Opinion articles and Letters to the Editor are a great way to consistently hear both sides of an argument, and then form my own opinion after taking in information from others.

After initially reading the Opinion piece from Dr. Dennis O’Hare on Feb. 15 (“Why we doctors oppose legalization of physician-assisted suicide”), I put it aside, re-read it later & pondered what he wrote.  I then felt compelled to write my own thoughts based on my experiences that are also relevant to the topic of physician-assisted suicide.

Those who are opposed to this bill the Minnesota Legislature is considering will typically refer to it as physician-assisted suicide, as the word “suicide” has negative connotations. The preferred name, especially for those who support it, is Death with Dignity. The formal name of the bill in the Legislature is the End-of-Life Option Act (HF 1930).

As an ICU registered nurse of well over 35 years, I have witnessed hundreds of patients dying in a variety of manners. In a controlled environment, such as an ICU, I was able, with a physician’s order, to administer narcotics or other medication my patient needed at the end of their life. I always considered it an honor to be present with the patient and their family, and to do my best to ensure that no suffering, whether from pain or shortness of breath, occurred during their final time. As the nurse, I was usually the only medical professional who would stay at the bedside until the final breath was taken.

Before that moment, many of the patients would tell me in private how they didn’t want to pass like this – in a sterile hospital room, having already suffered for weeks or months. They had hoped they could die peacefully in their own home, under the circumstances of their choosing. They asked me why they could make what they considered the humane choice for their beloved pet, but not for themselves. They all knew they were going to die soon from their diagnosis, and they simply wanted some control over the last thing on this Earth that would happen to them.

This is why I remain perplexed over Dr. O’Hare’s writing against this End-of Life Act. He writes that the bill would obligate Minnesota physicians to not only function as healers, but also as the gatekeepers and ultimately decision-makers. Yes, who better than the patient’s physician to make that decision? He himself writes that one day all our hearts will stop beating. I certainly hope that my physician will be willing to help me choose the circumstances under which mine will stop forever.

I hear the concern Dr. O’Hare has about the potential negative aspects of this bill. But if the fear of sliding down a slippery slope is so great, then other important medical decisions would never have been approached, such as allowing hospice patients to have very large amounts of morphine at their homes. That, too, gave the medical community cause for concern and carried with it an obvious risk of abuse. But we are now very comfortable with that and must realize that many patients attempt to use that exact prescription to intentionally end their lives. I have had hospice patients imply to me that they are ready to die and feel at peace with it. Their plan was that they would go home and see how much morphine or other medication was available to them, say good-bye to their family and leave this world on their terms. They would prefer to do it legally, but this state doesn’t give them that option.

The criteria are very clearly stated in this bill, and many patients who may desire it will not qualify. Like other laws, these criteria must be followed to the letter, and we must allow our trusted physicians to carry them out. What Dr. O’Hare wrote about in Canada, the broadening of criteria to include other groups or diagnoses, is certainly not a given in this country and not a fair argument against what is being proposed here. Any changes would have to be made by the legislators.

The National Institutes of Health conducted a random survey of 1,000 U.S. physicians, indicating that 60 percent thought “physician-assisted suicide” should be legal.  An informal (and not necessarily representative) poll conducted at our own Minnesota State Fair revealed that 73% of respondents agreed it should be legal.

Here are some examples of the Minnesota End-of-Life Option Act criteria, with the following being just a small portion of what the bill contains:

— It requires two health care providers, meeting specific criteria, to sign off that the patient is terminally ill and has a prognosis of less than six months.

— The patient needs to be found mentally capable.

— There cannot be any coercion for the patient to make this decision.

— No individual would qualify only because of advanced age or disability.

I sincerely applaud Dr. O’Hare’s work as a geriatrician and palliative care physician. It is a specialty that is greatly needed and appreciated. He, like any other provider, would have the choice to practice medical aid in dying. A pharmacist also has the choice to fill a medical-aid-in-dying prescription. A person who does fill their prescription has a choice of whether to use it, and they may indeed choose not to – but the choice is theirs. A choice to have that autonomy, legally, in their final time on Earth.

Registered Nurse Linda Marie Thayer, Lake Elmo, recently retired from United Hospital. She worked there for 40 years, the past 35 in the ICU.

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Thanks to MacKenzie Scott, Angie Alexander moved into her first house last May.

Alexander closed on her house in St. Paul’s Payne-Phalen neighborhood through a new special-purpose credit program at Twin Cities Habitat for Humanity. The nonprofit organization leveraged Scott’s funds to give 100 Black families up to a $50,000 down payment for their first home.

