Legislative policies & agenda to be adopted at Annual Meeting

Among other activities, Greater Minnesota Parks and Trails (GMPT) will be adopting legislative policies and agenda at the Annual Meeting on November 9. Our legislative policies are a statement of the positions that the organization holds on a variety of issues. It remains relatively stable from year to year, and there are no changes proposed for this cycle.

The legislative agenda is a statement of what we intend to work on for the upcoming year. It does change, though there are similarities depending on whether it is the first or second year of the biennium. 2025 is a budget year, and therefore, our agenda reflects that we will be working on budget issues. 

Two agenda items are new for this year. The first relates to the payment that the Greater Minnesota Regional Parks and Trails Commission (GMRPTC) makes to the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources (DNR) for grant administration. The new policy states that the reimbursement will relate to the actual cost of the services provided. The GMRPTC has been paying for those services in the past, but this slight change reflects the policies of other similarly situated commissions. 

The second agenda item relates to reallocating unspent Legacy funds. It is not always easy to anticipate how much money will be spent on a project when a grant is requested. Occasionally, grant recipients do not use all funds allocated to them for a project. We want to ensure that those funds can be easily reallocated to other projects. 

The remaining three agenda items reflect policy work that we have started in previous sessions and will continue to work on: supporting general fund money for the Commission, supporting passage of the LCCMR bill, and supporting bonding for parks and trails. Click here to view the draft of GMPT’s 2025 Legislative Policy Agenda, with new items in red.

If you would like to see what we have done in the past, you can view GMPT legislative policy agendas from previous years using the links below.

• 2024 GMPT Legislative Policies
• 2023 GMPT Legislative Policies
• 2022 GMPT Legislative Policies

If you have any questions, suggestions, or comments on our policies, please contact Elizabeth Wefel at eawefel@flaherty-hood.com in advance of our Annual Meeting.