Minnesota State Senator Tom Neuville

Last night, Oct.25th, my opponent (Jessica Peterson) and I participated in a debate at Carleton College.

I enjoy the “give and take” of the debate format. It turned out to be the best candidate event that I’ve been involved in this year.

Most of the students attending were Democrats (although about 5 or 6 brave students raised their hands and admitted that they were Republican or conservative). Jessica was a Carleton graduate and therefore, I suppose, was the sentimental favorite to do well at the debate. The students were very respectful, and the questions were excellent. Being able to rebut is especially important in a candidate debate, and is the best way to discover the thought process of the candidate.

My goal was to help the students understand how conservatives arrive at their positions. I also wanted to convey to them that I am accessible, and reasonable as a legislator. I don’t know that I changed any votes among the students, but I do hope that our debate will allow them to look at Republicans and Conservatives differently and be more open other viewpoints.

So, how are voters supposed to find out where a candidate stands on a particular issue. Many special interest and public interest groups have sent questionnaires to candidates during the past few months. Newspapers in District 25 have also surveyed us and will print our responses next week.

It’s easy to know my positions on issues because:

a. I have a voting record

b. I have more than 100 press releases still on my blog (website) going back at least 4 years.

I have always tried to be open and candid about my feelings on issues which might come before the Legislature.

This year, the Jordan Independent (Link here) . takes the prize for asking the most questions (19). If the paper actually prints all of our answers, voters will learn a lot about each candidate’s positions. I encourage readers to check this site next week.

There are two groups which have a reputation for being particularly fair and non-partisan.

One group is the Minnesota Prosperity Project (Link here) . where you can view my answers to their questions. The “Prosperity Project” is a coalition of business groups throughout Minnesota, including the Minnesota Chamber of Commerce.

Another non-partisan group conducting issue surveys is Project Vote Smart (Link here) . This group surveyed candidates on a range of issues, and includes my voting record and endorsements from special interest groups. Jessica Peterson’s site is here , but she did not respond.

The Minneapolis Star-Tribune voter survey is also posted on the Web (Link here). You can find my answers and Jessica Peterson’s, on this link.

The Star Tribune questionnaire is challenging to answer due to its vagueness. For example, it asks our position on whether legislators should “rule out tax increases next session”. Well, it depends on what tax you are talking about. I support a reasonable gas tax increase. But, I oppose other general tax increases. So, I have to respond by saying that I have “mixed feelings”. Voters don’t understand my true position on taxes from this type of question.

Other papers that have surveyed us include:

The New Prague Times: Link here

The Northfield News: Link here

Mankato Free Press: Link here

Le Sueur News Herald : Link here. I was happy to hear that the Le Center Leader and Le Sueur News-Herald have both endorsed my re-election this week.

You can check these papers next week and review how my opponent and I each answered the questions.

I’ve served on the Senate Judiciary and Crime Prevention Committees for 16 years. I was also a State Public Defender for almost 20 years. As a Public Defender, I represented poor people who were charged with serious crimes. I was in court a lot, and am very familiar with the Criminal Justice System.

Being a Public Defender isn’t an easy job. Most of my clients were guilty, some were innocent. But, all were entitled to the “presumption of innocence” and the right to legal counsel, under our Constitution. Because of my experience in the Criminal Justice field, I enjoy shaping public policy in this area. Keeping people safe, while respecting civil liberties, is one of the most important responsibilities of the state legislature.

There are evil people in our society, who commit very heinous acts. These criminals are not capable of rehabilitation, and need to be locked up in prison for a long time. But, most offenders are capable of returning to society without re-offending. This is why we call our prison system the Department of Corrections, rather that the State Penal System.

When I was first elected to the Senate in 1990, Minnesota had about 3000 people in state prison. We had the lowest incarceration rate in the country, next to North Dakota. Most felons received probation and/or local jail for punishment, under our Community Corrections Act.

Now we have more than 9000 inmates in State prison (see this report), and over 2200 of these offenders are in prison for drug crimes. (see this report) . This is a huge increase in the number of drug offenders, primarily due to methamphetamine addiction. (see this report).