Thanks to Scott, who has become a major philanthropist since her divorce from Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, a group of fifth-graders from Frost Lake Elementary School in St. Paul got to spend a recent school day learning how to cash a paycheck, run a business and vote at Junior Achievement North’s JA BizTown.

Junior Achievement North is using money from Scott to help bring every fifth-grade student from St. Paul Public Schools to BizTown. During her visit, Ava Harrington, 11, of St. Paul, found out that being CEO of Delta Air Lines is a pretty good gig. “The best part is working together, having good ideas together and free flights to anywhere in the world,” she said.

Billionaire philanthropist MacKenzie Scott publicized some $2.1 billion that she’s made in charitable donations since November 2022 in a post Dec. 6, 2023, on her website Yield Giving. (Evan Agostini/Invision/AP, File)

Thanks to Scott, Brittany Pinales was hired last fall to be the director of Big Futures at Big Brothers Big Sisters Twin Cities, where she will help the youth-mentoring organization create programs designed to help young people explore and pursue future career success.

Scott, who has made substantial gifts to organizations that work with historically marginalized race, gender and sexual-identity groups, has donated more than $16.5 billion to more than 1,900 nonprofits since 2020, including more than $116 million to 24 Minnesota-based nonprofits.

Before giving to an organization, Scott’s team does “quiet research to identify (nonprofits) working to advance the opportunities of people in underserved communities,” according to Yield Giving, the philanthropic organization established by Scott in 2022. She makes only unrestricted gifts — leaving it to each recipient to use their grants how they see fit.

“It demonstrates a level of trust and confidence that says, ‘We see you; we see your work and the deep impact it’s having, and we believe in what you’re doing,’” said Marisa Williams, CEO of Girl Scouts River Valleys, which received a $4.2 million gift from Scott in 2022.

Scott may be able to give at a greater scale because she gives unrestricted gifts, said Christopher Wong Michaelson, a professor of ethics and business law at the University of St. Thomas.

“It leaves the hard work of deciding how best to spend those funds up to the beneficiary rather than the benefactor,” he said. “One reward of this strategy is that real issue experts get to decide what to do with the money, but one risk is that it gives the benefactor less control over how the money is spent.”

Scott remains one of the wealthiest women in the world, despite her generosity, “so she is probably not giving up an opportunity to live a comfortable life,” Michaelson said.

Four local nonprofit leaders recently shared with the Pioneer Press how their organizations are using Scott’s donations to transform their organizations. The transcripts have been edited for clarity and conciseness.

Habitat for Humanity

Twin Cities Habitat for Humanity’s work on closing the gap in homeownership for Black households led to a record $13.5 million donation from Scott in March 2022 — the single largest gift ever given to the organization.

Historically, Minnesota has one of the widest racial disparities in homeownership in the U.S., with 77 percent of white households owning homes compared to 42 percent of households of color. That number drops to 25 percent when it’s limited to Black homeowners, said Cathy Lawrence, the organization’s chief of staff.

Cathy Lawrence (Courtesy of Twin Cities Habitat for Humanity)

Habitat for Humanity has been working to dismantle systemic discrimination in Black homeownership “from redlining to racial covenants to predatory lending to building freeways through neighborhoods,” Lawrence said. “All of these things have been a barrier to saving for a down payment, getting a loan and affording a home.”

Habitat officials have spent about $2.5 million of Scott’s gift to date to advance Black homeownership in the metro area and to advance the organization’s diversity, equity and inclusion work — internally and externally, Lawrence said, with plans to scale the advancing Black homeownership program over the next several years.

The money for the down payments is for foundational Black households, “U.S.-born folks who have been traditionally, historically shut out of banking and mortgages,” Lawrence said.

Alexander, for example, was able to buy a three-bedroom, two-bathroom home in St. Paul’s Payne-Phalen neighborhood for herself and her 11-year-old son. After growing up in an apartment in South Minneapolis and 10 years of renting in Roseville, Alexander, 30, says it’s a blessing to own her own home.

Angie Alexander and her Pomeranian, Bruno, pose outside Alexander’s house in St. Paul’s Payne-Phalen neighborhood on Friday, March 1, 2024. (Courtesy of Angie Alexander)

“I’m the first person in my family to own my own home,” said Alexander, who works in Woodbury and is a student at St. Paul College. “The best part is having the freedom to do whatever I want with it. I can do the back yard the way I want to. I’m going to put in a flower garden and plant some vegetables. My son likes zucchini, and maybe I’ll have some cucumbers.”

