1

1 ******** UNCERTIFIED ROUGH DRAFT ********

3 Governor Tim Walz State of the State Address

4 Taken on April 3, 2019

7 Reported by: Paula Richter, RMR, CRR, CRC

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9 GOVERNOR WALZ: Thank you. Thank

10 you. Thank you. Madam Speaker and Members of the

11 Minnesota House of Representatives, Mr. President

12 and members of the Minnesota Senate, Madam Chief

13 Justice and distinguished members of the Minnesota

14 Supreme Court, my fellow constitutional officers,

15 my Cabinet, staff, Governor Dayton. To our

16 sovereign leadership of our indigenous nations,

17 vice president (Chk) Grace Goldfield, Prairie

18 Island Indian Community President Shelley Luck,

19 and band of Chippewa chairwoman Kathy Shavers.

20 Lieutenant Governor Flanagan of the White Earth

21 Nation, escorts in the Minnesota National Guard,

22 some of whom are with the field artillery the 1

23 and the 125. Steel (inaudible) rang. And to the

24 first lady, Gwen. My daughter, Hope, my son, Gus,

25 who is absent as a 12-year-old with pinkeye, and

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1 my fellow Minnesotans, who serve as the foundation

2 of this great state and the reason we're here

3 tonight. Tonight gathering together for the first

4 time all of us together gives us an opportunity to

5 reaffirm why we are here. I know for certain that

6 we're not here to have petty arguments against one

7 another. I'm absolutely certain we're not here to

8 send out mean tweets towards one another. And I

9 know, and I think this is especially true of our

10 new members, we're not here to be actors in a

11 story that is already written for us, one that

12 tells us how we're supposed to act and this is the

13 way it's always been done and we're supposed to

14 butt heads on this and men May 20th will come

15 around and we will become friends. I am not

16 naive, my friends. I served in the house of

17 representatives. I believe there's one other

18 person in this room who is at the pleasure of both

19 serving bone until United States congress and

20 being here in the attorney general. I will tell

21 you, don't write that story. Write this story

22 right here. That's why you came here. That is

23 why you worked so hard to come and bring your

24 talents and bring your experience and more

25 importantly, to bring the stories of your

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1 constituents. That's what this is really about.

2 Those stories that inform who we are. The policy

3 proposals that we put forward, those are not

4 something that comes from us as our personal

5 ideology. They are things that come from our con

6 still went in the stories they tell us about their

7 lives. Whether they tell us about health care and

8 what they need or what can be done or they talk

9 about education and if working and what's not. Or

10 they talk about what makes Minnesota such a

11 special place. Tonight I'm going to tell you a

12 few of those stories. You'll recognize some of

13 them because the name might be different but it

14 will be the same story you're hearing. Some of

15 them you won't know. Some come from friends.

16 Some come from people who told me the story since

17 I have become governor and so many of you

18 sometimes just step back when you hear the story

19 and think, that need to be retold and something

20 needs to be done. And tonight I've got a lot of

21 stories mainly because I spent many, many years

22 teaching and I taught thousands of students, two

23 of whom are with us tonight. Will and Ross are

24 here with me tonight. They're twins if you can't

25 tell. I never could tell you apart. It was the

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1 dirty shoes, the dirty shoes were the giveaway.

2 Will and Ross were students of mine

3 in Mankato West, and like tens of thousands across

4 Minnesota, they came to our schools eager. They

5 took advantage of every opportunity and every club

6 we had and they wanted to find out what life could

7 give them. They went out and furthered their

8 education and they decided they would pursue the

9 two things that they were really, really excited

10 about: Athletics and sport and eat. And they

11 came together and got three of their other friends

12 and since they're very literal people, they

13 created a little company called five friends, so

14 it made sense. And they decided that nutrition

15 and granola bars were too expensive and they

16 weren't made with a lot of natural ingredients, so

17 the five friends who had everything from marketing

18 degrees to sports science degrees, came together,

19 crafted, started cooking granola bars and they

20 will admit, the first ones were terrible. You

21 guys have told me that. And stuck with it and

22 finally got a store to carry them. Then they got

23 the second store. Then they got the 100th store.

