Archive for the ‘University of Minnesota’ tag
“It’s a sad day for Minnesota”
The budget forecast delivered by state finance officials on Wednesday is perhaps the bleakest outlook in Minnesota’s history.
“This is the worst, without a question,” said Jay Kiedrowski, a senior fellow at the University of Minnesota’s Humphrey Institute of Public Affairs.
As the state’s chief financial officer under Gov. Rudy Perpich in the 1980s, Kiedrowski dealt hands-on with the fallout from another major recession.
What’s compounding the current shortfall is that it comes on the heels of already deep budget cuts and under a governor who refuses to raise revenues, he said.
The trends, if left unchecked, will have widespread consequences, from larger K-12 class sizes and higher college tuition rates to bumpier roads and fewer police officers.
“It’s a sad day for Minnnesota,” said Kiedrowski. Read the rest of this entry »
Student group wants pledge from ‘U’ to dump coal
A student group at the University of Minnesota wants the school to set a time line for phasing out the burning of coal on campus.
Students Beyond Coal, part of a national Sierra Club campaign, will stage a rally today against the fuel, which is a major source of greenhouse gases and other pollution.
“We want to support what the University has done already” to reduce its coal use and energy consumption, said Siri Simons, a sophomore environmental studies student, “and we want to pressure them to keep moving in that direction.”
But is completely cutting coal from the equation realistic? Read the rest of this entry »
