Layoffs hit UMN Extension food educators as MN grapples with Trump’s budget

For years the University of Minnesota Extension Institution has funded nutrition learning in low-income areas statewide including innovative projects like the medicine garden at the Ramsey County Fairgrounds which connects the county s military veterans to a Native American grower and healer On Monday all of Extension s full-time nutrition educators received termination letters permanently ending the million instruction and outreach campaign Extension issued letters to partners Tuesday from clinics and daycares to parks and food banks explaining that heavy cuts to the federal Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Activity or SNAP had forced the Minnesota Department of Children Youth and Families to slash grant funding for the dozens of wellbeing and wellness coordinators who run special projects or teach healthy eating to SNAP-eligible families across the state The cuts are a direct product of President Trump s Big Beautiful Bill approved last week by the Republican-led Congress The eight tribal nations in Minnesota alongside SNAP instruction programs nationwide face the same straits as a impact of the wide-ranging -page budget document Minnesota was a pilot campaign when it started years ago This is not temporary It is a permanent cut announced Patricia Olson director of Extension s Department of Family Physical condition and Wellbeing which is based in St Paul It is a national scheme How do you wind down a operation that is years old We re sad about losing staff but also about the kind of work we were doing in the society she added The sweeping budget bill which includes both spending cuts and tax cuts expected to add trillion to trillion to the national debt over the next decade has already had repercussions for Minnesota and the East Metro with deeper impacts likely as the regulation s numerous varied provisions take effect over the coming months and years Implications for Medicaid Nearly trillion in cuts to state Medicaid allotments nationwide may not be fully implemented until or leaving big choices ahead for the state of Minnesota which determines how federal Medicaid dollars are distributed stated Karen Kleinhans chief executive of the District Dental Care The nonprofit which maintains offices in Maplewood and four other locations across the state charges low-income patients on a sliding scale of its clients are on Medicaid while others are uninsured Kleinhans fears the state may roll back the increased Medicaid reimbursements that she and other safety-net dental care providers lobbied hard for in or make even deeper cuts We can t predict what the state will do with the very limited dollars that will be coming to them she declared If you are on Medicaid you should just make sure you get specific dental care before the end of this year because you might lose those benefits Minnesota is one of a handful of states where the counties conduct Medicaid screenings and connect seniors and the disabled to services Facing screening backlogs as long as eight months or more Ramsey County in recent times committed to hiring new financial assistance workers including screeners As a end of Trump s budget yearly screening requirements are doubling to twice-annually moving a goal post that already was exceedingly tough for chosen counties to reach We ve got to certify people twice a year That s a huge administrative burden commented Rafael Ortega who chairs the Ramsey County Board of Commissioners More people fall through the cracks and that extra work requirement falls on counties in Minnesota We have no immediate plans for the people we just hired to expedite financial assistance to let those people go he added We budgeted for that so we re good for a while The biggest impact is the people who are going to be cut off from Medicaid and are going to go through the emergency room Ortega predicted a trickle-down effect for hospitals nursing homes and other Medicaid-backed housing and care providers who likely will see more patients lacking in anatomical coverage Up to million in annual reimbursements for hospitals and nursing homes could be eliminated according to the League of Minnesota Cities If we don t verify people for Medicaid and then they go to the hospital or nursing homes that impacts reimbursements he stated County bureaucrats still are reading through the ordinance to get a grasp of it and bracing for changes that in several cases are well over a year into the future This bill pushes impacts out past the mid-term elections in November so we have to figure out what happens when Ortega stated Downtown real estate progress Real estate redevelopment also stands to be impacted for both better and for worse according to housing advocates Affordable housing developments often depend on federal low-income housing tax credits which will be altered in two meaningful procedures Daniel Lightfoot a spokesman for the League of Minnesota Cities revealed by email Wednesday The regulation creates a permanent increase in certain housing tax credit allocations beginning in and it also alters the threshold for bond financing for the developments It s estimated that these changes will finance over million additional affordable housing units nationwide over the next years Lightfoot wrote At the same time Minnesota cities and St Paul in particular are poised to lose