24 Then they got the 600th store. That's the dream

25 that Minnesotans want, an opportunity to get the

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1 background and create the life that you want.

2 When I ask them, what drove them, what made the

3 difference and they didn't blink. They said it

4 was the teachers who had each of us believing that

5 we could do anything we wanted to. That

6 experience they had in that classroom. And with

7 those teachers and after school in those clubs

8 inspired them to be the best they can. That's

9 what we ask, that's what we want of every single

10 one of our schools and our teachers. But

11 unfortunately, it's not true across the state.

12 All too often that success or that opportunity

13 might be dictated by a ZIP code or it might be

14 dictated by race. We've got a teacher here with

15 me tonight, Amanda Fjeld is here from Floodwood.

16 Amanda is one of those people that we need in the

17 classroom. Amanda grew up and went to Floodwood

18 schools. Some of you are familiar in here. I

19 know some folks in here know Floodwood in St.

20 Louis county that they know where it's at.

21 Floodwood is a town of about 525. Amanda and I,

22 who had the smaller class than each other before

23 this. I had 24 in mine, 12 of whom were cousins,

24 but I would not change that experience for

25 anything. The ability and the teachers that I had

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1 influenced me in a profound way. They influenced

2 Amanda enough she went up and got her teaching

3 degree and went back to Floodwood to teach. But

4 here's the problem. As flood's demographics

5 changed a little bit, the property tax basis is

6 big enough and as Minnesota started to shift for

7 funding in the state formula property taxes, it

8 left communities like Floodwood, they'll go to a

9 doubt next Tuesday. If their referendum fails,

10 they will consolidate classes, close programs and

11 lay of off a quarter of their teachers. They have

12 no option. Those are where we were putting people

13 in into those positions. What that does, it stops

14 the opportunity that Will and Ross were given. It

15 makes a difference based on geography for the out

16 comes we're going to get. It weakens our economic

17 strength across the state and we have the capacity

18 to do something about it. That's the reason when

19 we talk about education funding, it's not a game.

20 It's not numbers. Local school boards have

21 informed us about the decisions they need. I'm

22 asking and when we put a budget together, yes,

23 it's a fiscal document but it's a moral document

24 and what these schools have said is they need to

25 get 3 and 2 percent on their funding formula.

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1 That's -- we can debate that and we will.

2 Healthy. But keep in mind, behind every one of

3 the debates we have here are real people. Being

4 impacted by them. Real people.

5 I want to be clear. We need to be

6 smart on how we do this. We need to be creative

7 on how we do it and we need to stop seeing as a

8 lieutenant governor so often says and my next

9 guest who's with me, Dr. Nathan Chomilo is with us

10 in the audience tonight. Dr. Chomilo is a

11 pediatrician and an internist and he has the same

12 saying that lieutenant governor always says to me:

13 Children do not come in pieces. He has spent his

14 lifetime providing care as a peds preventive care

15 for those students, for those patients. But he

16 didn't see them just his parity. He also has a

17 program where he gets a book to every single one

18 of his patients because what he understands is

19 that whole child, if they get to a good start

20 where they have their opportunities to get their

21 checkups, but they're there in a place with

22 someone and a professional that ties everything

23 together. If that child is healthy physically and

24 mentally, if that child is ready for kindergarten.

25 If that child has a home, a safe home to put their

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1 head on the pillow at night, the chances of

2 success in that classroom and going on and

3 accomplishing what students do across this state

4 increase greatly. Dr. Chomilo knows most of the

5 children he sees in his practice are dependent on

6 the health care access fund. So I come to you not

7 with -- it's not my idea. I would like to claim

8 credit for what Minnesota did. Nearly three

9 decades ago we said it makes sense to get our

10 children care before they get sick. It makes

11 sense as to put them into that place. And it is

12 not by chance that because of what they did and

13 that was Republican and DFL and reform party

14 governor and everyone in this room, some of you

15 sitting here remember this, they crafted a system

16 that not only provided and insured more people

17 than any other state. Our health care comes

18 rocketed to the top. What that does is provides

19 the opportunity for that child for a good start,

20 it saves us money, and it makes the sense that we

21 know we can start moving in a direction where

22 every single person, not just every child, has

23 those same opportunities.

