Bye seeks DFL backing for 4B
Meg Bye of rural Pequot Lakes will again seek DFL endorsement for the House District 4B seat now held by Rep. Larry Howes, R-Walker.
Bye said she'll work for fair education funding, protection of water and forest resources, affordable health care and lower property taxes.
Meg Bye
She said the incumbent has been in the House since 1998, during times of both Republican and Democratic majority control, yet the district has little to show for his efforts.
Bye, 67, said a statewide funding mechanism is needed for education so that property tax poor school districts would not have to rely as much on that tax. The current education funding system, she said, has resulted in an unconstitutional disparity of resources.
"Children in Walker and Hackensack deserve the same opportunities as children in Minnetonka and Edina," she said. "It's pretty obvious over the last eight years the state has abdicated its responsibility as required in the (state) Constitution, requiring local funding to take over."
The former Duluth City Council member said there has been a complete reversal of the traditional progressive taxation systems Minnesota used to enjoy.
"I think it's about time we ask people who earn $250,000 or $300,000 (a year) to pay their fair share of income taxes," she said. "If we would even go back to the formulas we used 10 or 15 years ago."
State cuts have an effect on both schools and local government, she said.
"The work is still there," she said. "We still need to plow the streets, buy books for our children."
In her statement she said the district's problems have been compounded by a lack of leadership from the governor and ineffective representation from the incumbent legislator.
She called for the state to partner with groups like the Pine River Watershed to keep water from being impaired.
"We have clear water," Bye said. "We have clean water, but no funding to keep them that way."
Two years ago Howes defeated Bye 12,820 votes to 11,032 votes.
"My own involvement with the community has given me much more exposure," she said. "
The former mathematics teacher has a bachelor's degree from the College of St. Scholastica and has completed much of the work for a master's degree in management at St. Scholastica.
The DFL's Senate District 4 endorsing convention is Saturday morning at the Walker-Hackensack-Akeley High School. Bye said she had not heard of any opposition within the party for the District 4B endorsement. Pam McCrory, DFL Senate District 4 chair, said Tuesday both incumbents, Sen. Mary Olson, DFL-Bemidji, and Rep. John Persell, D-Bemidji, face challengers for the endorsement. Olson will be challenged by Gregory W. Paquin of Bemidji. Persell, the District 4A representative, will be opposed by Nicole Boileau of Bemidji.
Bye has been a classroom teacher, a mediator, the executive director of a regional nonprofit food bank and the administrator of a large city human rights enforcement office. She served 12 years as a Duluth City Council member.
She has worked for the U.S. Department of Justice and the U.S Office of Economic Opportunity. She also has served the state of Minnesota as a director of the Minnesota Housing Finance Agency, on the Governor's Crime Commission and The Labor Interpretative Center and the Duluth area Coastal Zone Management Advisory Board.
Bye was the first woman president of the League of Minnesota Cities and served on the board of the National League of Cities. In addition, she has served as president and board member of several nonprofit organizations providing services to people with disabilities, at-risk children and the hungry.
She is currently a member of Ducks Unlimited, the Pine River Watershed Alliance Board, the Pequot Women's Club and Team Teal of the Minnesota Ovarian Cancer Alliance.
Bye lives with Don, her husband of 40 years, on a farm homesteaded by Don's grandfather in 1896 in Loon Lake Township near Pequot Lakes. Their son, Dan, and his family, Vanessa, Ayden and baby Gena live near them, on the old homestead.