redevelopment incentives aimed at renovating vacant buildings and boosting downtowns The new provision kills subsidies that helped developers more than meet city and state capacity efficiency standards undermining a carrot that groups like the St Paul Port Authority have used to entice evolution downtown Ortega predicted those changes would come down disproportionately hard on affordable housing but certain developers foresee even tougher times ahead for all types of maturation in distressed areas like downtown St Paul in particular in an era where the road already was murky In St Paul and Minnesota we have a range of power efficiency standards and aspirations that cost more than a regular building renovation reported St Paul developer Jamie Stolpestad who hopes to acquire various downtown properties through his family s firm Hedmark Holdings Based on the Biden-era Inflation Reduction Act there were federal tax incentives and other subsidies that usually more than offset these costs But with those largely stripped away under the BBB Act property owners are left to face those costs without federal level subsidies As a upshot of ordinance Trump signed into law in profits from the sale of stocks bonds real estate and other assets can be invested at essential tax savings in real estate rise projects located within distressed areas or Opportunity Zones of which St Paul is home to of the zones located in Ramsey County The new statute makes that initiative permanent and expands it to rural areas which could spell good news for a few areas Lightfoot noted Still of concern to certain developers Trump s budget tightens eligibility requirements for the O-Zones by changing the definition of what constitutes a distressed area Specific fear downtown St Paul may no longer qualify That s because household incomes within the surrounding census tract previously were limited to of area median income with the statistical area spanning multiple counties which inflates the average far beyond that of average incomes in St Paul Under the new regulation that threshold drops to of area median income The old rules resulted in majority of downtown sitting within qualified Opportunity Zones Stolpestad mentioned Those incentives drove investors to projects like the Arlow Apartments Marriott Courtyard Hotel and Ecolab University Stella Apartments But with the income standards shifting from of AMI to of AMI I think all the existing downtown census tracts will lose eligibility Electricity rates to rise Logan O Grady executive director of the Minnesota Solar Ability Industries Association noted the state s solar industry began letting workers go even before Trump s bill passed in anticipation of a rocky road ahead The decree cuts major federal subsidies for solar power in Minnesota from residential rooftop panels to mid-scale society projects but the impacts will be felt far beyond industry workers and individual residential buyers That s because Minnesota utilities are under state mandate to convert more of their capacity supply to renewables like wind and solar Without federal subsidies to do that they ll likely pass on the cost of those projects to everyday ratepayers or import more oil and natural gas from other states In other words electricity and home-heating costs are likely to go up for everyone The reality is all of us are going to see rates go up O Grady noted It s really the worst time for us If you look at all our of load development projections over the next decade they re set to jump by a lot because of things like details centers and EV chargers I live in a population where a content center is being built in Rosemount he added When you have this massive load advancement coming and you have tools available to deploy rooftop solar and society solar and other mid-scale projects and then you strip those away that doesn t make a whole lot of sense to me Other impacts foreseen Leaders with the League of Minnesota Cities stated Wednesday they re still sifting through the details of the -page statute but it eliminates or reduces a large number of of the programs authorized by the Biden administration through the federal Inflation Reduction Act either by cutting them entirely or rolling back implementation dates Environmental programs are a big target The bill rescinds unobligated funding for a huge portion of IRA grant programs Lightfoot stated by email including the Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund Environmental Justice Block Grants Atmosphere Impurity Reduction Grants State-Based Home Strength Efficiency Contractor Training Grants and the Neighborhood Access and Equity Plan Trump s bill also reduces the federal income tax that a variety of employees pay on tips and overtime wages Overtime is very common for a great number of city departments and a few cities have operations where employees earn tips for their work in utility roles Lightfoot wrote Cities may have to think about adjusting payroll systems which may cost cities money Related Articles Ramsey County law enforcement group seizes nearly pounds of meth in Minneapolis Medicaid provider UCare will no longer serve Ramsey and other Minnesota counties St Paul firefighters rescue man trapped in underground utility vault for days Woman who died after shooting on Minneapolis interstate was -year-old from St Paul Richard D Thompson has stepped down as History Theatre s artistic director