24 So when I come to you and ask you,

25 it's not to pick a fight. It's not because I

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1 believe that I've cornered the market on the

2 health care access fund. I believe it is the best

3 solution that is out there and it gives us a

4 foundation to work from there.

5 And the reason -- and let me be

6 clear, the respect I have, and I want to be

7 absolutely clear about this, I know that every

8 single person in this chamber wants every child to

9 get that care. They want the outcome that

10 Dr. Chomilo is getting to happen for every child.

11 The difference might be in the approach that we go

12 about it. What I am asking you, though, is, let

13 us have this open debate about a 27 year old

14 program that is foundational to the health care of

15 this state. It has survived countless

16 administrations, countless members who have set,

17 reset, come and gone and has still continued to

18 deliver. And if we get to that, then we can move

19 forward about how do we talk about retaining and

20 making sure that we keep costs down, we make sure

21 that care is available in all of our communities

22 and we move forward to a better system. Because I

23 am here to tell you, don't wait for a minute with

24 a partner who is unreliable. The federal

25 government has added more certainty and we were

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1 told today that there will be no movement on

2 health care until after the 2020 election, and the

3 reason that that is a problem is my next guest

4 will tell you, we don't have until 2021. Deborah

5 Mills is with me tonight up in the audience and

6 Deborah I just recently met. Deborah is a dairy

7 farmer from Lake City. I don't think she would

8 have ever imagined being in this space or being

9 thrust into this debate. Her family is the quaint

10 American and Minnesota dairy farmers. Three

11 generations on the farm. They have about 280 head

12 they hill being. They reach corn tore silage.

13 Their daughter Maggie was a finalist for Princess

14 Kay of the Milky Way. This is just what

15 Minnesota -- yeah. It's just what people do.

16 And this is not about ascribing

17 blame. This is about outcomes that matter.

18 Because of the way the system worked and Deborah

19 playing by the rules, she does not have access to

20 health care so she has the stress of going without

21 health care. Couple that with historically low

22 milk presses. Couple that with catastrophic

23 weather events that had Deborah to a point and

24 those of you in here, I know many of you grew up

25 on farms, you worked on farms, you know

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1 agriculture, you come from different walks of

2 life. But the one thing is this is a proud family

3 who works hard and prides themselves not just on

4 working hard but being tough and then the day came

5 a short time ago where Deborah knew she needed to

6 make a really tough decision and I can tell you

7 the decision she made took courage beyond what you

8 can only imagine. She if I could up the phone and

9 called a mental health counselor and said, I am at

10 wits end. What do I do? And the good news is

11 there was somebody to picked up the phone. The

12 good news is there was a plan to put in place.

13 And Deborah started to come back from that.

14 Now, again, I will leave it to this

15 body and for us to debate where we're going to get

16 to, but I think we can stand in agreement that all

17 of our citizens should have the basic safety net,

18 the basic security that comes have having access

19 to health care so you don't get into a mental

20 health crisis. We can agree on that.

21 I promise you I've got a story that

22 will get you on your feet by the end of this.

23 I've got number of them here. I'll keep arming.

24 I've got number of them.

25 But I do want to be clear, I do not

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1 take that in any way to the judgment and the care

2 and the empathy that you show and everyone in here

3 shows to Deborah's family because we can get this

4 right. We have to. And I have to tell you, I

5 believe it will be in this body, the story that we

6 are telling here, we need to tell it differently

7 because if we go down the road and write the same

8 story that's been written in Washington, we will

9 get the same results. Everybody has talked about

10 one state with divided government. Can one state

11 rise up? I don't know about any of you. I'm told

12 you did not come here to be an actor in someone

13 else's script. Let's write the new script. Let's

14 write the new way. Let's respect one another

15 where it comes from. Because if you're sitting

16 here and you're so cynical that it will end in the

17 same place, look at what that does. Where do we

18 go from that.

