Minneapolis Star Tribune, July 7
There are better ways to handle school lunch debt
In some parts of the country, children who have delinquent school lunch accounts are still treated shamefully. Some lunchroom workers mark kids’ arms with embarrassing “I need lunch money” stamps, or serve cold cheese sandwiches as alternatives to hot lunches. In the worst cases, they trash the food, right in front of the kid with the unpaid bill and the rest of the students in the cafeteria.
Children should not be publicly humiliated or go hungry due to the failures of grown-ups.
That’s why federal guidelines that went into effect this month on handling school lunch debt are welcome. Beginning last week, the U.S. Agriculture Department requires school districts to adopt meal-debt policies and to inform parents about problems at the beginning of the school year.
Although the agency’s directive does not specifically ban some tactics, it does encourage schools to work closely with parents to address delinquent accounts and to ensure that kids get meals. The smart federal action was taken following a 2014 Agriculture Department report that confirmed the widespread use of shaming to compel parents to pay bills.
Locally, in 2014, Mid-Minnesota Legal Aid surveyed state school districts and learned that more than 40 had immediately or eventually refused hot lunches to students who don’t pay. To our state’s credit, many Minnesota schools took those reports to heart and developed different practices before the federal guidelines went into effect. Gov. Mark Dayton proposed and the Legislature passed a law requiring schools receiving school lunch aid to make free lunch available to all students who qualify. And by state statute, schools must ensure that reminders for payment of outstanding meal balances do not demean or stigmatize any child.
The state’s three largest districts - Anoka-Hennepin, St. Paul and Minneapolis - report that they make sure that eligible students receive lunches. In the core city districts, successful efforts to raise money privately to pay delinquent lunch bills helped support the program.
Anoka-Hennepin and some other districts say their nonpayment issues come from families that, according to guidelines, should be able to afford the $2.55 to $3.00 lunches. The reasons they fall behind vary; parents who have lost jobs and fallen on harder times could be eligible for free lunches without realizing it. Districts are now encouraged to reach out to those families to provide eligibility information.
Some who don’t pay apparently believe that if other students get free lunches, they should, too. In some cases, when gentler efforts have failed, districts turned over outstanding bills to collection agencies. Parents who can afford the meals but choose to stiff their districts should understand that when schools must buy meals with general funds, resources may be removed from functions such as buying books or adding staff members.
But however school districts, which are accountable to taxpayers, rightly seek to collect money that is rightly owed, it should be done among adults - never by embarrassing kids.
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St. Cloud Times, July 8
44 states correct to balk at releasing private voter information
Minnesota Secretary of State Steve Simon announced June 30 that he would defy a request from the president’s Election Integrity Commission to turn over detailed voter information to the federal government.
“I will not hand over Minnesota voters’ sensitive personal information to the commission,” he said in a statement. “I have serious doubts about the commission’s credibility and trustworthiness. Its two co-chairs have publicly backed President Trump’s false and irresponsible claim that millions of ineligible votes were cast in the last election.”
That’s a pointed statement.
But lest the debate devolve immediately into partisan finger-pointing, note that Simon, a Democrat, was not the only state election official to be blunt in response to the commission’s request.
“They can go jump in the Gulf of Mexico, and Mississippi is a great state to launch from,” said Mississippi Secretary of State Delbert Hosemann, a Republican.
“You’re not going to play politics with Louisiana’s voter data, and if you are, then you can purchase the limited public information available by law to any candidate running for office. That’s it,” said Louisiana Secretary of State Tom Schedler, also a Republican.
In all, 44 states have in part or in totality declined to provide the requested voter data. Why?
The Presidential Advisory Commission on Election Integrity was created to ferret out voter fraud (a worthy cause, although overblown based on the actual number of cases that have been found in recent election cycles).
The plan is to get all 50 states to provide all publicly available information about every voter, including name, address, date of birth, last four digits of Social Security numbers, political party affiliation, voter history since 2006, criminal history, military history, overseas citizen information and voter registration history in other states.
Once all of that information is sent to Washington, the idea is to cross-reference the lists with each other, as well as other data, to catch people who voted when they shouldn’t have or are registered in more than one location.
It sounds simple. It is not. Just consider how many Sam Johnsons exist among America’s more than 200 million eligible voters. How many of those are Samuels, Samanthas, Samms, Sam Jr., Sam Sr., or Sams who moved since the last election? It’s easy to see how list matching - a Sisyphean task in itself - will be the “easy” part.
But many of the states’ objections are more fundamental than skepticism about whether the commission is up to the task.
Some state officials, like Florida Secretary of State Ken Detzner, point out that their own laws prohibit release of Social Security numbers or voter data about, for instance, police officers or victims of stalking or domestic violence.
Wisconsin’s message appears to be that the commission can buy the same list that is available to anyone, but it won’t release any additional information. That’s a viable option for Minnesota’s voter data, as well. By law, any Minnesota registered voter can buy the voter registration list - but it won’t have ID or Social Security numbers or dates of birth, rendering it largely useless as a tool for detecting vote fraud.
Giving this commission what it wants is at least as risky as the Real ID Act that Minnesotans held out against far longer than the rest of the nation. The data security risks are gargantuan and real at a very personal level, and the problem - as small as it has proved to be by study after study - can be combated by states in compliance with their own laws.
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Mankato Free Press, July 9
New state law to help strengthen ag’s future
Agriculture is and always has been a foundation of Minnesota’s economy.
Thanks to a new law that is the first of its kind in the country, there’s a better chance agriculture will be a key part of the state’s future.
The law helps younger farmers get access to farmland. It provides tax credits to landowners who sell or rent land or farm equipment to them. Iowa and Nebraska offer similar tax credit programs for land rental, but Minnesota will be the first state to also allow the credits on land sales, according to the Star Tribune.
Anyone who has lived in a rural area is well aware of how tough it is to start out in farming but knows how key it is that young farmers keep entering the field, so to speak. In south-central Minnesota census numbers reveal the average age of farmers is mid-50s, with Le Sueur County farmers’ average age at 57.3. Only 4 percent of operators are less than 35 years old.
If young farmers aren’t filling the boots of older farmers, the economy of this region as well as the state as a whole is threatened. Without a lot of equity to get started, newcomers to farming find bank loans are tricky to obtain. Land owners understandably don’t want to lose money when they rent or sell. The new law should help give landowners an incentive to rent land to beginners. Lots of land is going to change hands as more farmers retire or die. (Landowners don’t qualify for tax credits if they sell or rent to family members.)
The state ag department already has other beginning farmer assistance available, such as a web tool to link farmers to farmland, a directory of data and programs available, and a Farm Business Management Scholarship Program. All of those measures are important to offer the support young farmers need, along with new methods such as this fresh law that continue to look at what’s necessary to maintain a healthy farm economy.
Young farmers are the future of agriculture in this state. Making sure they don’t run into insurmountable obstacles now and down the road are important to keeping agriculture strong.
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