Matt Doll, Minnesota Environmental Partnership
Last November, Minnesotans were closely divided on most state and federal elections, but we found one significant area of common ground, with over 77% of voters in favor of renewing the dedication of lottery funding for the Environment and Natural Resources Trust Fund (ENRTF) in our state Constitution for another 25 years.
That overwhelming support is thanks in part to how effectively the ENRTF has invested in Minnesota. The ENRTF has been funding projects to restore, enhance, and protect Minnesota’s natural resources for more than 35 years. It supports thousands of jobs and has made an impact in every county in the state.
Thanks to the November constitutional amendment vote and the 2023 law that authorized it, the ENRTF will now have a wider reach. The amendment allowed additional money to be spent out of the Trust Fund each year and triggered a 2023 law that set up a new Community Grants program to use that money.
This new program is designed to empower small organizations and disadvantaged communities that have historically lacked the means to access the ENRTF funding process. Traditionally, primarily large entities like state agencies and universities have been able to navigate the process through the Legislative-Citizen Commission on Minnesota Resources (LCCMR) to use ENRTF dollars. Now, smaller groups will be able to apply for grants to power pollution reduction, conservation, and environmental education efforts. The DNR will host the grants program, but a Community Grants Advisory Council designed to be representative of the state’s diversity and environmental knowledge, will guide the process.
The first funding for the Community Grants program that Minnesotans created will be availabe July 1, 2025, but already some Legislators are trying to quietly undermine this new opportunity for everyday Minnesotans.
Earlier this past week, the Minnesota House Ways and Means Committee was scheduled to take up the House’s ENRTF funding bill, HF 1218, as it does each year. This bill is ideally something of a formality for legislative approval. It consists of the ENRTF project funding recommendations from the LCCMR.
At the hearing, however, an amendment was added that would largely eliminate the Community Grants program in its infancy. The amendment would start by spending the entire increase in lottery funding for the next year on a list of cherry picked projects, some that the LCCMR already decided not to fund, circumventing the process.
After that initialear raid, the amendment would cut funding for the Community Grants program by 95%, dedicating nearly all the new funding it to other ongoing programs. It would also eliminate the Advisory Council, doing away with the public participation and environmental justice focus of the program.
This last-minute addition to the bill was contested in the Ways and Means Committee, but it was passed and was sent to the floor of the House on a close party line vote. However, the full House voted to table the bill – with the raid on community grants – for now, meaning it could be brought up later in the session in the now evenly-divided House. That means it could still move forward, or at least become part of a final negotiated final budget agreement between the two Legislative houses and Governor Walz.
MEP is standing in staunch opposition to this raid. We fought hard, alongside a diverse set of organizations and communities, to pass this improvement to the ENRTF. We believe that Minnesotans of all backgrounds have an interest in making our communities healthier and cleaner, and Minnesota voters agree with us. With this raid, the Legislature is telling Minnesotans, especially in diverse and low-income communities, that they should be content to live with the status quo and miss out on promised opportunities to protect and restore their local community resources.
Thanks to Governor Walz and the Minnesota DNR for opposing this raid. We’re asking Legislators and Governor Walz to hold firm and not give an inch on this attempt to divert these funds. Not a single dollar dedicated to community grants should be taken for other projects – we know that if we give an inch, a future Legislatures are likely to take a mile. We’re asking Minnesotans to lend their voice to blocking this raid and ensuring that the Legislature passes a clean ENRTF bill.
Minnesotans want the Community Grants Program, and we will continue fighting to make sure they get it. All of it.