Our sympathies go out to Rep. Tom Rukavina and his family after the news of his mother’s death arrived during last night’s budget meeting at Iron Range Resources. The meeting was adjourned and the budget issues will be resolved at a future meeting.
During the meeting, Rukavina had just proposed cuts to the commissioner’s proposed budget and some criticism of spending priorities was starting to percolate among board members. Today’s Mesabi Daily News has the story.
EVELETH — Iron Range Resources Board members were waiting Thursday night for the details of a proposed amendment to the Fiscal Year 2009 $31.7 million budget to be composed by agency staff.
The two-hour meeting was in recess with adoption of the budget pending. Then real life became much more important than a budget or an amendment or a meeting.
“The meeting will be adjourned,” said Board Chairman Rep. David Dill, DFL-Crane Lake, who said Board Member and Rep. Tom Rukavina, DFL-Virginia, had just gotten word that his mother had died. She had been ill for some time and was a resident of the Virginia Convalescent Center. It was Rukavina who had proposed the amendment to adopt the budget with the exception of several line items that totaled about $ 2 million. Those items included funds in the marketing and communications, development strategies, commissioner projects and renewable energy areas of the budget.
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Board Member and state Rep. Tom Anzelc, DFL-Balsam Township, said he, too, was concerned about the lack of detail on some of the budget items. “These are all public dollars,” he said of the agency’s money that is derived from taconite production taxes paid by mining companies in lieu of property taxes, adding it wasn’t like a chamber of commerce budget based on membership fees. “It seems like you’re running a giant chamber of commerce on steroids” rather than an economic development agency, he said, his remarks directed toward Commissioner Sandy Layman.
The board did approve grants and loans for an iron magnetization project near Keewatin. I hadn’t realized how few full time jobs were associated with this project, which extracts iron from piles of overburden. It’s exciting that we can make use of our mining waste here on the Iron Range, but this particular project is really just a salvage operation. Not a bad thing, but let’s not overstate the implications.
And we’ll see where the discussion goes on the budget. The commissioner’s plan does include $5.6 million for public works, but there will be continued debate over these $2 million in other projects and programs.
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