“If you were going to design a session with a goal to push businesses out of Minnesota and create disincentives for new business to come here, they succeeded in doing that,” said Charlie Weaver, executive director of the Minnesota Business Partnership, which includes the CEOs of the state’s largest companies. “Overall, this session will be remembered as one where nearly every Minnesotan will pay more.”

One word sums up Bill Blazar’s reaction to the 2013 session, and ours: Why?

Lawmakers had a $627 million budget shortfall to deal with, said Blazar, who works for the Minnesota Chamber of Commerce. “Why are they raising taxes by more than $2 billion?”

“Why not hold the line?” asks Kim Crockett of the Center of the American Experiment, noting that Minnesota already spends more than peer states on K-12 education, higher education and health and human services.

There’s concern about how tax increases will impact decisions and business behavior going forward, said the Minnesota Chamber’s Laura Bordelon, noting the state’s April unemployment report, which showed the loss of 11,400 jobs.

There’s also concern about tax policy that’s “not particularly good for the integrity of the revenue system,” Mark Haveman, executive director of the Minnesota Center for Fiscal Excellence, told us.

They “put a lot of chips” on the corporate income tax, which is the most volatile of state tax structures, he said, something that is “not good for competitiveness” in a state with one of the nation’s highest corporate and individual income tax rates.

It’s not a particularly good session for accountable government either, Haveman told us, because “there’s lots of hidden taxation, a lot of distortion of tax prices.”

Property-tax relief efforts, he said, amount to “spending $400 million to insulate taxpayers from the true cost of local government.”

Minnesota 2020 executive director John Van Hecke has a different perspective. He told us the session will remembered for setting funding priorities that are “actually going to make people’s lives better.”

Small business succeeds best, he maintains, “when people have money in their pockets. Stimulating the economy has an amazing downriver impact on business profitability. You don’t grow the economy through austerity.”

The session, he said, puts Minnesota “back on the right track” after 10 years of “disinvesting in education, in communities, in people” with public policies that “directed resources away from the kinds of investments that have traditionally made Minnesota strong.”

In education, he cites increases in “base funding” or per-pupil dollars. The commitment “says we trust school boards, trust teachers, trust superintendents and principals to make choices for the strongest future possible.”

Weaver takes issue: “They put more money into schools, but with no accountability. They threw money at the problem with no reform.”

Of particular concern, he said, are eliminating the basic competency requirement for a high-school diploma and reductions in teacher evaluation and testing.

“This Legislature and the governor chose go back to the past,” said Blazar. “Their solution is to raise taxes and put more money into programs that have been around forever and nobody frankly knows if they will work.”

How will the session be judged?

We’ll get a formal reading as soon as next year when voters weigh in on Election Day on whether or not House members did a good job.

Other measures might take longer. “If you look over the next five years on where businesses locate in this country and where Minnesota businesses expand, that will tell the tale,” Weaver said.

What lawmakers are doing is “showing people the door,” Crockett told us. “We’re growing government at the cost of the health of the entire state.”

This editorial originally appeared in the May 19, 2013 edition of the St. Paul Pioneer Press.

There’s plenty to like on the spending side of their balance sheet. The DFL plan pumps an additional $725 million into public education from preschool through graduate school. That’s enough to reverse the deep higher-education cuts of the past two years; ease the squeeze that has some of the state’s public schools operating only four days a week; pay for all-day kindergarten, and offer preschool scholarships to low-income families.

The plan also includes measures to close a nagging $627 million budget gap, the residue not only of the Great Recession but also of a dozen years of legislative failure to balance the budget in a lasting way.
 
Particularly worrisome is a new marginal tax bracket that will apply to the state’s top 2 percent of incomes. The rate attached to that bracket remains to be set by a House-Senate conference committee, but it is almost certain to be among the nation’s highest, especially after an anticipated temporary surcharge for top earners “blinks on” to get state aid payments to schools back to their normal schedule. After four years of payment delays, ending the “school shift” is an $860 million one-time expense.

Tax ideas that would have allowed for a lower income tax rate, including clothing and alcohol taxes, were rejected because they would have fallen on the middle class. While that decision is true to Dayton’s 2010 campaign promises, it comes at an economic price. Making Minnesota an income tax outlier among the states won’t be helpful in attracting and sustaining private-sector investment.

In addition, like a bad penny, a bad tax policy idea that disappeared two months ago turned up again Sunday. Applying the state sales tax to some currently untaxed business-to-business purchases will be part of the plan, Senate Majority Leader Tom Bakk announced. He was not specific about which items or services would become taxable, nor about how the revenue thus raised would be used, other than for “significant economic development.”

