A one-sided fight over St. Paul’s streets

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Under pressure from the City Council last week, St. Paul Mayor Chris Coleman outlined a $54 million street-improvement program—more than 10 percent of his proposed $515 million operating budget for 2015. Hizzoner thus significantly raised a group of rebellious council members’ bid of $22 million for streets after they likened his earlier plan to “putting a Band-Aid on a broken hip.” Continue Reading

The state as a model employer

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Our public workforce should reflect our state’s diversity, but Minnesota is not living up to this standard. Research shows that 10 percent of Minnesota’s civilian noninstitutionalized population has a disability, but only a little more than three percent of state public employees are disabled. The state’s disabled workforce has been shrinking for 15 years—now is the time to reverse the trend. Continue Reading

City data could help you catch a bus and improve your neighborhood

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City-generated data my soon help people track buses from their phones and help monitor problem properties for things like noise violations and landlord abuses. These are just two potential uses that may go public by November under the city’s new open data policy.The Minneapolis City Council approved an open data policy earlier this month, making city data that was previously accessible only through requests easily accessible to anyone. The city hopes the data will spur new technological projects that may help both the city and its constituents and bolster innovation.“The city of Minneapolis runs on 76 trillion characters of information,” Minneapolis chief information officer Otto Doll told a forum at the University of Minnesota recently. “A strong percentage of that data is private but the rest are data that possibly could be open.”Doll said the data from several city departments will be accessible through a single website in a raw form that can be used by the public, imported into spreadsheets, and viewed in smartphones, if software developers create applications to access the data.The use of smartphones to track bus movements and schedules could be done if a developer uses real-time data already generated by Metro Transit, said Bill Bushey, an organizer for Open Data Twin Cities that lobbied for the new Minneapolis rules.The council’s rules require that creation of a single portal making data accessible to the public, the creation of an advisory group from the city’s departments to decide what data should be open, and a compliance report to see how well agencies are complying with the rules.“The city is setting up the infrastructure, and it’s also setting up a culture change,” Bushey said. “It’s a big deal for a city to set up a system of this nature.”Nuria Rivera-Vandermyde, the city’s director of regulatory services, said neighborhoods could use housing license and inspections data to track property ownership and code compliance. Continue Reading

Somali president visits Twin Cities, receives mixed welcome

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It was completely dark by the time Somali president Hassan Sheikh Mohamud arrived at Northrop Auditorium on the University of Minnesota campus on Aug. 9. But the lack of light didn’t stop protesters, many of whom had been demonstrating for hours, from rushing to the curb and chanting “Down, Hassan, down!” as the president arrived.President Mohamud’s visit to the Twin Cities is part of his attempt to build relationships with the strong Somali population in Minnesota, but his reception was met with mixed feelings. More than 100 protesters showed up among the several hundred attendees at the event, attacking the president for his current policies, which protesters say lack adequate security improvements and fail to keep promises.“Somalis back in Somalia, they have been in civil war for 24 years and they don’t have a voice,” said protest organizer Abdirizak Jama. “President [Mohamud] is ignoring the federal system, the federal constitution.”Back in May more than 100 Somali lawmakers asked the president to resign for failing to deliver more tangible change, like improving security in a nation struggling to rebuild after two decades of war.President Mohamud’s support also doesn’t accurately represent the Somali-American community in Minnesota, Jama said, which he estimates at more than 25,000.The U.S. Census Bureau estimates about one in three of the 85,700 people with Somali ancestry in the United States live in Minnesota, according to their most recent data.Said Mohamed said he’s frustrated by the lack of government funds used to educate the people of Somalia about the dangers of the extremist ideology perpetrated by terrorist groups like Al-Shabab.President Mohamud is responsible for the death of Somali parliament member Saado Cali Warsame, who was killed last month in a drive-by shooting in Mogadishu, Mohamed said. Continue Reading

Six reasons Minnesota students should vote this year

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Younger voters are known for their low turn-out rates, but in 2012 they showed up in record numbers and helped decide the fate of the presidential election. While the president isn’t up for re-election for another two years, there’s still plenty of reasons for younger voters, particularly colleges students, to vote this year. Here’s six reasons why young voters should practice their civic duty on Election Day. 1. You’re a target demographic this electionThis year’s election season has a few competitive races in student-heavy districts that young voters should look out for.In District 60B, which includes neighborhoods around the University of Minnesota-Twin Cities, incumbent Rep. Phyllis Kahn, DFL-Minneapolis, is facing a strong challenger in Mohamud Noor. Noor supporters pushed Kahn, who has represented the district since 1972, out of getting the DFL endorsement in April.Ryan Kennedy, executive director of Minnesota Public Interest Research Group said the Kahn-Noor race is particularly important because whoever wins has a lot of potential to be a strong voice in higher education policy.The 60B race also features two drastically different candidates. Continue Reading