also opposed by the group TakeAction Minnesota. MPR News’ Tom Weber talked with Liz Doyle, associate director of that group.

Click here to listen to the full story.

Filed under
Health Care

Ellison, Pocan lead call for Constitutional amendment to guarantee the right to vote

By Harry Colbert, Jr. , Insight News
Original article published April 21, 2015

With the right to vote being questioned in states throughout the nation, representatives from neighboring states are calling on Congress to amend the Constitution to ensure citizens’ rights to vote.

Rep. Keith Ellison (D-MN) and Rep. Mark Pocan (D-WI) gathered this past Thursday (April 9) with organizers in North Minneapolis to rally support for an amendment that would end what they called an assault on voting rights throughout the nation. The pair of Democratic representatives said they are trying to build bipartisan support for the proposed amendment, but say most challenges to voting are coming from the Republican right.

“Coming from Wisconsin we have some of the best to show for in the past in this area (of protecting the right to vote), and some of the worst in the current,” said Pocan, referring to current Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker, who pushed through legislation in the state calling for all voters to have government issued identification in order to cast ballots. “The fact is we have politicians trying to select the voters rather than voters selecting the politicians and the people most affected are often minorities, the elderly and students – people who don’t typically vote Republican.”

Ellison, who was among those who championed the defeat of a bill to restrict voting in Minnesota in 2012, said there needs to be uniform protections to preserve the right to vote in America.

“And the best remedy is a Constitutional amendment guaranteeing the right to vote,” said Ellison, who said 83 restrictive voting bills in 29 states were introduced in 2014.

In addition to trying to protect the right to vote for those already on the rolls, there is a growing call to extend the right to vote to those with felony convictions. Most states deny felons the right to vote and only two states, Maine and Vermont, allow prisoners to vote. In Minnesota, felons are not allowed to vote if they are on probation, parole or incarcerated. It is estimated that between 45,000 to 60,000 Minnesotans are affected by this law.

“As an ex-offender, my voice has been silenced due to me having an ‘F’ on my report card,” said Nathanael Doching, of TakeAction Minnesota’s Justice 4 All project. Doching has a felony conviction on his record. “I’ve been labeled with a shunning mark that is only visible when you research my past instead of focusing on my future.

Click here for the full story.

Filed under
Criminal Justice Reform

Living wages should start with employers, not taxpayers

By Jon Tevlin, Star Tribune
Original article published April 14, 2015

On a beautiful spring morning, Ricardo Chavez spent a little of his free time to speak out for some fellow janitors that he has never met.

“We have a union,” said Chavez. “We have paid benefits, but my brothers cleaning the Best Buy store next door don’t have these benefits.”

Chavez, who came from El Salvador in 1988, works in the company’s Richfield headquarters, where he cleans offices. The cleaning company he works for pays higher wages and benefits, but cleaners at the company’s stores are paid substantially less and have no benefits, he said.

There are bills now moving through the Legislature that would change that by mandating such benefits as earned paid sick time and family leave.

Activists chose to demonstrate in front of Best Buy Tuesday because the company is an influential member of the Minnesota Retailers Association, which has been lobbying the Legislature and trying to stop the bills that would help millions of Minnesota workers. The MRA is taking it a step further by pushing a bill that would prohibit local governments from enacting wage or benefit laws, something that has been discussed in Minneapolis.

Yep, those are the same people who usually scream for local control.

Greta Bergstrom, communications director for TakeAction Minnesota, which organized the event, said it is the beginning of a statewide push to finally get some of the benefits of a surging economy to those who have the least and need it the most. Bergstrom said a coalition of organizations, including unions and religious leaders from a wide variety of denominations, are trying to get meetings with companies like Best Buy to appeal to their corporate stature to strengthen benefits for part-time and low-paid workers.

“We’re asking them to use their leadership for the greater good,” Bergstrom said.

Click here to read the full article.

Some Republicans not sold on eliminating MN Care

By Catharine Richert, MPR
Original article published April 1, 2015

Eliminating a public health care program called MinnesotaCare could end up being a critical part of the budget plan adopted by the Republican-controlled Minnesota House.

But at least one Republican legislator says he doesn’t support a bill to get rid of MinnesotaCare. In committee he voted against the legislation, which is sponsored by Rep. Matt Dean, R-Dellwood.

“From an employer’s standpoint, in greater Minnesota and as a small employer… I just didn’t think today is the day to say goodbye to MinnesotaCare. I have employees who are still using it,” said Rep. Dave Baker, R-Willmar, who operates restaurants and hotels in the Willmar area. “We’re not quite there yet, but down the road it’s something we should address.”

MinnesotaCare is more than two decades old. It provides state subsidies to help people buy health insurance when they make too much money to qualify for Medical Assistance, but  don’t get coverage through an employer and can’t afford to buy their own plan.

Dean’s plan would move these participants to MNsure, the state’s health insurance exchange, where they would buy a health insurance plan that Dean says will be better tailored to their needs. Dean said his proposal could save roughly $900 million, with some of that money being spent on other GOP priorities like nursing home funding.

House Republicans are also planning to cut taxes by $2 billion over the next two years.

