A few quick thoughts.
Health care, human services
Health care reforms will be a challenge for outstate providers. Reimbursement rates will be cut unless hospitals and others can prevent some tough medical cases (the poor on medical assistance) from returning to emergency rooms.
The reforms sound like a good way to save money, but remember, lots of these folks have mental illness and chronic conditions. Rural and outstate hospitals may have fewer resources to really make these "incentive" plans workable.
On the flip side, there should be a lot of opportunity for rural counties to join together in delivering services and setting up joint administrative centers for human services. There appear to be incentives to do these kind of collaborations. Some small counties have experience doing it already, so there's a model out there.
A little known provision in the final health and human services bill will blow a surprising hole in county budgets regarding payments for sex offenders:
Here it is:
Section 1 (246B.10) increase the county share for person civilly committed to the Minnesota Sex Offender Program from ten percent to 25 percent. This section is effective for all individuals who are civilly committed to the Minnesota Sex Offender Program on or after August 1, 2011.
Ouch. That will hurt, or it will create incentives for county attorneys to avoid committing sex offenders. That won't go over well with the public.
K-12 education
With the state borrowing from schools, and thus schools having to borrow themselves to make up for 40 percent delay in payments, it will be tough on small districts who face cash flow issues and face declining enrollment already.
A $50 increase in the per-pupil formula will not help a district that is losing hundreds of students, or even 50.
I would expect to see more stress on outstate school finances, and therefore, incentive to merge, like we saw recently with Le Center and Montgomery Lonsdale.
New required annual evaluations for teachers will be touchy for small school districts as everyone knows everybody and it will likely be a big cultural change at many schools that never had required evaluations.
Tying those evaluations to scores could also be problematic because students with risk factors for poor performance can be concentrated at small schools. One school in Mankato has 50 percent of its students that qualify for free or reduced priced lunches, while others are nowhere near that.
So, with teachers knowing they'll be evaluated based on student success, will there be an incentive to work at only the schools in neighborhoods that are middle class or well off?
Scores can be affected by small groups, but it's a positive that the local school boards and teacher reps will be able to choose what scores to use in measuring student progress.
Higher education
Of course, many regional centers have one or more state universities or community colleges. With cuts in the 10 percent range in higher education, it's clear these communities will be impacted with higher education job loss.
Minnesota State Mankato has cut approximately 100 high paying jobs over the last two years. Tuition will increase for kids going to school, which means they may have less to spend at the local malls, bars and restaurants.
Jobs
The $500 million bonding bill will help mitigate the job losses in outstate Minnesota where construction is typically slower. The bonding bill will also help mitigate some job loss from state employment, as the workforce is scheduled to be reduced by 6 percent through attrition.
The Mankato area has one of the highest concentrations of state employees in the state, almost 10 percent of wages, depending on how you measure it. Many other regional centers have the same kind of exposure to a state workforce.
The 15 percent cuts in jobs Republicans had proposed would obviously have had more impact.
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