19 And that includes me of asking the

20 questions of what am I willing to do to try to

21 find that. And the answer is to try to use our

22 best ability and the facts available and the

23 empathy that is central to this decision-making

24 you make in here too ensure that that child gets

25 off to a good start, that those students have the

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1 opportunity to learn and that that family has the

2 opportunity to make it on the land where they've

3 been for over a hundred years. That's what we

4 know.

5 Here's the good news: None of are

6 in this alone together. There's great ideas out

7 there. I think most of us come here with a sense

8 of humility. Not all the best ideas are going to

9 come out of this place and they're not going to

10 come out down on Summit Avenue. They're going to

11 come out of Minnesota. That's the stories that

12 matter. We've seen this leadership out there.

13 And I know that I completely depend on them and

14 you as legislators have one to depend on, and

15 that's our local elected officials.

16 I've got Mayor Ben Schierer of

17 Fergus Falls right up here. And Mayor Schierer,

18 first of all, he's the owner of a brew pub and

19 wood fire pizza place in Fergus Falls, right on

20 Main Street. Yes: I recommend the Thai peanut,

21 so -- the pizza, not the beer. The pays Saturday

22 one.

23 Mayor Schierer understands he can't

24 debate these things. These are he'll issues that

25 effect that. The streetlights have to be kept on.

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1 They need to be plowed. You need to make

2 decisions about the pool. You need to talk about

3 how o we keep businesses and department together.

4 These mayors come with a very nonpartisan approach

5 because they have to get results. They do not

6 have the luxury of holding on to a tight

7 ideological position and say I'm one of many.

8 They are the mayor of their community and the

9 prosperity of that community depends upon them.

10 So having a mayor, and I know many

11 of you know this, funny how so many of them are so

12 actively engaged in their community before they

13 took their job. The first thing may juror

14 Schierer had me do before I was elected is come

15 out to Fergus Falls on a cold November night and

16 sat that town hall that went about two and a half

17 hours and heard the hopes and dreams and fears and

18 critiques of the people in Fergus Falls and sat

19 listened to this, listen to them, listened to

20 their stories.

21 And after I was done, a gentleman

22 came up and he said, Tim, I did not vote for you

23 and I do not agree with many and any of your

24 positions but it is a parent to me that just like

25 me, this is what he said, that you love Minnesota

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1 just as much and we are going to have to find a

2 way forward. I do not want you to fail because

3 Minnesota will fail.

4 Here's what I'm telling all of you:

5 I do not want a single one of us in this building

6 to fail because that means Minnesota fails and

7 that gentleman knew it.

8 I thank you. And this is a place

9 and you can feel it. This is the sense of pride

10 we come here to make a difference. So when we're

11 putting out proposals, and I say this about

12 community prosperity very clearly, the community

13 prosperity piece that I'm putting out is to talk

14 about local government aid, to talk about some of

15 the things we can do on broadband and working

16 together, to put the tools back into the hands of

17 Mayor Ben, or Mayor ^^^ of Waseca or Mayor

18 Peterson in Winona, to allow local decisions to

19 make a difference in people's lives because we

20 know that leadership and those ideas are out there

21 but we have to be good partners. And that holds

22 true with leaders who don't hold elected position.

