By Mark Fischenich

Free Press Staff Writer

The Minnesota House of Representatives has now indicated how it would spend the state’s money during the next two years, about four weeks after the Senate did the same.

And for the most part, specific appropriations for south-central Minnesota were included in the House budget, the Senate budget or both. The spending ranges from dollars for a rural policy center in St. Peter to the agricultural interpretive center in rural Waseca to a hydro-electric dam near Rapidan.

Over the next month, conference committees made up of equal numbers of senators and representatives will negotiate compromise bills for final passage by the Legislature.

In a typical year, supporters of a particular appropriation could feel pretty confident if it was included in both the House and Senate budget bills. Odds were it would end up in the final bill negotiated by the conference committee.

The 2007 session promises to be quite different. The Democratic-controlled House and Senate have each passed budgets that rely in part on income-tax increases that Republican Gov. Tim Pawlenty has promised to veto. And House and Senate Republicans, while in the minority, have enough strength to uphold Pawlenty’s vetoes if they stick together.

So it appears some serious paring will need to be done on the legislative budgets sometime before final adjournment. Here’s the status of many of the appropriations aimed specifically at the Mankato area.

Rural policy center

The Center for Rural Policy and Development in St. Peter would receive $500,000 over two years under the Senate budget. The House would provide a $1.1 million grant.

The center provides research and analyzes policy options for dealing with economic and social issues facing rural Minnesota. It operates on state appropriations, grants and proceeds of an endowment established with donations by nonprofit organizations and the state.

Tornado cleanup

The House would provide $75,000 and the Senate offers $79,000 to help clean debris tossed into Le Sueur County’s Lake Emily by an Aug. 24 tornado.

Several homes built on the shore of the lake, which is just east of St. Peter, were damaged or destroyed by the storm. In the process, debris ranging from air conditioners to sheet metal was believed to have been dropped in the lake.

Farmamerica

Both the House and Senate provide $128,000 a year for the operating budget at Farmamerica, the agricultural interpretive center east of Waseca. The amount matches what was provided in the last two-year state budget approved by the 2005 Legislature.

St. Peter museum

The Treaty Site History Center, the museum on the north edge of St. Peter along Highway 169, would receive $100,000 under the Senate budget and $150,000 under the House version. In each case, the funding would be to create the central exhibit for the museum, something that was never completed because of funding shortages when the building was built 13 years ago.

Officials from the Nicollet County Historical Society requested $150,000.

Business adviser

The Riverbend Center for Enterprise Facilitation, a program founded by Blue Earth County to help would-be entrepreneurs get started on the right track, gets $63,000 under the House’s economic development budget bill. The bill also provides $63,000 for Martin and Faribault counties to establish similar programs there.

Each of the programs would have to report to the state the number of customers served and statistics about jobs created or retained because of their efforts.

Lake Titloe

The Senate’s one-time appropriations bill, which spends some of the non-reoccurring budget surplus on one-time projects, provides $200,000 to the city of Gaylord to help clean up the waters of Lake Titloe. The funds would help the city construct storm sewers to divert water from city streets into holding ponds rather than directly into the polluted lake.

The House and Senate both provided $150,000 in their bonding bills for the design of holding ponds upstream from the lake, ponds that would help reduce the agricultural chemicals and sediment entering Titloe.

The bonding bills also have $15,000 for tile covers that trap sediments before they enter field tile.

Rapidan Dam

The House environmental and natural resources budget bill includes $60,000 to cover the state share of a $199,000 study of Blue Earth County’s Rapidan Dam.

The study would be the first phase a $1 million study by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers that would likely determine the future of the 97-year-old dam on the Blue Earth River.