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>> Representative Wagenius thanks for joining us today. My first question is if you can tell us a little bit
about yourself and your district? >> let's start with my district. I represent
parts of the very southern part of Minneapolis, and four precincts in Richfield which is about
a quarter of Richfield so that is my district. We are around the airport so we are on the
northern side of the airport and on the western side of the airport so airport issues have
always been important for this district. I am a mom of to and Grand Mosque of three just
had a new member of the family joined us in November. My background before I was elected
I was a staff attorney for the Minnesota Court of appeals.
>> what are your top legislative priorities? >> when you have some seniority you are you
have the responsibility of chairing a committee and the committee I chair right now is environment
and natural resources and agriculture finance. My priorities of course is to have a budget
that is workable for all of the interests in that area and that's what we did last year
is pass a budget that was workable and not only workable but at move forward a number
of issues that are important to Minnesotans and one of the things we concentrated on was
our water resources particularly groundwater which is the drinking water source for 75%
of Minnesotans. We were seeing limitations that had ever been discussed before so that
is one of the places we concentrated some of our efforts on.
>> what legislation have you worked on in the past that you are most?
>> one of the first things I did as a legislator before I knew it was impossible to do is I
took on the battery industry which had mercury in each of its batteries just a common alkaline
batteries and at that time there were batteries that were almost like two-thirds Mercury their
heavy and you could tell they were mercury batteries and the industry was relying on
mercury as one of its components. Just a tiny bit in each battery but because of our so
many batteries we have a lot of mercury and of course it would go to the incinerators
in getting the Arab and come into our water and so one of the very path biggest initiatives
I did when I was an early legislator was literally getting rid of mercury of batteries. We had
one step of phase out and then the second step was you can't have it anymore. It was
hard bill to pass the industry said to me at one. Well you know your Minnesotan e only
consume 2% of the batteries so we just won't sell batteries in Minnesota if you do this.
That was scary I can remember thinking all my gosh, but we would add and within months
after we passed the legislation they were advertising mercury free batteries. That is
one of my favorites and my other favorite was with then Senator random she is now a
judge and I worked on and getting the first state dollars for all day kindergarten. It
is taken as a long time to fully fund that and that's all we did this year and I was
super pleased with that. >> why did you initially decide to run for
office as a representative? >> Some folks in my neighborhood asked me
to do it and I actually was working for the Court of Appeals could not be politically
involved because I had to be non-partisan at that point. There was an open seat and
some of the people in my district mainly women came to me and said we have not adult woman
Representative they're very few women in the legislature we would like you to run, and
they promised me at the time that if I would run they would give organize and make dinner
for my family every night of the week. I said no but if you will be my campaign manager
I will do it so that's what happened. >> what you see as the biggest challenge the
state will face in the next 10 years? >> education and making sure all our students
are educated up to their best potential is probably the biggest challenge. It's certainly
not the only one that I would say that's the biggest one. . .