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Tag Archives: Dean Johnson

Higher ed budgets headed for scrutiny

Gene Pelowski pulled out his iPad on the first day of session and went straight to YouTube. The incoming Democratic chairman of the House Higher Education Finance and Policy Committee likes to pull up the same video clip for anyone who comes into his office to ask for something: the famous opening scene of the Marx brother’s 1932 movie “Horse Feathers.”

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Why gambling expansion remains a long-shot bet

A steady downpour didn’t keep Indian gambling workers from flocking outside the state Capitol in St. Paul last April. At least 1,500 people gathered outside on the building’s steps, some arriving by the busload from reservations hours away. Clad in raincoats and shielded by a canopy of umbrellas, workers thrust signs into the air that read, “Rural jobs count too” and “Don’t gamble with my job!”

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Budget negotiations show no outward sign of progress

Nearly six months after DFL Gov. Mark Dayton and the Republican-controlled 87th Minnesota Legislature were sworn into office and set to work concocting the 2012-13 biennial budget, the state has crept inexorably toward a government shutdown whose scale and consequences remained unclear in important respects even after a Wednesday order from Ramsey County District Court Judge Kathleen Gearin.

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