Regardless of how the money would be used, taxing business inputs is not sound policy. It layers hidden taxes into the cost of goods and services and takes a toll on wages and job creation in the affected industries. Those costs will affect low- and middle-class Minnesotans as surely as a clothing sales tax would. But the spurned clothing tax would have had the virtue of transparency, and could have been offset for low-income earners by a refundable tax credit, as the Senate tax bill provided.

To be sure, businesses will benefit from some of the property tax relief measures that total a hefty $400 million over two years in the DFL plan. But low- and middle-income homeowners and renters ought to be favored as the tax conference committee allocates that sizable sum.

Property tax relief is warranted for homeowners and renters whose taxes are disproportionately high relative to their incomes. But homeowner property taxes in Minnesota rank in the middle range among the states, according to the nonpartisan Washington-based Tax Foundation. They aren’t putting Minnesota at a competitive disadvantage. High income taxes are. DFLers would do well to shrink their property tax relief budget for the sake of a somewhat lower top income tax rate.

The DFL plan includes debt service spending in 2014-15 sufficient for an $800 million bonding bill. But the majority’s all-DFL approach to setting the rest of the budget appeared Sunday to dim chances that a bonding bill will be enacted this year. Republican leaders said that since they were excluded from budget-setting, they’re less interested in supplying the eight minority votes in the House and two in the Senate required to achieve the 60 percent supermajority required for general-obligation bonding.

We hope they reconsider. Failing to enact a bonding bill while interest rates remain low and public-works needs are pressing would be a sorry result. It would be particularly disruptive to the multiyear renovation of the State Capitol that was begun last year.

Republicans have offered no alternative budget plan this session, evidently preferring to stand aside and criticize DFL decisions. They should know that if they scuttle a bonding bill, they will deserve to be seen by this session’s critics as part of the problem.

This editorial originally appeared in May 14, 2013 edition of the Star Tribune.

Allowing time to complete that work, the requirement was scheduled to take effect in 2014.

But despite that timeline — and the yearlong efforts of a teacher evaluation working group — there is a possibility that implementation could be delayed because of cost concerns. That shouldn’t happen. Improving teacher quality and narrowing Minnesota’s significant learning disparities between some groups of students is work that can’t wait.

Gov. Mark Dayton included $10 million in funding in his 2013 budget proposal. However, neither the House nor Senate education bills currently provide any new dollars. In fact, a recently added amendment to the Senate bill calls for postponing the required job reviews another year.

The Senate provision responds to a request from several education groups, including the teachers union and associations of state principals, superintendents and school boards. All are concerned that the 2011 Legislature failed to include new funding for the assessments.

By their estimate, doing the evaluations will cost Minnesota districts a total of $290 million per year. They also argue that the evaluation model developed by the working group will be tried in pilot districts during 2013-14, which will not allow sufficient time to analyze how well it works.

To their credit, some reform-minded members of the working group say that now is not the time to reverse momentum for the assessments. They point out that many districts, in their efforts to comply with the law, are well on their way with evaluations — even without additional funding.

A survey conducted by the group last year found that about 77 percent of the nearly 2,000 districts surveyed already had a written evaluation system in place. Some of those policies may need adjustment to align with state standards, but making those changes won’t always involve significant new expenses.

The payoff should be worth any additional costs. A recent study by the education advocacy group MinnCAN found that nearly 90 percent of teachers believe that evaluations that align with and help drive professional development that will advance student learning.

It’s also important to remember that many districts already receive money under the Q-Comp program, which was established during the Pawlenty administration to reform teacher compensation and tie it more directly to student performance. In addition, state money now earmarked for professional development could be used to offset evaluation costs.

Lawmakers should also consider the fact that Minnesota applied for and received a waiver from federal No Child Left Behind rules — in part because of its commitment to have the evaluation system in place by 2014.

Despite the clear connection between quality instruction and student achievement, Minnesota schools have generally done a mediocre job on evaluations.

In the past, U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan has reprimanded this state and others for dragging their feet on teacher assessments.

He wasn’t alone. The National Council on Teacher Quality, the Center for American Progress and the American Enterprise Institute all gave Minnesota Ds for its teacher evaluation systems. And one of the reasons the state missed out on federal funds through the Race to the Top program was because of a poor rating on instructor assessments.

