Hoping to bring great budget debate to Mankato

I'm hoping to convince the Citizens League of Minnesota to bring one of their intriguing budget debate meetings to Mankato in the near future.

The Citizens League, a non partisan and credible research group, has through a grant with the Bush Foundation set up some 30 plus meetings around the state, in small towns and big, to gather citizens for a night of discussion on how to solve the state's estimated $6 billion budget deficit.

There's a good report on one of the recent meetings in MinnPost.

I recently spoke with Citizens League Executive Director Sean Kershaw and when I saw he didn't have Mankato on the list for a meeting, I recommended we get one. I told him I believe Mankato was a community that could be very engaged in this process and he'd get a good turnout.

He sounded like he was going to pursue it. I spoke with him at a recent meeting of the University of Minnesota Frank Premack Public Affairs Journalism board, of which we are both members.

The Free Press will do everything it can to help bring about this meeting, including participating in it and publicizing it. I'm hoping to hear back from Kershaw soon. Will update when I know.