Leaders get real about plans for county's growth

The odds of ever having another major bridge from Scott County into the main job clusters of the urban core are weakening because so little is being done to set aside land, a group of civic leaders warned their legislators late last week.

"The responsibility for preserving right-of-way for the river crossing on the Hwy. 41 corridor is being left to the locals," county transportation planner Lisa Freese told eight south-metro lawmakers at a legislative strategy summit in Prior Lake on Friday. "There are significant challenges to Scott County in particular to protect that land from growth for 40 to 50 years."

The whole metro-wide pool of money for that purpose is a pittance compared to the needs, she and others warned. And even that pool is being threatened as urban interests look for ways to shore up transit funding closer in.

But legislators had a warning of their own: This is hardly the year for costly wish lists.

With the deficit the state is facing now, added to the bigger one that's coming, the possibility exists that "none of these things will happen," said DFL state Sen. Kevin Dahle, pointing to a document containing a list of county priorities. "Just think of the cuts we need just to get to a balanced budget."

Lawmakers offered more hope on new laws that make sense but don't cost money.

They found it striking to hear, for instance, that because of a legislative ban on planning for a possible Dan Patch commuter rail line from Northfield to Minneapolis, there's a good chance that stations on the Southwest Corridor light-rail line from downtown Minneapolis to Eden Prairie will be laid out without any regard to whether they could or should link up with the Dan Patch later on.

On money questions, however, the session got more tense as it went along, with lawmakers and local officials pointing fingers at one another.

Republican Rep. Paul Kohls, whose Carver County-based district crosses into part of Scott, warned of a need to "manage expectations," given the budget crisis.

"Gov. [Tim] Pawlenty will not support a tax increase," he said. "That's reality. House Republicans won't override his vetoes. That's the game field. We need a more sustainable spending trajectory," one that depends upon government reform.

Former Prior Lake Mayor Jack Haugen said that Scott County is a pioneer in reform to achieve cost savings. But legislators, he said, are putting party over the good of the state.

"If I'm a Republican or a Democrat, it doesn't mean I'm 100 percent in sync with every goll-darn issue on either side of that platform. ... People trust you to make judgments. At what point do we have people who truly represent the common good, rather than be tied so strongly to the caucus?"

The county's public works chief, Lezlie Vermillion, said that state and regional governments are sending signals that they have little or no interest in moving aggressively to preserve right-of-way for future river crossings, vital to Scott County's growth prospects.

Freese recalled that a wide corridor of unused land in Carver County, from Eden Prairie through Chaska, stood empty for decades as that area awaited the new Hwy. 212, which was recently built. "That would never have come to fruition without that right-of-way fund," she said.

Today, however, she said, it's "incredibly difficult to get funds from that." The Metropolitan Council has a $5 million fund for that purpose, with $3 million already spoken for, she said.

The council levies around $3.4 million a year to replenish the fund, she said, "but when you get into aggressive right-of-way acquisition, you and I know that one house can cost $500,000, so it wouldn't go very far. The Hwy. 41 corridor has a number of businesses. If they would choose to sell, it would be very difficult with that amount of money in the fund to secure an acquisition."

But Republican Rep. Mike Beard of Shakopee joined his colleagues in warning that with the economy in the state it's in, legislators will have little appetite for expanded taxing and spending. Worse, he said, is that available funds can go down when urban and rural lawmakers -- "at 3 in the morning when everyone is cranky and tired" -- make deals in which "funds get vacuumed up for other purposes."