That should change — sooner rather than later. The Legislature should proceed with plans to implement the evaluation system, and school districts should embrace the opportunity to improve instruction.

This editorial originally appeared in the Minneapolis Star Tribune on April, 30, 2013.

The Minnesota Business Partnership has some concerns with this bill. While we understand the difficulty of addressing program reductions within Health and Human Services (HHS), we also note the spending trend in this budget area is unsustainable in the long term. HHS spending is expected to continue to grow at a faster rate than the economy and projected state revenues.

HMO Surcharge

We have concerns with the surcharge on health plans that would net an additional $80 million for the state. While we appreciate the idea of maximizing federal dollars, the impact of this surcharge on health plans is uneven and will result in increased cost for private consumers of HMOs. This will increase the cost-shift from public programs to a segment of private payers. With the vast number of changes that will imminently be imposed on the market due to the federal Accountable Care Act, we have concerns about the overall impact of the surcharge on health plans in this market.

MinnesotaCare Reform

We recognize potential in the state’s transition from MinnesotaCare to a Basic Health Plan (BHP) as permitted by the ACA. This transition would draw down hundreds of millions of dollars in federal funding. The state should, however, strive to cover MinnesotaCare populations entirely with this funding. It should be more than sufficient to provide equal care to current public program enrollees without additional revenue increases. The state should provide a full accounting of federal funding and transparency relating to its use and distribution over existing and continuing public program structures. The state should not use the creation of a BHP to expand benefits or increase costs to consumers and taxpayers.

This is not meant to be a comprehensive list of our position on the numerous proposals contained in this bill, but rather highlights of some of our main concerns.

Thank you for your commitment to ensuring all of Minnesota’s students have access to a world-class education.  We’re writing to ask that you not include the provision in SF 453 that delays implementation of the 2011 teacher evaluation law.

The most important in-school factor for ensuring our students’ success is an effective teacher.  In passing the 2011 teacher evaluation law you sought to provide all teachers with regular performance evaluations designed to help them improve instructional practices.

Since the law became effective, Minnesota has received a federal NCLB waiver based in part on implementation of the teacher evaluation law, and the Minnesota Department of Education (MDE), with advice from a task force consisting primarily of teachers, developed a state default model.  The state’s default model was not intended to be used by all districts, but by those that aren’t able to negotiate a local model.

In fact, while developing the state’s model, a survey of districts was conducted asking about current teacher evaluation policies.  Of the 198 districts that responded, 153 (77%) said they have a formal written teacher evaluation process in place.

Clearly, statewide implementation of the state’s default model is unnecessary.

This is also a reflection of the commitment of teachers to ensuring their professional growth and its connection to improved student performance.  For example a new statewide poll of Minnesota teachers by MinnCAN which found:

• 89 percent of respondents say that teacher evaluations that align with, and help drive professional development opportunities for teachers  will help advance student learning.

Now is not the time to reverse the momentum for providing teachers regular evaluations to help improve their practice.  Districts and their teachers are either evaluating existing policies, or developing policies, and this is consistent with the timeline submitted by MDE in our NCLB waiver:

• 2011-12: model development
• 2012-13: model refinement
• 2013-14: pilot year
• 2014-15: full implementation
• 2015-16: implementation refinement

Through your leadership, and that of school boards and teachers across the state, Minnesota is well positioned to ensure all teachers have regular evaluations that will lead to improved student success.

Thank you, and we look forward to working with you on behalf of our students.

Sincerely,

Lynnell Mickelsen
Co-founder,
Put Kids First Minneapolis

David Olson
President,
Minnesota Chamber of Commerce

Kathy Saltzman
State Director – MN,
StudentsFirst

Daniel Sellers
Executive Director,
MinnCAN

Chris Stewart
Executive Director,
African American Leadership Forum

Charlie Weaver
Executive Director,
Minnesota Business Partnership

While we appreciate the efforts of Senator Wiger to help ensure Minnesota students have access to a world-class education, we’re writing to express our strong concerns with the current version of S.F. 453.  Our primary concerns with S.F. 453 are the:

1. Elimination of state expectations in reading, writing and math for students to earn a diploma;
2. Delayed implementation of the teacher evaluation law; and
3. Re-creation of a state-mandated property tax, the General Education levy.

Basic expectations.  The most devastating shortcoming of S.F. 453 is the elimination of state expectations for student achievement on the state’s reading, writing and math standards to earn a high school diploma.  S.F. 453 repeals our current high school exams (e.g. GRAD), and lacks any basic state expectations in the future. 

With implementation of the GRAD exams, high school student achievement and graduation gaps are closing.  One reason for this improvement is the GRAD exams are based on Minnesota’s academic standards.  As a result, students, families and teachers have information on student progress throughout their K-12 experience and can modify instruction as needed to help them succeed.

We are one of 25 states, representing nearly 70% of all U.S. students, that requires students to show basic competency in core subjects through objective state exams.  These policies not only provide consistent expectations for student performance among diverse school districts, but also ensure the value of a diploma. 

We’ve supported the proposed changes to high school exams proposed in S.F. 453, but only with the inclusion of basic state expectations for student achievement in reading, writing and math to earn a diploma.

Teacher evaluations.  Minnesota is one of 23 states to ensure teachers have regular evaluations to highlight areas of expertise and further develop other areas of practice.  This is one of the most critical policies we can have to support teachers and improve student achievement.  It’s also a key element of the state’s NCLB waiver.

Delaying implementation of this law is unnecessary and sends mixed messages to school districts and the public about the legislature’s commitment to ensuring all teachers have evaluations to support improved practice.

General Education levy.  S.F. 453 creates a new state mandated property tax, the General Education levy.  At a time when the legislature is focused on reducing property taxes, it’s ironic the state would create a new property tax.

When the General Education levy was repealed in 2001, the state created what is commonly referred to as the statewide business property tax.  This property tax now raises $800 million a year.  Re-creating the General Education levy without eliminating, or correspondingly reducing the statewide business property tax ignores the 2001 trade-off and creates another financial burden for employers.

S.F. 453 does include some positive provisions such as a focus on early learning, literacy by third grade and the math corps.  However, in a world where expectations for student achievement are constantly rising, eliminating statewide graduation expectations and delaying teacher evaluations sets our students up for failure.

We look forward to continuing to work with you to ensure our students have a world-class education.

While we appreciate Representative Marquart’s commitment to ensuring Minnesota’s students are among the best prepared in the world, we’re writing to express our strong concerns with the current version of H.F. 630.  Our primary concerns with H.F. 630 are the:

• Elimination of state expectations in reading, writing and math for students to earn a diploma; and
• Lowering expectations for the performance of new teachers in reading, writing and math.

Basic expectations.  The most devastating shortcoming of H.F. 630 is the elimination of state expectations for student achievement on the state’s reading, writing and math standards to earn a high school diploma.  H.F. 630 repeals our current high school exams (e.g. GRAD), and lacks any basic state expectations in the future. 

With implementation of the GRAD exams, high school student achievement and graduation gaps are closing.  One reason for this improvement is the GRAD exams are based on Minnesota’s academic standards.  As a result, students, families and teachers have information on student progress throughout their K-12 experience and can modify instruction as needed to help them succeed.

We are one of 25 states, representing nearly 70% of all U.S. students, that requires students to show basic competency in core subjects through objective state exams.  These policies not only provide consistent expectations for student performance among diverse school districts, but also ensure the value of a diploma. 

We support legislation (H.F. 1506) similar to the proposed changes in high school exams contained in H.F. 630.  The key difference, however, is the establishment of state expectations for earning a diploma – set at a level where students wouldn’t need remedial courses to enter a post-secondary certificate program.

With H.F. 630, Minnesota is poised to return to the time when we had no common expectations for high school graduation and the public, employers and post-secondary institutions expressed dismay over graduates who couldn’t read or do basic math.

New teachers.  Just one year ago, the House voted 132 – 0, the Senate voted 60 – 1 and Governor Dayton signed into law the expectation that new teachers be able to pass state reading, writing and math exams before they entered a classroom.  H.F. 630 reverses this commonsense expectation.  To the degree accommodations are needed for language immersion teachers, or other extenuating circumstances, they should be made.  However, creating indefinite exemptions from this expectation is unwarranted.

We do want to recognize some of the positive aspects of H.F. 630.  These include the focus on early education, early literacy, the math corps and the continuing role of the Online and Digital Learning Advisory Council.

We’re also very supportive of the goals statement for achieving the world’s best workforce: closing the achievement gap; 100% literacy for third grade students; and 100% attainment of college and career readiness for high school graduates.  A suggested improvement for meeting these goals is building a stronger role for parents, beyond the oversight actions of the Department.

We look forward to continuing to work with you to ensure our students can compete globally, though a critical factor for accomplishing this goal is setting common state expectations for all students to earn a diploma.

