​Affordability: Investing in Families and Local Solutions

• Access to Care: What the State Auditor Can Do

  • Empower Local Childcare Infrastructure: There are so many creative solutions to childcare, and one size does not fit all. We must include local leaders in the conversation to scale community-specific solutions as we do with the State Housing Tax Credit Model, driving local investment and data-driven development. From my time as Mayor of Fergus Falls, I have direct experience with these kinds of programs, their potential funding sources, and the positive impacts they have on communities.

  • Fiscal Advocacy for Healthcare & Elder Care: As Auditor, I will use the office to foster and facilitate relationships with local government leaders who know what works in their communities to make sure they have the resources they need to invest in the best elder care solutions possible.​

• Safe and Affordable (Locally-Owned) Housing

  • Strategic Housing Development: We must work with local communities to utilize programs such as Tax Increment Financing (TIF) and the Rural Workforce Housing program, and the State Housing Tax Credit to incentivize housing with clean energy solutions to ensure every Minnesotan has a safe place to call home. In Fergus Falls, a top priority of mine was to clean up an old industrial site that had been left to pollute the surrounding land for years. We built the necessary relationships and with the help of public programs and private investments, we were able to clean up that land and now, it is ready for new affordable housing developments.

  • Protect Local Housing Markets: To build local ownership in our own communities, we have to push against predatory venture-capital land acquisitions that destabilize communities, and instead prioritize community land trusts and cooperative models to ensure long-term affordability and ownership for manufactured-home residents.​

• Data-Driven Food Assistance and Family Support: I will use rigorous fiscal oversight and data analysis to help state and local policymakers understand the true cost of living and identify efficiencies that keep the cost of food and basic needs as low as possible for Minnesota families.​

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Dignity: Protecting Rights and Ethical Investments​

• Uphold Constitutional Freedoms: I will do everything in my power as State Auditor to stand up and protect our civil rights, free speech, and the personal freedoms of every person in Minnesota.

• Ethical Investment Oversight and Pension Stability: We must build broad coalitions to enact real, lasting change in investment policy that reflects our Minnesota values while maintaining the long-term stability of our public pensions. Together, we can build a forward-thinking system of state investment funds to ensure public dollars are not fueling human rights abuses or genocide abroad.​

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Community: Prioritizing People Over Profits

• Fiscal Support for Public Education: We must work directly with local school districts and local governments to ensure they have the resources and oversight necessary to provide high-quality public education and youth programs. These are critical investments in not only our youth, but also our communities.​

• Building Community, Not Corporate Profits

  • Revitalizing Public Spaces: When I served as Mayor of Fergus Falls, my primary focus was rebuilding our public spaces and, through that, our community. When our last box store left us behind, no one thought we could turn around a “dying” town, but we worked to build public and private partnerships and attract investments to create new public spaces. Following those investments, our downtown storefronts are filled, and our community is thriving. That sense of community is something you can feel every time you walk through Fergus Falls.

  • Accountability for Corporate Polluters: We have to hold corporations accountable when they come in, damage our natural resources, then leave. I will make sure our state has the data and oversight necessary to do that and help protect local taxpayers from shouldering the cost of corporate negligence.

  • Strengthen Local Economies: As Auditor, I will support the growth of small businesses and local economies over corporations to build strong and resilient communities across the state.