( A significant part of the 2004 Omnibus Crime bill was devoted to dealing with the methamphetamine drug issue.We have done an effective job in stopping “meth labs”, but not so well in stopping meth traffic and addiction. Senator Julie Rosen, R-Fairmont, has led the charge in dealing with this issue. Here is a copy of SF 1580, as introduced by Senator Rosen).

Several years ago, I began to question whether long prison sentences were the best way to deal with drug offenders, who are convicted of selling drugs to pay for their own drug addiction. When a person is “hooked” on drugs, they don’t think about criminal consequences. Just in the past 7 years, Minnesota has seen a 7-fold increase in drug offenders being sent to state prison. Eventually, we have to treat these addicts, since all of them will get out of prison sooner or later.

So I asked, why couldn’t we provide the treatment “up front” and create early release incentives for inmate addicts who successfully complete treatment (while in prison), and stay off drugs for an extended period once they are released from prison. Relapsing would send the offender back to prison to finish their sentence.

Even many prosecutors and law enforcement officers favored the idea . So, in 2004, I proposed an early release program, but only for those with non-violent histories, and whose crime was clearly the product of addiction. (you can review the original bill here)

The program passed (as a pilot program at first). It will operate until 2008, when we will evaluate the results. Some inmates have already been released , and we will track them for success or failure.

Ultimately, I hope this program will save millions of dollars in prison space. We need to use prison space for violent offenders who are more dangerous to our communities.

(In 2005, I co-authored the sex offender bill, with Senator Jane Ranum, DFL-Mpls, in response to the Dru Sjodin case. That bill alone, will require the State to build more than 1200 new prison beds over the next 15 years. This is where the prison money should be spent.)

Once drug offenders are “clean” for several years, their chances of re-using drugs are greatly reduced. I think that is money better spent than $28,000 a year in prison. We must remain tough on the drug profiteers (no deals for them). But, too many parents are being taken from their children due to drug addiction. We must be smarter about how we spend our criminal justice dollars.

Divorce is hard on kids. Young children especially, continue to love both parents even during a bitter divorce. Older children suffer but, often suppress their insecurity. Divorce causes instability and uncertainty for children. Unfortunately, parents often put children in the middle of their conflict with the other parent.

I wish we could reduce the number of divorces. It’s an area of the law which is full of anger and emotion. When two people divorce and create two households, there usually is not enough money to maintain the same standard of living for everyone. In my 30 year career as an attorney, I have lost more sleep while representing parents in custody fights, than anything else I’ve done.

With this perspective, I have Chaired the Senate Family Law committee for the past 4 years. ( I am the only Republican to chair a policy committee in the DFL controlled Senate).

In 2003 I introduced a bill to change Minnesota’s child support law and re-codify the entire Marriage dissolution law. Here is a copy of the bill as it passed out of the Senate Judiciary Committee in 2003, and a copy of the Summary of the bill prepared by Senate Counsel.

Every 4 years, the Department of Human Services is required to evaluate the State’s child support system. The review committee recommended moving to a system called the “Income Shares” model . Under current law, only the non-custodial parent’s income is considered when calculating child support. This is called the “Percent of Obligor” system. We’ve had this system for more than 20 years. It’s not based on any economic model and was perceived as unfair, especially by fathers who tend to be the non-custodial parent in the majority of cases, and believe that they pay too much for child support.

The courts developed a formula for off-setting child support obligations when parents have joint custody (called the Hortis-Valento formula). This had the effect of encouraging litigation over whether a parent’s time with their children was going to be called “custody” or “visitation”. The label given to the parenting time could mean a big difference in the amount of money one parent paid to the other. Fighting in court over custody and visitation is costly, financially and emotionally, and consumes a lot of the court’s time. Often, the fight isn’t really about time with the children, but rather, the amount of child support that gets paid.

In 2004, a child support reform bill passed the House, and made it to the Senate floor. But, disagreement among family lawyers, judges, legal aid advocates, and father’s rights groups, continued. The bill was never voted on by the Senate during the 2004 session. This turned out to be a blessing in disguise. Over the interim, I studied child support laws in 12 other states which had adopted the “Income Shares” model. I learned more about the economics of child support than I ever did as a practicing attorney, and probably more than any legislator in Minnesota.