Owning her own home means Alexander, who is studying to be a surgery technician, can finally have a dog. Her Pomeranian, named Bruno, joined the family in December.

Alexander said she hopes Scott realizes how grateful she is. “I didn’t think I would be able to afford a home until I got out of school,” Alexander said. “I am so thankful for what she’s done for me and my son and for all the others and the Habitat community. She is amazing.”

In addition to the down-payment assistance, the Black homeowners “requested a cohort model of financial coaching because of the financial trauma that they have endured,” Lawrence said. “They wanted to share their trials and tribulations and go arm in arm with people who have suffered the same indignities.”

The organization also plans to invest about $500,000 of Scott’s gift in its internal diversity-equity-and-inclusion efforts, Lawrence said, including the hiring of additional staff to work directly with clients.

Habitat officials originally were asked to provide three years of annual reports explaining how the Scott money would be spent. About six months later, however, Scott’s representatives said those reports would no longer be required.

“That would seem like it’s a good thing,” Lawrence said. “I mean, it’s less work for us, but at the same time we don’t get to share these stories — we don’t get to inspire her to continue to invest in the work, so it’s a little bit of a Catch-22 in my mind that we weren’t able to do that.”

One fascinating aspect of the gift: Scott’s representatives gave Habitat officials the choice of whether they even wanted the $13.5 million. “They wanted to ensure that organizations could handle it, and that we had the capacity to deal with it,” she said.

The organization also was given the option of taking the money in a lump sum or have it parceled out over a three-year period. Lawrence talked to President and CEO Chris Coleman about it. “I said, ‘Do we want to take it over three years? How would that make our financials look?’” she said. “He was, like, ‘I want all the cash, and I want it now.’”

The generous gift has not affected donations, she said.

“We have found that donors have been inspired by it,” she said. “It did not cause any decrease in giving. They know that if MacKenzie Scott felt that we’re a worthwhile place to invest money, then they can do that, too. It was a real endorsement of the work.”

Representatives of Scott have told Habitat officials that the $13.5 million donation was a one-time gift, but Lawrence and other organization officials are hopeful that more money may follow.

“We’re hoping that she understands the impact, and that she would want to continue to have us scale,” she said. “What she’s allowing us to do is make that vision come alive, become a reality, especially for certain families.”

That Scott placed no restrictions on how to spend the money is “amazing,” Lawrence said. “There were no strings attached. She trusted us to do the work. That really is disrupting philanthropy. Unfortunately, we haven’t seen too many more philanthropists follow in her stead and do this, but we can always hold out hope.”

Junior Achievement North

As the mayor of JA BizTown, Justin Htoo, 10, of St. Paul, speaks to his fellow Frost Lake Elementary fifth-graders at Junior Achievement North, one of several local organizations that have benefited from donations from philanthropist MacKenzie Scott. (John Autey / Pioneer Press)

One of Justin Htoo’s first acts as mayor of Junior Achievement North’s BizTown last month was to give a speech and lead the BizTown pledge. The pledge emphasized the importance of telling the truth, helping others, obeying the rules and paying taxes in BizTown, a student-sized town on the second floor of Junior Achievement North’s building on University Avenue in St. Paul. BizTown teaches hands-on lessons in economic concepts, workplace skills, and personal and business finances.

In his speech, Justin encouraged his fellow Frost Lake fifth-graders to vote on what animal should be the mascot of BizTown. “Voting is a very important part of citizenship and a great way to make a difference in your community,” he said.

Scott in 2022 gave $1.9 million to Junior Achievement North, which serves 106,000 students in Minnesota, North Dakota and western Wisconsin.

Sara Dziuk (Courtesy of Junior Achievement North)

The organization has used $1 million of her gift to create a fund to support its experiential learning programs “so more schools and students will be able to participate,” said Sara Dziuk, the organization’s president and CEO. “It is our most expensive program to run, so we rely on philanthropy — as well as a contribution from schools or families — to cover that expense for each student.”

It costs $80 for a student to attend JA BizTown and JA Finance Park; Junior Achievement pays the majority of that cost through fundraising and a new grant from the state of Minnesota. The Scott money is being used to help offset the cost for each school district, she said.

“We are working to stretch the gift as far as we can to reach students across the region,” Dziuk said. “Every little bit helps each school district.”

The Scott money is helping the organization bring every St. Paul eighth-grader and every Minneapolis ninth-grader, along with many other school districts, to JA Finance Park this year. In addition, every fifth-grader in St. Paul Public Schools and Minneapolis Public Schools is slated to participate in JA BizTown next year, she said.