23 And my next guest tonight some of

24 you may be familiar with because this is what

25 leadership and community activity starts to look

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1 like. My next guest is Houston White. Those of

2 you who don't know Houston, and Houston, in this

3 moment, I share my deepest sympathies on your loss

4 of (Chk) Don east and you and I have not spoken

5 much since then. But the one thing I can tell

6 you, Houston owns a barbershop in north

7 Minneapolis. He's a renowned clothing designer

8 with his own retail store there. Got a small

9 restaurant coffee shop. I'm convinced if I bring

10 my car there, he can repair it. And that's -- but

11 he's got a vision and he's got an enthusiasm and

12 an entrepreneur spirit that is contagious and he

13 talks about ways that we can revitalize our

14 communities. This is a man who went to school at

15 North High School and he remembers walking down

16 the street with his backpack and someone stopped

17 him and said what's in your backpack. He said

18 I've got a business in my backpack, sir. And he

19 did. He was out selling and working and an

20 entrepreneur went into it. And he has a vision of

21 making that Camden town area of where he's at a

22 vibrant community, where people can come to live

23 and create their job. And that's what we

24 partnered together. Houston knows that's the

25 strength of community prosperity. The mayors of

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1 these communities know that there. They're

2 looking for a reliable partner in us. And I would

3 ask us, let's be that reliable partner. Let's

4 don't model and wait on the unreliable partner we

5 have in the federal government, but what Houston

6 knows is, the community he's trying to make, we

7 must make sure that the employees coming to him

8 and the people there are able to bring their best

9 selves. That means that this state needs to and

10 has to tackle issues of inequity. Whether they be

11 geographic inequities or racial inequities, we

12 have got to tackle the idea that people need

13 fordable housing, that people need child care so

14 that they can go to work. Those are things that

15 are universal amongst us and if we partner and lay

16 the foundation, the mayors and the entrepreneurs

17 like Ben and Houston will take it and run.

18 Now, the stories we're telling are

19 the story of us, the story of Minnesota and the

20 stories of communities. It's not by mistake that

21 the proposals and the policy proposals and the

22 budget proposals that I put in front of you center

23 around some pretty clear themes because that's

24 what came to me from people, we want to have

25 health care. We want good education and we want

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1 our communities to prosper. And the stories

2 behind the people. And I say this because I have

3 been blessed. My wife and I have our first house

4 that we ever bought in Mankato on the west side of

5 Mankato. And like so many of you, my dearest

6 friends that became family were my neighbors where

7 they butt up against them. Either you become best

8 friends or you build a fence. In my case, we were

9 best friends.

10 And this is my neighbors, the

11 Ingmans. Mary Ingman, her two sons, Ben and Jake

12 are here tonight, the wonderful sister Katie,

13 we'll get her back from Washington State, are here

14 tonight. We have shared countless Fourth of

15 Julys, birthdays, refinishing my floors in my

16 house when I would recruit the boys, the same

17 things all neighbors do. That this is how

18 communities are built. And I have the privilege

19 of not only teaching Mary's children, I had the

20 privilege of coaching Ben and I remember it very

21 clearly. It was a Friday in December, headed

22 towards the holidays back in 1996 and I had -- and

23 was coaching middle school basketball and I was

24 downtown at the old Mankato Armory and we were in

25 that floor and it was after school and it was

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1 right before Christmas break and it's a bunch of

2 12 and 13 year old boys and we had a tournament

3 coming up. It's the excitement. It's fun. It's

4 life. It's potential. And in walked in two state

5 troopers with Mary. And she'd obviously been

6 crying. And it was at that point that Ben found

7 out and we found out that her husband, Charlie,

8 had been hit head on on Highway 14 and killed with

9 three young children. That same highway has

10 killed 145 people in the last three decades. It

11 is the most dangerous in Minnesota. So I say this

12 with candid and bury my heart to you because each

13 and every one of you, whether you live in Delano

14 or Mankato, you know stories of this happening.

