In 2009,North Saint Paul city administrator Wally Wysopal was the loudest cheerleader for a proposed $18.5 million taxpayer-backed telecom network dubbed PolarNet. "It provides economic development opportunities like we don’t have today and that’s what we want to do is distinguish North Saint Paul from any other community in the metro area," Wysopal said at the time.

Even after North Saint Paul voters overwhelmingly rejected the controversial fiber-optic network, Wysopal thought it might be viable with some fine tuning. "We need to find out what went wrong and what's salvageable," Wysopal told the Ramsey County-Maplewood Review.

The federal transportation bill that finally became law last week keeps the wheels on highway funding, construction jobs and public transit programs, but appears to derail passenger rail projects like the proposed $1 billion Northern Lights Express (NXL) line from the Twin Cities to Duluth—at least for now.   

The development bolsters the recent decision by the Anoka County Regional Rail Authority to rescind financial support and pull out of the 155 mile proposed NLX line, which parallels a defunct and failed Amtrak line shut down in 1986. 

To some, the actions of the Connecticut legislature that enabled a child care providers union in Connecticut might appear to add momentum to SEIU and AFCSME’s national campaign to conscript family child care business owners into becoming card-carrying dues-paying union members of these two unions.  
 
Just weeks earlier, however, Governor Paul LePage (R-Maine) signed a bill repealing a 2008 law that sanctioned a union for family child care providers who receive state subsidies. Adding to the confusion, Governor Jerry Brown (D-Calif.) vetoed a bill establishing a union last fall.
 

On Friday afternoon, Gov. Mark Dayton signed the $496 million Omnibus Bonding Bill (HF 1752) passed by the House and Senate earlier this week.

The relatively modest bonding proposal was developed after Gov. Dayton rejected a smaller package passed earlier this year. The governor supported a $775 million bonding proposal, but ultimately agreed to support a scaled back version.