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President
U.S. Senator Our senior Senator is Sen. Amy Klobuchar. Please visit her website for more information. You can follow her on Twitter @AmyKlobuchar and like her page on Facebook here.
U.S. Senator Our Senator is Sen. Tina Smith. Please visit her website for more information. You can follow him on Twitter @TinaSmithMN and like her page on Facebook here.
Congress – CD3
Governor Our Governor is Mark Dayton and our Lt. Governor is Michelle Fischbach. Please visit the Governor’s website or visit the Lt. Governor’s website for more information. You can follow Gov. Dayton on Twitter @GovMarkDayton and like his page on Facebook here.
Secretary of State Our Secretary of State is Steve Simon. Please visit his website for more information. You can follow him on Twitter @MNSteveSimon and like his page on Facebook here.
Attorney General Our Attorney General is Lori Swanson. Please visit her website for more information and join her Facebook group here.
State Auditor Our State Auditor is Rebecca Otto. Please visit her website for more information. You can follow her on Twitter @Rebecca_Otto and like her Facebook page here.
Senate District 48 Our endorsed candidate for State Senate is Steve Cwodzinski. Please visit his website for more information. And, like his Facebook page here.
House District 48A Our State Representative for the House District 48A is Laurie Pryor. You can follower her on Twitter at @lauirepryor. Like her Facebook page here. And, please visit her website.
House District 48B Carlie Kotyza-Witthuhn. Visit her website at https://www.carlieforhouse.com/. Visit her Facebook page at https://www.facebook.com/carlieforhouse. Follow her on Twitter @CarlieforHouse

Elected Officials & Candidates

The following commentary appeared in the StarTribune Wednesday, April 29, 2015:

By: Will Phillips, Shar Knutson and Lori Swanson

Bills to remove pricing, accessibility and service protections should not proceed. People still rely on their home phones.

A man in northern Minnesota struggled to breathe late one night. His wife called 911 from their landline telephone. Because the couple must climb a hill outside their home to get cellphone reception, they fear what might have happened if they had no landline.

An elderly rural woman sends pacemaker readings to her faraway heart doctor using her landline phone. She can’t do this with a cellphone.

A southern Minnesota woman uses her landline phone to operate her medical-alert system. She lives on a fixed income.

These and other Minnesotans — including many senior citizens and rural residents — need and deserve local landline phone service that is accessible, affordable and reliable. (more…)

AG Swanson · deregulation of landline · home telephone · Lori Swanson

The following, authored by Attorney General Lori Swanson, appeared in the StarTribune on March 12, 2015:

The history of American higher education is a tour of enlightened self-regulation. Professors, alumni, parents and students nurtured a higher education system that made our citizens the living pillars of our democracy. Each generation’s children had the opportunity to climb the ladder of economic opportunity.

But things have changed. Billboards, television commercials and radio broadcasts now herald a different culture for higher education, with for-profit colleges purporting to be the vanguard. Let’s look at the results to date.

For-profit colleges enrolled just 12 percent of students but accounted for 44 percent of student loan defaults in 2013 nationwide. The U.S. Department of Education determined that 72 percent of for-profit college graduates earn less than those who drop out of high school. Nearly 90 percent of for-profit graduates have student loans. Taxpayers ultimately pick up the cost of federal loan defaults when these students can’t find jobs.

Some for-profit “career schools” have saddled students with tens of thousands of dollars of loan debt by misrepresenting job placement rates and the transferability of credits, and by enrolling students in programs that will not even qualify them for employment in their field. Seven of the top eight for-profit colleges that receive GI Bill benefits are under investigation by state or federal regulators for deceptive recruiting or other potential law violations, according to a U.S. Senate Report. Attorneys General in over 25 states have sued, settled with, or are investigating for-profit colleges for their recruiting, marketing, enrollment and/or job placement practices.

Against this backdrop, the Attorney General’s office drafted Senate File 696/House File 234, a bill pending at the State Capitol. The measure would give students better information about job placement rates, graduation rates and limitations on credit transferability. In short, a pretty innocent bill that would cost taxpayers no money but would interject some transparency and basic fairness for students.

Yet, the bill faces a steep climb at the Capitol. Few deny that students are getting hurt. Instead, detractors claim that in 2014 the Minnesota Legislature allowed state regulators to largely outsource their oversight of out-of-state online, for-profit colleges to the school’s home state via an “agreement.” The “agreement,” however, was never designed to fix — nor does it fix — the abuses carried out by for-profit schools. It merely is an excuse to protect the industry by claiming that the state cannot regulate how online schools treat Minnesota students.

Nonsense.

The tsunami of student loan debt has crushed the hopes and dreams of far too many young people. Minnesota has a responsibility to defend these students against abuses by for-profit colleges.

State and federal laws require companies that sell securities to inform potential investors of significant information about the company and the investment — including its risks — so that they can make informed judgments about whether to invest. We should require no less for our students. After all, these companies are selling their programs as investments too — investments in young people’s futures.

Attorney General Swanson · for-profit colleges · Lori Swanson · more transparency