Beltrami Co. Wind Storm Reimbursement Bill Discussed at MN Capitol

Legislation authored by Minnesota House Reps. Bidal Duran (R) of District 2A and Matt Bliss (R) of District 2B, if passed, would fully reimburse Beltrami County for costs incurred from the Jun. 21 wind storm last year. The bill, House File 3530, was heard Wednesday by the House Public Safety Finance and Policy Committee and was laid over for possible inclusion in an omnibus bill.

During his testimony in favor of the bill, Bemidji Mayor Jorge Prince called the storm that swept through the surrounding area “a defining day in the city of Bemidji.”

“We experienced 125 mph straight-line winds, which later on, we were told, constituted a derecho,” said Prince. “We lost nine million trees in the affected area. Those trees fell on homes, they fell on businesses, they fell on public infrastructure, power lines, schools, etc.”

“The damage was devastating, and the recovery in affected communities will take many years,” said Rep. Duran.

Beltrami County fell $800,000 short of the amount of damages needed to request federal disaster assistance, but it did qualify for Minnesota’s Disaster Assistance Contingency Account funding, which provides 75% reimbursement for public infrastructure damage and leaves the county expected to cover the remaining 25%.

However, city and county leaders testified how those remaining costs, which amount to nearly $2.5 million, would affect the area for many years.

“I am very concerned about the aftermath of the storm,” Prince stated. “In fact, I would argue that it is a second storm, and this one’s a financial one.”

“Nine million trees, folks, that’s a lot of trees for a county like Beltrami to pick up the tab,” added Rep. Bliss.

Beltrami County Administrator Tom Barry noted during his testimony that due to the unique government-to-government relationship between the Leech Lake Band of Ojibwe and the federal government, damages within Leech Lake were excluded from the county’s total, as the band pursued assistance through its tribal authority.

“While appropriate and consistent with federal policy, this process had the unintended consequence of reducing the county’s official damage assessment to just below the required threshold [for federal reimbursement],” Barry elaborated, “despite the fact that the true impact across our shared region clearly exceeded it.”

Barry ended his testimony saying that the county does not have the capacity to absorb costs at this scale. Members of the committee stated they believe these types of storms are happening more frequently, and that the state needs to be better equipped to handle such events.

“We say ‘once-in-a-lifetime storm,’ and that is happening more and more and more frequently,” said Rep. Athena Hollins (DFL), District 66B. “We have FEMA funds that are no longer secure, and insurance isn’t going to save us because a lot of places aren’t even able to get insured anymore because of these storms and the climate change that is happening that is causing these disasters.”

“I think we are an outlier here; I think we do need the support,” Rep. Duran emphasized. “Beltrami County specifically is very poor, and it needs a little bit more assistance than most.”

House File 3530 was laid over at the end of the hearing, which does not mean the bill is dead. It can still be included in a bigger budget bill at the end of the session.