Council Member Brad Aho, Fire Chief George Esbensen and I walked walked and walked the sidewalks around the office buildings surrounding Capitol Hill as we went from legislative office to legislative office to talk about Eden Prairie’s federal legislative agenda. It was a lot of walking. My feet were dead after two days of it. I think I’ll wear a better pair of shoes next year.
We got good responses from the offices we met with. We are concentrating on Representative Kline’s office for assistance with the WAFTA site clean-up. Our tone was a bit stronger on that issue this year compared to previous years. It needed to be. We all know the site is contaminated. That is well documented. It is also well documented that we all know about it and haven’t been all that active in getting it cleaned up. This is the year that we need to make some progress on that issue. WAFTA is in the 2nd Congressional District so it is appropriate for Rep. Kline to take the lead on the issue. But it’s problematic for us to have Rep. Kline take the lead in some respects because he has a personal policy against congressional earmarks, which is what we probably need in this case. Rep. Ramstad said he would try to help us with that.
We had an excellent meeting with Representative Jim Oberstar’s chief of staff Bill Richard. Rep. Oberstar is a powerful congressman when it comes to transportation funding. We made our case to Mr. Richard about the importance of getting additional federal funding for the 169-494 interchange and for future funding for the SWLRT project.
Senator Coleman hosted an open house event on Tuesday so that he could meet with all the Minnesota city officials in DC for the National League of Cities conference. About a 12-15 showed up. Those who missed it, missed a good opportunity. He gave us a lot of his time and attention. We also met with his staff on Monday, so we had a pretty good opportunity to make our points on individual Eden Prairie issues too, such as the Southwest LRT project and the 169-494 intersection project.
We had two meetings with Senator Klobuchar’s staff. We concentrated on an ongoing issue we have with the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service concerning public access to the Minnesota River Valley at one and one transportation and homeland security at the other. We also threw in the WAFTA issue at both meetings, just for good measure.
I bumped into Representative Keith Ellison at a legislative reception sponsored by the City of Minneapolis. I talked to him about the fact that the proposed light rail line from Minneapolis to Eden Prairie is equally important for both cities. He agreed and told me that he’d do everything he could to support the project when it came time to provide it federal funds.
Our final meeting of the week was our final meeting with Representative Ramstad. He will be retiring from Congress this year. I am going to miss him. He is a good legislator, and an even better guy. He is honest and frank about issues. He tells you when he can help and tells you when he can’t. He has been an effective representative for Hennepin County in Congress. He will be missed.
We’re back home now and busy getting follow-up communications sent back to remind the people we met with what they said they would do for us. It’s also a good way to remind ourselves what we said we’d do for them.
Good trip, but it’s good to be back to work in Eden Prairie.