By and large, most MinnesotaCare enrollees live in rural parts of the state, and largely in districts like Baker’s, which are represented by Republicans.

Securing support from members of the GOP caucus will be critical for the survival of the Republican’s budget, and groups backing MinnesotaCare will be targeting Republican legislators who represent the majority of MinnesotaCare’s enrollees in the coming weeks.

Over the Legislature’s Easter and Passover break, the liberal group TakeAction Minnesota has organized a phone bank effort in key districts promoting the benefits of MinnesotaCare. And the group has also spearheaded a letter writing campaign in support of MinnesotaCare that’s been signed by more than 80 groups, including the American Heart Association and UCare, a prominent Minnesota health insurance firm.

These groups are concerned that MinnesotaCare enrollees will end up spending more to find insurance on the exchange.

Click here to read the full article.

Filed under
Health Care

GOP leader wants to end MinnesotaCare

By Catherine Richert, MPR News
Original article published March 17, 2015

Days after saying they want to cut taxes and still spend money on key priorities, a key Republican in the Minnesota House is floating a proposal to end a popular health care program for Minnesota’s working poor.

Pressured by their own party to return a $1.9 billion budget surplus to taxpayers, GOP leaders are looking for ways to do that while pursuing their agenda.

…

Liz Doyle, associate director of TakeAction Minnesota, a non-profit group that supports public health care programs, said Dean’s plan would be bad for MinnesotaCare participants. It would land them in more expensive and potentially less comprehensive coverage, she said.

“Our concern is that it would end the guarantee of affordable coverage that MinnesotaCare currently provides and subject low-income working families to potentially much higher health care costs on the private market,” Doyle said.

TakeAction Minnesota played a big role in making MinnesotaCare the state’s so-called basic health plan under the Affordable Care Act. Aside from some benefit improvements and adding more people to the program, incorporating MinnesotaCare in the state’s implementation of the law effectively allowed Minnesota to tap some federal money to help pay for it.

Click here for the full article.

At Capitol, MNsure remedies are all over the map

By Christopher Snowbeck, Star Tribune
Original article published March 16, 2015

Lawmakers agree that something needs to be done, but there is no clear path to fixing the troubled exchange.

A leading Republican in the GOP-controlled House thinks the state should alter MinnesotaCare, drop MNsure and jump to the federal government’s HealthCare.gov website.

Meanwhile, over in the DFL-controlled Senate, a proposal to eliminate the MNsure board is moving forward, with a top Democrat questioning a recent board decision to prioritize what he calls “bells and whistles” for the exchange website.

…

Dean is not the first to put forward the MinnesotaCare idea, which could help MNsure financially by expanding the number people buying on the exchange.

But Greta Bergstrom of TakeAction Minnesota said her group strongly opposes Dean’s bill, because MinnesotaCare has worked well for decades. TakeAction Minnesota was influential with DFL lawmakers in pushing to create MNsure, but the group questions whether people with incomes low enough for MinnesotaCare would find quality coverage from private insurers that’s affordable.

“It’s a program … that’s worked effectively for two decades, and really is a legacy program for the state of Minnesota,” Bergstrom said. Of Dean’s proposal, she said: “We don’t think it would work.”

Click here for the full article.

Minnesota Shawshank Redemption—Second Chance Law Brings Hope and New Revenue

By Tony Randgaard, Minnesota Connected
Original article published March 5, 2015

In the ubiquitous epic Shawshank Redemption convict Andy Dufresne counsels: “Remember Red, hope is a good thing, maybe the best of things and no good thing ever dies.”

Unlike Andy, Take Action Minnesota leader Larcell Mack could not escape his 17-year prison sentence with a rock hammer and a sultry Raquel Welch poster. An errant, ricocheting bullet killed a fleeing associate and changed his life.

He did hard time taking advantage of every rehabilitation tool available. He finished his GED and then Associate degree. Along the way, he eagerly completed courses in Microsoft Office, drafting, carpentry, painting and floor covering. After his release, Mack passed all milestones, becoming active in his church and community and is now a workforce counselor dedicated to making a difference…

Click here for the full article. 

Filed under
Criminal Justice Reform

GOP Restart Wage Debate With Talk Of Tips

By , CBS
Original article published February 24, 2015

House Republicans reignited a debate over the minimum wage Monday with a move to exempt some servers, bartenders and other tipped workers from future hikes — a likely non-starter for the Democrats in control of the Senate and governor’s office.

Restaurant owners, servers and union officials alike turned out in force to rehash some familiar arguments from last year’s law that bumped the state’s minimum wage up to $9.50 hourly by 2016. Now, Republican Rep. Pat Garofalo has a bill that would allow employers to pay tipped staff $8 hourly if tips bring their pay above $12 an hour.

…

That gives the parade of waiters, waitresses and union representatives who objected to Garofalo’s bill a strong ally. Along with some House DFL lawmakers, they portrayed the proposal as an attack on last year’s much-needed wage boost.

“This bill is an attack on the dignity of working people, and you have a chance to stand with workers or to hurt them” Cliff Martin of Take Action Minnesota said.

Click here for video and the full article. 

Filed under
Organizing a New Economy

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