I decided that Oregon had a child support law that would be a good model for Minnesota. In 2005, I re-wrote the bill and started over.

I’ve never worked as hard on a bill. My Legislative Assistants and I took hundreds of calls from moms and dads who were angry with the current system. We met with dozens of legal advocates, judges, law school professors, child support collection workers, and family attorneys in an effort to address various concerns.

Ultimately, the bill passed because my colleagues and others had faith that I was being fair to everyone involved. Here is the bill (SF 630) as it was finally passed into law in May, 2005. The new law will take effect on Jan.1, 2007. An independent consultant reviewed the law in 2005 and told me that Minnesota’s new law was better than Oregon’s. I think it might become a model law for the country.

Here are just a few things the new law does:

1. Reduce some of the acrimony between parents during a divorce by presuming that each parent is entitled to at least 25% of the time with the children after the divorce is final.

There is a parenting time credit (reduction of child support) given to the “non-custodial” parent if they are awarded between 10% and 45% of the time with the children. This creates an incentive to utilize parenting time. Children will be better off when they have a continuing relationship with both parents.

Since the non-custodial parent can have up to 45% of the time with their child, without being entitled to a reduction in child support, an incentive exists for custodial parents (usually moms), to be generous in granting more time with the children to the non-custodial parent. This too, is good for fathers and for children.

2. Child support will no longer depend upon whether a parent’s time with their children is called “custody” or “visitation”. Labels are meaningless, and litigation over labels will stop.

3. Creates a new guideline which will consider the income of both parents when calculating child support. Fathers perceive this as being more fair.

4. Creates a “self support reserve”, which recognizes that one parent cannot pay child support if they cannot even support themselves.

5. Makes the system more “flexible”, by allowing consideration of special family circumstances. The new law states clearly that the goal, when setting child support, is “to prevent either parent or the child from living in poverty.” Judges will be able to consider any reasonable factor to deviate from the general guideline in order to prevent children or parents from suffering.

6. Creates a Web-based child support calculator which will make it easier for anyone to calculate what they owe for child support. This feature is what impressed me most about Oregon’s law.

7. Recognizes the cost of raising subsequent children who are born to either parent when calculating child support. Why should subsequent (and younger) children have to live in poverty?

The passage of this bill is the most significant change in Family Law in the past 20 years. The law had a delayed implementation date (Jan.1,2007) because it’s such a huge task to modify the computer programs at the Department of Human Services and train hundreds of county workers and judges to implement the new law. I am excited, and hopeful, that the new law will improve people’s lives.

There have been many proposals to address the rapid increase in health insurance premiums and the uninsured.

I have studied this issue since 1990, when I first ran for the Minnesota Senate. That year, Health Care was also the top issue. People claimed that we had to solve the “crisis” which existed because insurance premiums were increasing by 10% that year. I guess we’ve had a crisis for the past 16 years, since Health care costs are still increasing by ‘double digits’.

The Legislature responded in 1991, by creating the Health Care Commission. It developed the idea of “managed competition”, the beginning of today’s managed care system. The idea was to create 8-10 “Integrated Service Networks” (ISN’s) around the state, which would manage costs, while still competing with each other. Back then, we still had a “fee for service” system which allowed patients to choose their own doctor or hospital. Today, we have less provider choice, but still don’t really have control of costs . Managed care is not the answer. It costs a lot to provide that much administration.

I’m convinced that the primary cost driver is the “Third Party Payer System” itself. It doesn’t make sense to me that employers choose and control health insurance for most of us. Many employers can’t afford the rising cost of insurance, and are shifting the cost to employees in lieu of salary increases. Employer-based health care also makes it hard for many people to change jobs. The current system is mostly driven by our tax code. Employers have traditionally been given tax deductions for providing qualified benefits to their employees. But, individual can’t claim the same tax deductions.

In 1993, I read a book, written by Don Larson of Owatonna. It was called “Medical Cost Crisis..A common-sense Solution”.The book has always stuck with me. Larson proposed that primary health care be paid out of pocket by consumers at market prices, and that government provide the basic “safety net” and catastrophic insurance for everyone.

