Minnesota Senate District 32: Kreun, Ford on housing, schools, fraud

How to make life in Minnesota more affordable drove most of the discussion in a forum earlier this month between the Republican incumbent state Sen. Michael Kreun (R-Blaine) and the Democratic-Farmer-Labor (DFL) challenger Chris Ford.

Kreun has said that cutting government spending and lowering taxes are good places to start.

“We’re overtaxed,” Kreun said at the Oct. 6 candidate forum. “And we need tax relief and to provide economic opportunity to get Minnesota going so that we can all live in a great state that’s thriving.”

For Ford, the focus was on taking care of Minnesotans struggling with the high cost of housing, health care and child care.

“A family of four right now is paying 30-something thousand dollars a year for child care. That’s unacceptable,” Ford said. “We need to make sure that we can give them tax breaks and also take care of the providers. Our seniors are suffering. They’re on Social Security and they just aren’t, you know, their cost of living is not catching up with what they’re bringing in.”

Where Ford and Kreun stand on affordable housing

“I think the number one thing we can do to make housing more affordable is get our property taxes under control,” Kreun said. Both he and Ford agreed something needs to be done about the state’s strict zoning and permitting rules. They’re often blamed for making it more expensive to build homes in Minnesota compared to other states.

“I think that owning a home is a right and not a privilege,” said Ford, “and people should not be priced out of owning a home.”

The 32nd District includes the city of Blaine, where 8% of the housing is manufactured homes. That’s more than twice the state average.

Ford said people who live in mobile homes need help. He blames private equity firms for driving up rents and making life difficult for residents.

“They’re on Social Security, and their Social Security is going up COLA [cost-of-living adjustment] 3%, but their rent’s going up 6%. I mean, no one can survive that,” said Ford.

Kreun came out against a bill that would limit rent increases in mobile home parks to 3% a year.

“Basic economics tells us that rent control has never worked,” he said. “You’re not going have investments, and these mobile home parks are not going be a good place to live.”

What do Kreun and Ford say about school funding?

Next month, Minnesotans will vote on a constitutional amendment to increase how much money is distributed to schools from the state’s Permanent School Fund. The amendment would increase distributions by roughly 50% while not raising income or property taxes. It has wide bipartisan support.

Ford said schools badly need the money.

“I don’t understand why you don’t want to invest in youth,” said Ford. “That’s truly what our future is about. And to withhold money back from the public school systems and make sure they’re not funded, what are we saying about our future?”

Kreun also supports the amendment, but he added it doesn’t address one of the biggest problems. Despite all the money Minnesota spends on public schools, he said they are worse off.

“How is that possible? It’s possible because the legislature imposed massive unfunded and underfunded mandates on our schools,” said Kreun. “That is unconscionable. So your taxes can go up and more money can go to the schools, yet they’re still struggling.”

Ford and Kreun on fraud

Kreun said the fraud scandal in the state’s social spending program is the “number one” issue for voters. He co-authored a bill in the senate to create a new Office of Inspector General to combat fraud and waste.

“But we need to do better,” he said. “We need to have automatic audits when our social services programs go out of control. We need to have legislative accountability so that those programs need to come back to the legislature when they get out of whack. We need to vote on those things so you all can hold us accountable.”

Ford didn’t address fraud during the forum, but he did later when interviewed on Heartland Signal’s “Driving It Home with Patty Vasquez.”

Ford said it was “ridiculous” to blame the fraud scandals on Democrats. He said huge spending increases in 2017 led to the problem, and that no one paid attention until years later.

The entire Oct. 6 forum from the League of Women Voters of Anoka, Blaine, Coon Rapids Area and the Ham Lake Area Chamber of Commerce between Ford and Kreun can be viewed below: