A coalition of environmental groups has announced it plans to spend more than a quarter of a million dollars this summer on a public awareness campaign centered on proposed sulfide mines in northern Minnesota.

Despite the continuing legal drama surrounding the two constitutional amendments headed for this fall’s ballot, the groups formed to support or defeat the amendments to outlaw gay marriage and mandate voter ID are in something of a holding pattern

The fourth round of constitutionally dedicated funding for outdoors projects is under way at the state Capitol.

The advocacy group Conservation Minnesota next week will release a detailed accounting of state lawmakers' track record on Legacy spending. In it the group raises concerns that lawmakers are using Legacy funds in ways that voters didn’t intend when they agreed in 2008 to increase the sales tax to pay for outdoors and cultural projects.

Amid the flurry of big-ticket budget bills and spreadsheets that have overtaken the Capitol in the past week, the comparatively puny environmental budget bills moving through the Legislature have attracted little attention in most quarters.

Several state legislators with impeccable voting records on environmental issues were knocked down a peg in a conservation advocacy group’s annual legislative scorecard released Monday.

The Conservation Minnesota Advocacy group downgraded dozens of legislators in its 2009 legislative scorecard released Monday.

Legislative leaders have signaled recently that job growth will be the central goal of the bonding bill in the 2010 legislative session. Those sentiments portend good things for remodeling buildings on college campuses and for bridge replacement projects. But the focus on economic development concerns environment and conservation groups that also ask for hundreds of millions of dollars in bonding for things like acquiring prairie and wetlands.