15 So my passion is not to pick a fight with you

16 about transportation. My passion is to make sure

17 what the results say when we've got D rated roads

18 that we do something together and I will gladly

19 have the debate with you and a compromise to find

20 out we do that but here's what I'm telling you:

21 In the 23 years since Charlie has died, that is

22 still a two-lane dangerous road and the time has

23 passed to fix that. We can do that. So we can do

24 that: So I Noah amongst the challenges and again,

25 I remind many of you this: Yes, I am a hopeless

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1 open Tim mist but as I tell many of you, I'm also

2 a realist. I supervise the lunge room for 20

3 years. I am not nay eve. I do not expect and as

4 my wife good we know says and we believe very

5 strongly in this, hope is the most powerful word

6 in the universe. We named our daughter Hope. But

7 as my wife says and I know it's true, hope is not

8 a plan. You have to plan not just hope that

9 things get better. And all of us in here have to

10 plan if we want to write a different story. The

11 outcome will remain the same if we do not. And I

12 say this to you because I take very, very

13 seriously and I think all of us see this: The

14 incredible privilege it is to solve govern as free

15 men and women. Literally billions of people

16 around the world can only imagine of sitting where

17 your and making decisions and your con still went

18 being able to come here. But let's all be very,

19 very clear, that privilege was paid for with the

20 blood of patriots. It was paid for in sacrifice

21 to get there.

22 Tonight we have one of them amongst

23 you, World War II Veteran Gordy Kirk is with us

24 tonight.

25 Gordy served with the third army,

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1 the fourth army division, Patton's Vanguard. He

2 landed at Normandy and he fought across Europe

3 from '43 to '45. He did that while knowing that

4 when he returned home, he could not sit at the

5 same counter and eat the same food as someone next

6 to him. What Gordy did was come back to his

7 community and say, I'm going to be the change

8 because what he knew was on those beaches of

9 Normandy, that was the pushiest form of democracy.

10 No one in there questioned where someone came

11 from. No one questioned the color of skin. No

12 one questioned their religion. They only knew

13 they stood together in the face of tyranny.

14 So he came back, became state

15 commander of the VFW, changed how we delivered

16 veterans benefits across this state and continued

17 to build in his community. He gave us the gift

18 and modeled it for the way we need to treat each

19 other. So I hold myself to that standard tonight

20 and if I fall down, I expect to be called on it.

21 Of treating our differences with respect and

22 treating these debates with respect. But with an

23 understanding, we can not allow ideology to get in

24 the way of educating our children for Will, for

25 Ross, and for Amanda teaching. We can not let

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1 ideology get in the way of stopping this state

2 from providing basic health care to all of its

3 citizens. We can not let ideology get in the way

4 of holding back our mayors and our entrepreneurs

5 of getting things done and we can not let ideology

6 get in the way of making sure that no one else has

7 to go through what the Ingman family did. And

8 when I look out my back window and I see those

9 grandkids, my heart thinks breaks for thinking

10 that Charlie didn't get to see that.

11 So here we go. What are we going to

12 do now? There's already people written us off.

13 You've seen the stories. Are we heading for

14 gridlock? Are we headed for shutdown? Is it all

15 just a fake? Are they getting along? Those are

16 the people that want to see that. They're

17 reporting some of them, but trust me on this, it's

18 easier to cover the plane that crashes than the

19 one that lands. But I'll tell you right now, I'll

20 tell you right now the story that we've told and

21 the story that not just Minnesota needs but the

22 country needs is a bipartisan and a split

23 government that came together in the good of the

24 people and moved things forward for Minnesota.

25 That's what we need.

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1 So I say to you, Minnesota, the

2 state of our state is strong. And we are at a

3 crossroads. We can choose to follow the same

4 story that was written ahead of time. We can

5 choose to decide who belongs and who doesn't. We

6 can choose to let ideology drive us before people.

7 Or we can do what Minnesota has always done: Rise

8 up and create a better way of life. Lead the

9 nation in how things could get done, making sure

10 that all of our children, black, white, brown,

11 indigenous, rural, urban, suburban, gets the

12 opportunity to live what is truly a unique and

13 incredible lifestyle of Minnesota.

14 So here's my charge to you, and I

15 walk hand in hand with you. Let's write our own

16 story. Let's write a new story how this can

17 happen. Let's do this in a way that others can

18 look at and say, that's the way out of this. And

19 let's do it because as Minnesotans, we've always

20 done it before. We've never feared the future.

21 We create the future. Let's go write the story.

22 Thank you.

23 (The proceedings were adjourned)

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