“That’s what we are working towards,” Dziuk said. “Having the Scott fund allows us to offset some of that expense and makes it more affordable for schools or for families.”

Junior Achievement North also is using money from the Scott gift to bring students from other cities in the metro area and greater Minnesota through the programs “so that we can make sure that any student in any school who is interested in this experiential learning opportunity can benefit from it,” she said.

Students participate in a three-week curriculum in their classroom before coming to Junior Achievement for the day. “It’s just incredible to have 150 students bustling around — listening to a student-run radio station and taking their checks and depositing them at a bank and going to a cafe and having their lunch and voting for a student mayor and giving to philanthropy,” she said.

The organization is using some of Scott’s gift — about $700,000 — to support its strategic program growth initiatives over the next three years, including the hiring of five additional full-time staff. It also has used some of Scott’s money to create a BizTown pop-up — a mobile BizTown experience — to use in North Dakota and greater Minnesota, and plans to add an additional 25 job-shadow experiences for high school students in the metro area, she said.

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The job-shadow experience involves taking a classroom or a grade level to a corporate environment like Cargill, U.S. Bank or United Healthcare. “They have a chance to see firsthand what it looks like to work in these different organizations,” Dziuk said. “They learn about all of the different jobs that can be available. It’s a fantastic experience for students to be exposed to different careers and industries.”

The donation also is being used for technology upgrades, building maintenance and marketing. “We wanted to have some dollars to make some key investments, so we’ve done things like we ordered 50 new laptop computers so that we can have better technology within our learning labs for that simulation experience,” she said.

“This is a transformative gift, but it’s transformative only when it’s additive,” Dziuk said. “It’s opened doors for us in terms of the impact we can have, but we need to continue to look for philanthropic support and identify partnerships that will allow us to expand our work further. This gift gave us momentum. It gave us fuel and traction in the community so that we can raise more money and grow programming in support of students.”

Think Small

Officials from Think Small, a Little Canada-based nonprofit that works in early-childhood education, aren’t sure how Scott found out about the organization. She gave Think Small $2 million last fall.

“It’s very secretive. We don’t know who her spies are here,” said Tracy Nordstrom, president of the organization’s board. “But we feel very fortunate, obviously, that she recognizes the importance of early-childhood learning, and she recognizes Think Small is a leader in Minnesota.”

Tracy Nordstrom (Courtesy of Tracy Nordstrom)

The nonprofit looks at ways to train and support early educators, with a special emphasis on early literacy. “Our goal is that every kid in Minnesota shows up in kindergarten ready to learn, ready to read, ready to lead,” she said.

Think Small is using Scott’s donation as seed money — “we call it the sourdough starter” — for a $10 million campaign, Nordstrom said.

The organization’s $10 million “innovation and advocacy fund” will magnify parents’ voices in policymaking and help provide more quality child care options throughout the state, Nordstrom said.

“Think Small will continue to do what Think Small has been doing all along, which is to innovate and to advocate in the early-childhood space,” she said. “We will continue to innovate based on research and what each community needs to improve quality and improve access for early childhood — that’s nutrition, that’s home-visiting nurses, that’s child care during the day for little kids, that’s preschool, that’s coaching for all the providers, that’s continuing education for anybody who’s in the early childhood world, all of that.”

Scott’s $2 million gift has already inspired an additional $3 million in local contributions, she said.

“It’s like the bread is rising, you know? That’s what it feels like to me,” Nordstrom said. “It felt like a tremendous affirmation to have somebody outside of Minnesota recognize the 50-plus years of work that Think Small has done in early childhood. We wanted to open it up and say, ‘Who wants to join us and who wants to join MacKenzie Scott to put some more money in here? What can we innovate? What can we expand, and what can we do with this money moving forward?’”

Think Small plans to use money from the fund to expand its Think Small Institute, which helps early-childhood educators gain professional development opportunities and individualized coaching support from experts in child development. The institute expanded online during COVID, she said, and can now reach folks throughout the state.

“The pandemic really forced us to put everything online — just like every other business — and what we realized is, ‘Hey, we are pretty good at this. We can reach out to Crookston. We can have folks in Moorhead. We can have people up in Warroad participating in our programming, our coaching, training all of that online,’” she said.