The Minnesota Business Partnership has some concerns with this bill. While we understand the difficulty of addressing program reductions within Health and Human Services (HHS), we also note the spending trend in this budget area is unsustainable in the long term. HHS spending is expected to continue to grow at a faster rate than the economy and projected state revenues.

Medical Assistance Surcharge on Hospitals

We have concerns with the surcharge on hospitals that would net an additional $100 million for the state. While we appreciate the idea of maximizing federal dollars, the impact of this surcharge on hospitals is uneven and may further the cost-shift to private payers. With so many moving parts to the implementation of the federal Accountable Care Act (ACA), we are concerned with the assumption that any increase in covered patients attributable to Medical Assistance expansion will help hospitals recoup any losses from this surcharge.

Cap HMO reserves

We are also concerned with the provision that would take approximately $47 million from private, nonprofit health plan revenues. A health plan company’s reserves are part of sound business practices and are governed by Minnesota statute to maintain solvency for the company and the individuals it serves. It is unclear how the state will distinguish reserves attributable to public programs versus private customers. It is also unclear how this will affect actuarial soundness of these plans. With the vast number of changes that will imminently be imposed on the market due to the federal ACA, we have concerns about the overall impact of this cap on HMO reserves.

Insurance mandates

We have concerns about the imposition of a new mandated benefit, related to autism coverage, on private consumers. As the cost of health care and health insurance continues to rise, employers already struggle to maintain coverage for employees. This mandate is particularly expensive because the state is responsible for its costs as the mandate lies outside the essential benefits set, resulting in eight-figure costs to taxpayers.  The mandate has not been shown to be cost effective and will increase health care costs. That is the wrong policy for Minnesota to pursue.

Basic Health Plan

We recognize potential in the state’s transition from MinnesotaCare to a Basic Health Plan (BHP) as permitted by the ACA. This transition would draw down hundreds of millions of dollars in federal funding. The state should, however, strive to cover MinnesotaCare populations entirely with this funding. It should be more than sufficient to provide equal care to current public program enrollees without additional revenue increases. The state should provide a full accounting of federal funding and transparency relating to its use and distribution over existing and continuing public program structures. The state should not use the creation of a BHP to expand benefits or increase costs to consumers and taxpayers.

This is not meant to be a comprehensive list of our position on the numerous proposals contained in this bill, but rather highlights of some of our main concerns. 

There are two major challenges that Minnesota’s K-12 education system must deal with if our students are to be prepared to compete for jobs in the 21st century. The first is making sure that a high school diploma means a student is prepared for a postsecondary education. The second is closing the nation-leading academic achievement gap that persists between our white and nonwhite students.

If we can get these two things right, not only will Minnesota students rightly earn their place among the best in the world, but every child in our state will benefit from a rigorous education that sets clear standards and demands proficiency.

Unfortunately, one of the best tools we have to improve student preparedness and close the achievement gap doesn’t create front-page headlines (like money and class size), or mobilize thousands for rallies or protests (like tenure). That tool? Testing — to ensure that all kids meet basic academic expectations. In Minnesota, business leaders have continually fought for it, higher-education institutions are demanding it and all students are benefiting from it.

It’s so effective that there isn’t a rational explanation for why legislators and education officials in Minnesota want to scrap it.

Legislation supported by the state’s commissioner of education would eliminate the reading and writing GRAD exams that Minnesota high-schoolers currently must pass to earn a diploma (the requirement to pass the math GRAD exam was suspended in 2009 — and in the chart below, you can see what happened to academic achievement when the math test was no longer required to graduate).

Instead of eliminating these tests, legislators should keep them as we transition to a new system based on what is used by our state’s higher-education institutions. Right now, 40 percent of Minnesota high school graduates who go on to attend a Minnesota postsecondary institution need remedial help (primarily in math) when they get there. What good is Minnesota’s 78 percent high school graduation rate if almost half of the graduates aren’t prepared for college or a career and technical school?

We can fix this. Our organizations — working with the Minnesota State Colleges and Universities system (MnSCU) — have developed a proposal to align high school exams with postsecondary admissions. These tests, taken in eighth, 10th and 11th grade in reading, writing, math and science, would identify how well students are prepared for a postsecondary option — whether that’s their immediate plan or not.

If we are serious about closing our nation-leading achievement gaps, eliminating basic expectations does not make sense. We’d also be ignoring the negative impacts of practices like social promotion and grade inflation, as well as research on how teacher expectations for students can differ based on race and income.

