Governor, Legislature shouldn’t ignore Minnesota’s competitiveness

Innovation has built Minnesota s business sector and it depends on economic and regulatory certainty Given international and national trends innovation and certainty are more critical to grow Minnesota s market system now than ever before That s why in the final days of the legislative session a broad range of business labor and other economic champions of Minnesota are sounding the alarm The state is risking essential future stake by not agreeing to and passing a tax bill that recognizes two emerging industries sustainable aviation fuel SAF and statistics centers A summary circulated last week from the Minnesota Chamber Foundation shows the importance of broad expenditure in future economic advance Two billion megaprojects were informed for Minnesota in accounting for over of the state s total business capital funding commitments According to the document These two proposed projects alone a SAF facility in Moorhead and a input center progress in the south Metro plan to bring billion in new capital investments to the state These projects are still in proposal stages and final outcomes are not guaranteed However they represent among the largest expansions in the state s latest history should they come to fruition These projects would make Minnesota more economically competitive Each sector would mean further funding in the decades to come Politically speaking each has broad bipartisan encouragement Minnesota has been looked at as a SAF leader in the U S and around the world since it passed one of the first SAF tax credits in The state SAF tax credit enabled the newly created MN SAF Hub to make fast progress out of the gate in executing its strategy and helped give Minnesota an early lead in the global SAF race But other states are looking to seize on the economic evolution opportunities related to SAF as well Since Minnesota took action in Illinois Washington Colorado Nebraska Arkansas and Iowa have all passed their own measure to promote a SAF commercial sector Minnesota is leading but the bipartisan SAF bill that has help from both the agriculture and climate communities is not guaranteed to pass and if it doesn t it would leave Minnesota to chase other states and lose our competitive edge It is a similar story when looking at figures centers A broad coalition of businesses labor and environmental groups have worked together on figures center bill that will incentivize the responsible maturation of information centers while protecting the milieu and ratepayers This same rule has been endorsed by a broad bipartisan coalition of legislators Just last fall Minnesota was touting itself as a leader in attracting these future system hubs to our state Our weather and circumstances are advantages At the groundbreaking for a large-scale statistics center last year Gov Tim Walz revealed Material centers voyage in packs they excursion in groups and you get one and you get a big one And we d had more before And so we ll be more to this The statistics center tax incentive is scheduled to sunset and requirements to be extended and modernized in order to be competitive with our peer states such as Iowa North Dakota and Wisconsin Just last week Iowa released a multibillion-dollar input center funding Both SAF and material centers mean jobs construction jobs high-tech jobs across diverse sectors of agriculture power AI and transportation throughout the entire state Elected functionaries at the capitol are putting these investments at liability without taking action to sponsorship these industries in the tax bill In an era of polarization bipartisan rule is worth fighting for Fighting for jobs capital and a future tax base We won t stop working to keep investments coming to Minnesota We call on Gov Walz and leaders of both parties to prioritize our state s future economic opportunities in these industries Doug Loon president Minnesota Chamber of Commerce Darin Broton executive director Minnesota AgriGrowth and Tom Dicklich executive director Minnesota Building Trades The post Governor Legislature shouldn t ignore Minnesota s competitiveness appeared first on MinnPost