An estimated 30,000 children in Minnesota have “zero access” to high-quality early-learning experiences, ages 0 to 5, according to Nordstrom. “They’re either in a child care desert, there’s no quality child care nearby, or they simply can’t afford it,” she said. “The $2 million sounds like a ton of money, but we are just beginning to reach those 30,000 kids, so it’s delightful and not adequate. So I say, ‘Give me your $500, give me your $5. Let’s keep the energy going, and let’s reach as many kids as we can.’”

Nordstrom said she has been amazed by the “cross section” of causes that Scott has been supporting with her foundation.

“The commonality is that they all build community and build opportunity,” she said. “It’s racial equity, it’s education, it’s community building, it’s all this stuff, which, you know, is what I can tell, in my analysis, is just building humanity, and it’s supporting the possibility of being our best selves. That’s a positive, joyful, wonderful thing.”

Big Brothers Big Sisters Twin Cities

The $6 million that Scott gave to Big Brothers Big Sisters Twin Cities is the largest donation in the youth-mentoring organization’s 104-year history.

The gift was part of a $122.6 million contribution Scott gave to Big Brothers Big Sisters of America and to local affiliates. The Twin Cities chapter is using the money “to revamp the organization in a way that will create greater impact” and recruit more mentors, especially male volunteers, said Pat Sukhum, CEO of Big Brothers Big Sisters Twin Cities.

Pat Sukhum (Courtesy of Big Brothers Big Sisters Twin Cities)

“The dollars are really being transformational,” he said. “They are absolutely redefining and pivoting how we are approaching community and the work we’re doing. It’s an incredible opportunity for youth-centered impact.”

The timing of the gift, which the organization received in May 2022, couldn’t have been better, said Sukhum, who was named CEO in June 2021.

The organization had recently moved into its new headquarters in North Minneapolis, and officials “were right in the midst of saying, ‘We need to go out and get a lot more community feedback and input into our program,’” Sukhum said. “We had a new leader and a new space, and we were in a new community, and now we have these dollars to bring it to life.”

Big Brothers Big Sisters officials ended up talking to more than 700 community members, including hundreds of “Bigs, Littles and families,” Sukhum said.

“We had to make some big pivots after that,” he said. “We found that we had room to grow. We’re over 100 years old, and if you don’t evolve over 100 years, you’re going to become irrelevant to the community. The community input really sparked us to say, ‘OK, we’ve got to redefine who we are.’ We were coming into a strategic-planning phase, and we really approached it in a much bigger way. How do we really gather voice? How do we pull in our participants?”

Eight-five percent of the youth served by Big Brothers Big Sisters Twin Cities are youth of color; 55 percent are Black. The organization’s commitments to justice, equity, diversity and inclusion align with Scott’s support of equity and the needs of underrepresented people, Sukhum said. “She speaks often — and supports often — organizations focused on youth development.”

The organization has allocated $3 million of Scott’s gift to the investments identified in its strategic plan. “We really want to look at these MacKenzie Scott dollars as transformational, right?” Sukhum said. “We don’t want to put $6 million in a bank and have it just grow interest.”

The $6 million has allowed Big Brothers Big Sisters Twin Cities “to invest with pace,” he said. “Historically, it has been a scramble. It was, ‘Let’s do a one-off thing because we have limited resources.’ We had a scarcity mentality. What MacKenzie Scott allows us to do is approach our decisions with a value-based mentality, an investment-based mentality.”

Twelve to 15 new staff will be hired to support the strategic plan — hires that will initially be paid for with dollars that came from Scott, he said.

“We plan to write a formal letter, ‘Dear Ms. Scott,’ and show our thanks and gratitude for what she is doing in our community,” he said. “She is transforming lives. We want her to know how we’re putting these dollars to work and how we speak of it in a transformational way. We hope it can be inspirational to other organizations, inspirational to community building, and to other funders and how they give.”

MacKenzie Scott Minnesota donations

MacKenzie Scott has given more than $116 million to these 24 Minnesota nonprofits, according to Scott’s website, yieldgiving.com.

She gave $28 million in 2023:

Southside Community Health Services, $2.6 million (2023)
Project for Pride in Living, $7 million (2023)
City of Lakes Community Land Trust, $10 million (2023)
Hmong American Partnership, $2 million (2023)
Way to Grow, $2 million (2023)
Think Small, $2 million (2023)
BWJP, $2.5 million (2023)

She gave at least $43 million in 2022:

Girl Scouts of Minnesota and Wisconsin River Valleys, $4.2 million
Boys and Girls Clubs of the Twin Cities, $4.8 million
Big Brothers Big Sisters Twin Cities, $6 million
Big Brothers Big Sisters of Central Minnesota, $1.5 million
Red Lake Nation Boys & Girls Club, undisclosed amount
Twin Cities Habitat for Humanity, $13.5 million
Dakota Medical Foundation, $10 million
Boys and Girls Club of White Earth, $1.25 million
Junior Achievement North, $1.9 million

