A river in Minnesota’s Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness was ranked as the nation’s third most endangered in an annual list of threatened waterways from the conservation group American Rivers on Tuesday, MPR News reports. This comes after the U.S. House of Representatives voted in January to lift the 20-year ban on mining near the Boundary Waters.
According to the American Rivers report, more than two dozen studies over the past decade show that pollution to the South Kawishiwi River is “probable if not inevitable if mining is allowed.”
Related: This river confluence has a rich human history. One that archaeologists haven’t agreed on
In state government news, lawmakers in the Minnesota House of Representatives proposed new legislation that would establish “the nation’s first true state-level wealth tax,” levying a 1% tax on all “taxable wealth” over $10 million, Bloomberg Tax reports. The proposal was heard during a House Taxes Committee meeting April 7 and was laid over for possible inclusion in a larger tax bill.
Lawmakers defined “taxable wealth” as “the sum of all real or personal, tangible or intangible property, minus the sum of all debts and financial obligations owed by the taxpayer,” according to the Minnesota House’s Session Daily.
“We already do tax wealth,” said Rep. Aisha Gomez, DFL-Minneapolis. “We tax the wealth of working-class and middle-class people every single year. Because most of us, the one asset that we own is a home. Every year, they assess the value of my asset, they apply a classification rate, we have a levy that’s imposed and I pay a wealth tax on my one asset. … All we’re saying here is that the wealth of the rich should be taxed just the same as the wealth of middle class and working class people.”
A cannabis entrepreneur hoping to build on privately owned land within the Leech Lake Band of Ojibwe reservation is unable to move forward because of complex state and tribal regulations, reports the Minnesota Star Tribune. “This is a perfect example of the challenges of the multi-jurisdictional cannabis market that we have here,” Office of Cannabis Management Director Eric Taubel told the paper.
A bill placing guardrails around Minnesota homeowners associations, or HOAs, has bipartisan support and is moving forward in the Minnesota House and Senate, KSTP reports. The bill caps HOA fines at $100, requires boards to clearly list the penalties for specific violations and obtain at least three bids for construction and maintenance projects.
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