Beltrami County Shares 2025 Legislative Priorities with Incoming Lawmakers

The 2025 Minnesota legislative session starts in less than a week on January 14th. Beltrami County has identified nearly a dozen legislative priorities in its 2025 legislative platform, with several of those likely requiring additional spearheading at the State Capitol.

The Beltrami County Board invited state Representative-elects to join in the first work session of the new year. The Board shared its 2025 legislative platform along with a list of priorities the county hopes the incoming lawmakers will fight for when they get to St. Paul.

“We had a list of ten priorities from them. 50% of them seem to be priorities for all counties across the state,” said Republican Rep. Matt Bliss, who was re-elected to House District 2B in November. “There are some substantial issues that affect Beltrami County.”

That list of priorities included efforts to help with the housing shortage, as well as the lack of transportation in the area. The Board brought up a number of programs that it says either doesn’t do enough to provide what the county needs or just cost too much.

“There’s a lot of unfunded mandates that are hurting our counties right now that we need to figure out a way to either cut back on or change to be able to alleviate a lot of the pressure that’s going on with the counties right now,” said Bidal Duran, the Republican House 2A Representative-elect.

“The problem that we’re going to have this year in the state is we’re facing a budget crisis and also a tight House and a tight Senate,” added Bliss, “So moving any kind of spending along can be a little bit tough. So we’re going to try to push through what we can to help the counties, and again, having half of the priorities be statewide priorities I think is going to help us out in that area.”

After the work session came to an end, both Representative-elects shared what they felt are the biggest issues facing the area.

“Each department has their own priorities, but they kept coming back to the hub and spoke in the bonding request for the new transfer station and solid waste disposal,” explained Bliss. “So that that seems like to be the big one that they want to push through.”

Both Bliss and Duran agreed that previous legislation currently has the surrounding counties spending too much out of their own pocket.

“We only have a third of our county property that’s taxable, so we don’t have the biggest revenue out there to be able to bring in and pay for a lot of things that are going on here,” Duran added. “We can’t have all these unfunded mandates from the state of Minnesota hurting our county anymore. We just can’t do it.”

Scott Winger, the new District 3 Commissioner for Beltrami County, also took his oath of office once the regular board meeting started. Richard Anderson, the former commissioner, was celebrated as well for his 13 years of service on the Board.