She gave $33 million in 2021:

YMCA of the North, $18 million
Penumbra Theatre, $5 million
Greater Minnesota Housing Fund, $7 million
YWCA St. Paul, $3 million

And she gave at least $12 million in 2020:

Duluth Area Family YMCA, undisclosed amount
YMCA of Cass and Clay Counties, $10 million
Esperanza United, undisclosed amount
YWCA of Cass and Clay Counties, $2 million

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With his 15-month-old daughter Tlameha in hand, Daniel Cox explained to a crowd of sympathetic onlookers that quality child care hasn’t just become prohibitively expensive — it’s also hard to find. His family landed on the waitlist at three different centers.

In the meantime, “we are paying more than our mortgage for child care costs,” said Cox, during a forum at the Rondo Community Library on Dale Street a week ago.

To supervise his young daughter, Cox has worked from home and relied on the help of extended family to look after Tlameha while his wife goes into the workplace, luxuries he acknowledges not every family with young kids can access.

He believes a question on St. Paul’s November ballot could make all the difference for thousands of the city’s low-income families. The ballot language, approved 5-2 by the St. Paul City Council last July, calls for a dedicated fund for subsidies for early child care and early education through a 10-year property tax levy, which would grow annually over that period.

Grants for child care

Childcare advocates gather in front of St. Paul City Hall on Wednesday, March 22, 2023. (John Autey / Pioneer Press)

The fund, which could be administered by a new city department, would issue grants intended to make care for thousands of the city’s youngest children free for low-income families and available on a sliding scale for families at higher incomes.

The grants are intended to help families afford child care, open up new child care spots and help child care providers obtain licensure or complete training to meet program standards.

Given that more than one-fourth of the city’s schoolchildren live under the federal poverty level, organizers say the idea has drawn wide-ranging support.

“These are some of the easiest persuasion conversations you’ll ever find,” said Cox, campaign manager for SPARK, the “St. Paul All Ready for Kindergarten” coalition of early learning advocates backing the ballot initiative.

Ballot question language: “In order to create a dedicated fund for children’s early care and education to be administered by a City department or office that provides subsidies to families and providers so that early care and education is no cost to low-income families and available on a sliding scale to other families, and so as to increase the number of child care slots and support the child care workforce, shall the City of Saint Paul be authorized to levy property taxes in the amount of $2,000,000 in the first year, to increase by the same amount each year following for the next nine years ($4,000,000 of property taxes levied in year two, $6,000,000 in year three, $8,000,000 in year four and so on until $20,000,000 of property taxes are levied in year ten)?

BY VOTING ‘YES’ ON THIS BALLOT QUESTION, YOU ARE VOTING FOR A PROPERTY TAX INCREASE.”

A range of reaction

The proposal has garnered a range of reaction from some of the city’s most progressive voices, dividing even some self-proclaimed child advocates. Concerned about locking in 10 years of property tax increases for an untested municipal program in a single vote, St. Paul Mayor Melvin Carter and city council President Mitra Jalali have both come out firmly against the idea as it’s currently designed.

The mayor, who has backed a number of previous children’s initiatives, vetoed the ballot language last July, only to have his veto overridden by the city council a few weeks later. Carter maintains that the language, as written, “authorizes” but does not require his office to implement the child care subsidy program. He said it would cost far more to effectively set up than its budget would allow.

“They’ll just find out pretty quickly there’s not the pathway around this office that they thought there was,” said Carter, in a brief interview in late February.

Another burden for new homebuyers, property taxpayers?

Many child care centers have faced a fiscal cliff, of sorts, as federal funding provided through the American Rescue Plan Act runs dry.

During a news conference at St. Paul City Hall on Wednesday, Aug. 16, 2023, St. Paul Mayor Melvin Carter explains why he vetoed a ballot measure that would establish preschool and child care grants for low-income St. Paul residents. Later that afternoon, the seven-member St. Paul City Council overrode his veto. (John Autey / Pioneer Press)

Citing workplace shortages, declining enrollment during the pandemic and cost concerns, St. Catherine University in St. Paul recently informed parents it would close its 93-year-old Early Childhood Center in late May.

Still, some critics have said a child care subsidy program would be better administered by the state, county or school district, rather than by the city, which does not maintain a social services department and may have to create an entirely new office. That would entail spending extra money hiring auditors or inspectors to prevent fraud and abuse in an area in which the city has no expertise.

