Clay & Becker Co. businesses blast MN paid family leave bill

MINNESOTA (KVRR) – Ninety-eight businesses part of the Fargo, Moorhead, West Fargo Chamber of Commerce are against a bill in the Minnesota Legislature that would give employees up to 24 weeks of paid family leave.

“This bill is by no means set in stone. It’s already I believe had five tweaks of it going forward,” DFL State Sen. Rob Kupec of Moorhead said.

“We really hope he listens to the constituents and not the caucus,” Steve Daggett with Midwest Bank Detroit Lakes said.

“This is a bill that needs to be looked at, killed for now, looked at later. North Dakota did exactly that,” Owner of D&S Beverages Doug Restemayer said.

The Senate bill involves 12 weeks of family leave to care for a newborn or ill or dying relative. It also give 12 weeks of medical leave. The bill would make this mandatory for all businesses regardless of how many employees they have. It costs $1.7 billion and has a seven tenths of a percent sales tax. The measure would also create 410 new government positions to implement and monitor the program.

“The real problem is staffing and the government’s trying to fix something and they’re causing more problem to the true problem,” Daggett said.

“The 0.7% would be approximately $300,000 added to the tax levy for Clay County. If we pass 50 percent of that onto our employees, that’s an estimated car payment per year,” Clay County Commissioner Jenny Mongeau said.

“We don’t want this to look like this is a business versus employee issue. It’s not. Employees, we do well because of our employees and we try to have cultures that are good for employees,” Daggett said.

“I get the privilege of operating in both North Dakota and Minnesota and there’s a stark contrast of doing business in the two states and this just makes the contrast even more stark,” Restemayer said.

“We need to stop this. We need to get tax relief. We have a $17.6 billion surplus and it needs to go back to the people. Not to more government,” Republican State Rep. Jim Joy of Hawley said.

“I’m also hearing from people who are employees and they have a very different take on this as well, so it’s balancing those things,” Kupec said.

Kupec vows to take what he’s heard from Clay and Becker County businesses and take it back to St. Paul.