For many years we have known that Medicare has a funding problem. When the baby-boomers reach age 65, the problem will only get worse. I’ve heard that Medicare’s unfunded liability is as much as $18 trillion. (See this article) Can we really afford to provide free health care to seniors who are millionaires in the future? This issue makes for great “political demagoguery”. We really need to have a more rational debate about the entire health care system in this country, without scaring senior citizens in the process.

My proposal is outlined in SF 3820, which I introduced at the end of this year’s legislative session, with State Representative Laura Brod. The bill would study a redesign of Minnesota’s health care system. It would move tax deductions from employers to employees. Consumers would deposit the money now spent for health insurance into Health Savings Accounts (HSA’s). This money would be 100% tax free, and would be used to pay a family’s medical bills directly to the provider. No need for third party administrators at the primary care level. This would save administrative costs and allow the money to be spent for direct care. Some researcher estimate that moving the medical deduction from employers to employees would reduce health care spending by $40 billion (in 2004 dollars), or about 6% of total private health spending.(See this article) Presently, the “gatekeepers” are financed out of insurance premiums that are paid with before-tax dollars, but co-payments and deductibles and now paid with after-tax dollars. The tax incentives favor administration over direct care, and that should be changed.

Under my proposal, after a family spends about 12-15% of their annual income on medical expenses, the government would pay for all additional health care. Only 5% of families would ever require government help. The rest of us would save money, and have total choice of which health care provider we use, based on quality and cost. If we live a healthy life style, money in the HSA would accumulate and could be used for future nursing home expenses, dental care, mental health care and many other services which are not covered by most private insurance right now. Many group plans cost $1000 per month for family coverage. But most families wouldn’t spend anything close to that much if they just paid their own bills. We need insurance to protect us from medical bankruptcy- not to pay for primary care. It is the fear of a catastrophic health problem (cancer, neonatal care, heart surgery) which makes people nervous.

This system is better than a ” Single Payer System” advocated by some. Under a single payer system, the government would pay for all health care. This means that politicians would decide the level of medical care, not consumers. This would also lead to health care rationing and a two-tiered system (like in the U.K.), as the government tried to maintain a balanced budget.

When people don’t pay the doctor bill themselves, the result is wasteful medical practices, and over-utilization of the medical system. That’s why we cannot control rising Medical assistance costs at the State level right now. We must make the cost of health care more transparent.( Next time you go to the doctor, ask him what the bill will be for the visit. Chances are, they won’t know because it depends upon who is paying your bill, and the discount they have negotiated with the clinic.)

The solution is not easy, or we would have implemented reforms by now. Most proposals to reform the health care system “tinker” around the edges instead of taking on the real culprit, the third party payer system itself. Only when people start paying their bills personally, will we control the skyrocketing costs of health care.

Today I attended my 7th Church Dinner/Festival in the past 6 weeks. St. Patrick’s Catholic Church in Shieldsville holds its fall harvest festival on the first weekend of October every year. I’ve attended nearly every one since 1990.

The Festival is famous for it’s Pork and Sauerkraut, Polka Mass, horseshoe tournament, and friendly people. An organ played in the background while everyone had dinner or a cup of coffee and dessert. This is the last Catholic church dinner before the election. Marilynn and I love to attend church dinners. It gives us the opportunity to soak in the culture and gauge the opinion of the people in the area. You can tell if people think you’re doing a good job by the way that they smile or crack a joke with you.

Of course, if you like to eat (like I do), going to so many dinners is an occupational hazard. It’s almost time for me to go on my annual diet.

People appreciate it when their legislator comes to visit, spends a little money on raffle tickets, homemade jam and pies, and enjoy the music. I recall one year being admonished during a parade in Morristown for not being able to attend the Chicken and Biscuit dinner in Waterville the previous year. People like to see us.

One promise that I have always made is that I will remain accessible to the people. Going to church dinners gives people a chance to visit with me about anything on their mind - and they do ! It also keeps me grounded and “in touch” with the people I represent.