They’ve also noted that the child care subsidy program, as currently described, does not actually mandate an early learning component, and child care providers would not have to be rated by a rating system such as Parent Aware.

Property tax increases

If approved in November, the special property tax levy would be structured to raise $2 million in its first year, $4 million in the second year, $6 million in the third year and so on, reaching $20 million by year 10. SPARK organizers have estimated the median-value home would shoulder $20 in added property taxes in the first year, and $200 by year 10.

That’s left critics to question whether the property tax increases would hurt the very group they intend to support — moderate-income residents — by putting homeownership further out of reach for first-time homebuyers. Housing costs are already viewed as burdensome for too many people in the Twin Cities, and St. Paul’s tax levy is likely to come under added pressure as the retail sector continues to contract due to factors like online shopping.

Meanwhile, office buildings and even some luxury apartments appear to be losing value in the era of remote work, which could further shift the cost of everyday municipal services onto homeowners through future property tax increases.

The mayor’s position

The subsidy proposal has put some progressive advocates in the awkward position of seemingly opposing aid to families in need. The mayor has long prided himself on his outreach to vulnerable children, including forgiving library fines, extending hours and free sports and other activities at city recreation centers, and launching a CollegeBound St. Paul program that offers $50 college savings accounts for newborns.

Before being elected mayor in 2017, Carter was the founding board chair of the school-centered St. Paul Promise Neighborhood, director of the Minnesota Office of Early Learning, and executive director of the Minnesota Children’s Cabinet under former Gov. Mark Dayton.

Still, after the 5-2 council vote last summer to support the ballot language, Carter released a statement saying he had “significant concerns with the lack of details available for what would be a brand new program with a budget that rivals our citywide library system.”

“While I appreciate the ambition behind this well-intentioned initiative, the city’s focus should remain on meeting critical needs like repairing roads and caring for individuals experiencing homelessness, which have gone under-resourced for far too long,” the mayor wrote.

‘A public good’

The SPARK board is chaired by Halla Henderson, a member of the St. Paul school board, and also has drawn backing from state Rep. Dave Pinto, City Council Member Nelsie Yang and Council Member Rebecca Noecker, among others in attendance at last week’s forum.

The speakers noted that academic studies have long established the positive impact of early education on childhood brain development, but a slew of state-backed programs — the Child Care Assistance Program (CCAP), Head Start/Early Head Start and pre-K offered through St. Paul Public Schools — maintain sizable waitlists.

“This is a public good,” said Pinto, taking the microphone at the forum. “There is nothing with greater potential in the entire universe than a brand new human brain. But it needs that nurturing, that support.”

More than half the children in St. Paul live within 185% of the federal poverty level, the threshold used by the state of Minnesota to indicate need for means-tested early learning scholarships, which are in high demand.

How it might work

The state Legislature approved significant funding increases to programs serving children up to 5 years of age last year, but an independent analysis by economist Rob Grunewald found that the city would need an additional $39 million per year to provide early learning supports to all St. Paul children up to 2 years of age within the 185% poverty threshold.

The mayor has pointed out that the $2 million generated in the first year of the program would barely scratch the surface of that need, and would still fall far short in year 10.

“A $120 million program cannot be implemented with $20 million,” said Carter, laying out figures on a whiteboard during an impassioned public presentation against the ballot language last August.

The city’s Early Learning Legislative Advisory Committee, established in September 2022, was the first to call for the creation of a city-driven child care and early learning program funded by a new, dedicated public revenue source. The program would be designed to prioritize families with the most need using a point system that considers factors like income, homelessness, foster care status and having parents under 21, according to the council resolution ordering a special ballot this November.

The program would allow families to access care and apply for financial assistance through a single application or online finder tool. Providers located in St. Paul would be eligible for subsidies to open up new spots, free of charge or on a sliding scale to parents, though a waiver process could also fund providers located outside the city in extenuating circumstances.

Eligible providers would include Head Start and Early Head Start, licensed family child care, licensed child care centers and legal non-licensed providers, including legal non-licensed family, friend and neighbor caregivers. The city council would consider how to support other family, friend and neighbor caregivers, according to the council resolution.

The goal would be to fund programs with a variety of schedules to meet families’ needs, from part-time care to year-round, full and extended-day care. The subsidies could also support providers in obtaining licensure and meeting program standards, and they would be aimed at supplementing — not supplanting — funding available from other sources, such as state early learning scholarships.