The gains made by minority students are real and proved by GRAD exam results. The accompanying chart clearly demonstrates how much improvement different student groups have made since the reading and writing tests became mandatory. To highlight just one example: The improvement for African-American students in reading was three times greater than it was for white students.

When taken together, Minnesota’s nonwhite students have demonstrated a 7 percent improvement in reading and a 9 percent improvement in writing since testing began. By eliminating the GRAD exams and any other basic expectations, we would lose the best tool we have for measuring student achievement and identifying where extra help is needed.

Further, backing away from basic expectations won’t help our students prepare for a future when a high school diploma isn’t enough to get a job. By the time this year’s seventh-graders graduate from high school, 70 percent of all jobs in Minnesota will require completion of some level of postsecondary education.

A Minnesota high school diploma has to be more than a timecard. Testing to the standards that our postsecondary institutions require, and expecting Minnesota students to meet them, will help ensure that. Getting rid of the tests because it’s politically expedient doesn’t help anyone, and will only guarantee that Minnesota kids are lapped in the international race for the jobs of the future.

David Olson is president of the Minnesota Chamber of Commerce, which represents 2,400 businesses across Minnesota. Charlie Weaver is the executive director of the Minnesota Business Partnership, which represents more than 100 CEOs from Minnesota’s largest employers.

This commentary originally appeared in the April 1, 2013 edition of the Minneapolis Star Tribune.

When the Affordable Care Act (ACA), also known as Obamacare, was passed in Washington, it was done with the members of one party taking over and doing it all their way. In Minnesota, we said we could do better.

But when the time came for Minnesota to lead the way, those in one party took over and did it all their way. We could have done better.

None of this will be free. In fact, the Minnesota model will cost us $332 million by 2016, and $68 million or more every year after that.

As the exchange adds a hoped-for 300,000 people to the insurance rolls (subsidized with borrowed federal money), the rest of those who buy insurance are certain to pay more. The ACA will add at least 15 percent and as much as 40 percent to the cost of a premium by 2016. The cost of the exchange and all the new rules it envisions could add another 5 percent. Funny way to control costs.

The Minnesota Chamber of Commerce, National Federation of Independent Businesses, Business Partnership and other job-creating groups offered ways to make the exchange leaner, more effective and actually more likely to work when the start switch is pushed on Oct. 1 this year. Those suggestions were largely ignored.

The exchange as passed allows an unelected seven-member board to set new insurance rules and standards that will likely increase costs significantly and not change much of anything for consumers. The board is barred from allowing anyone to serve who is currently working in this complicated industry. If knowledge is power, experience is king in a complex matter such as this. But not even a practicing physician is allowed, for fear he or she would be somehow biased.

The exchange board can pick and choose which plans will be offered. It will likely severely limit options for consumers. Choice breeds competition, and competition improves cost and quality. Minnesotans are smart enough to not have to rely on somebody else to limit their choices. We like having options, and we don’t like others telling us which choices we get. And if consumers want help choosing a plan, they can use brokers, navigators, carriers or the state’s new $41 million website to guide them.

The exchange will collect a 3.5 percent premium tax on every plan it sells. That is a lot. And that cost won’t be borne by some big, fat-cat businesses. No, it will be charged to small businesses and individuals who are barely making it now. And they will start paying a year before the state even needs to pay for the exchange.

The ACA already imposes a lot of new taxes and penalties that will fall disproportionately on these micro-engines of our economy. These new costs will come directly out of employee bonuses, additional staff budgets and capital investment. More drag on our small job creators won’t help us boom the economy.

Quality matters to all of us. The initial products offered will be subject to our highest, nation-leading insurance standards. Whatever ideas the board creates will likely have little impact on our already stringent rules for these plans, but they will cost more and reduce plan options. What a bargain — more cost for the same quality and less choice.

And while there will be a lot of reports filed about this board, no overseeing entity can do much except talk about how much money they spend. The Legislature and governor can “look but not touch.” There is no cap on the exchange’s budget nor controls on its spending.

When Minnesota listens to all of its voices, it does better work. On this most crucial of projects, it listened to just a few and ignored the rest.

Because ideas from business experts were not incorporated, the exchange will cost much more. It won’t be as effective. Quality improvements will fall short of what they might have been.

We should have learned from Washington’s mistakes. We could have done better.

Jim Abeler, R-Anoka, is a member of the Minnesota House.

This commentary originally appeared in the March 20, 2013 edition of the Minneapolis Star Tribune.