As for oversight, the resolution calls for the program to be “held accountable for fiscal and program performance according to clearly defined performance indicators and annual financial audits,” though it remains to be seen what those indicators would be and who would oversee the audits.

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LAURA CHILDS: Minnesotan Gerry Schmitt, writing as Childs, releases her 55th book, “Murder in the Tea Leaves,” in her bestselling Tea Shop Mysteries series featuring Theodosia Browning, owner of the Indigo Tea Shop in Charleston, S.C. She also writes the Scrapbook mystery series and the Cackleberry Club mysteries as well as the Afton Tangler thriller series set in the Twin Cities. Book signing noon to 2 p.m. Saturday, March 9, Once Upon a Crime mystery bookstore, 604 W. 26th St., Mpls.

SLOANE CROSLEY: Discusses “Grief is for People,” with author Curtis Sittenfeld. 7 p.m. Wednesday, March 6, Magers & Quinn, 3038 Hennepin Ave. S., Mpls.

SUE LEAF: Minnesotan discusses “Impermanence: Life and Loss on Superior’s South Shore,” her memoir about life on the big lake’s lesser-known side, in conversation with Laurie Hertzel, former Star Tribune books editor. 1 p.m. Sunday, March 10, Barnes & Noble, 2100 N. Snelling Ave, Roseville.

MAGOON/LEITICH SMITH: Critically acclaimed and bestselling children’s authors Kekla Magoon and Cynthia Leitich Smith introduce their first collaboration, the middle-grade graphic novel “Blue Stars: Mission One: The Vice Principal Problem,” first in a series about two sixth-grade cousins who become superheroes using their creativity and ingenuity (rather than actual superpowers) to fight those who threaten the school and their community. Magoon is the author of fiction and nonfiction and teaches at Vermont College of Fine Arts. Smith, a Native American Muscogee citizen, is winner of several American Library Association Youth Media awards including the American Indian Youth Literature Award, and was the inaugural Katherine Paterson Chair at the Vermont College of Fine Arts MFA program. Joined by debut illustrator Molly Murakami. This is the only stop on their national tour at which all three will be present. Free. 6:30 p.m. Tuesday, March 5, Red Balloon Bookshop, 891 Grand Ave., St. Paul.

(Courtesy of HarperCollins Publishers)

ReSHADA TATE: Bestselling author has published more than 50 books, from contemporary romance to teen fiction, nonfiction and poetry. Her novel “Let the Church Say Amen” was adapted for the screen by producers Queen Latifah and Regina King. Her new book is “The Queen of Sugar Hill,” the largely unknown story of Hollywood actress Hattie McDaniel, best known for her role as Mammy in the film “Gone With the Wind.” Although she was the first African-American woman to win an Academy Award, the Oscar put her in the crosshairs of controversy for the rest of her life. White people thought of her as Mammy and Black people scorned what they felt was a demeaning role. But McDaniel persisted, working on fair housing and other social justice issues. Presented by Metropolitan Library Service Agency, which brings high-profile authors to metro-area libraries. Free. 6:30 p.m. Thursday, March 7, Wildwood Library, 763 Stillwater Road, Mahtomedi.

JAMES TRAUB: Discusses “True Believer: Hubert Humphrey’s Quest for a More Just America.” 7 p.m. Tuesday, March 5, Magers & Quinn, 3038 Hennepin Ave. S., Mpls.

What else is going on

Public and private academic libraries across Minnesota are working together to ensure that nearly half a million scarcely held books will remain available in Minnesota for the foreseeable future, according to an announcement from Minitex, a division of the University of Minnesota’s Libraries funded by the Minnesota Office of Higher Education. Called the Minnesota Shared Print Program, the 24 participants have committed their institution to retain specific books that, according to Minitex, represent a significant part of the scholarly record that is in demand but not widely distributed within Minnesota or other regions of the United States. “Access to Minnesota’s vast array of scientific and literary materials is now secured,” Minitex director Maggie Snow is quoted as saying. “By evaluating collections collectively, libraries can better serve the students, researchers, and communities.”

“Saturday Night at the Lakeside Supper Club” by Minnesota native J. Ryan Stradal is out in paperback. As with his previous novels, “Kitchens of the Great Midwest” and “The Lager Queen of Minnesota,” his latest won praise from fans and critics. It’s the story of the advent of supper clubs, born in Wisconsin during the Depression and unique to the Midwest. Named one of the best books of 2023 by Publishers Weekly and Barnes & Noble, it’s filled with family drama, the changing restaurant scene in Midwest small towns, and strong women.

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