One thing I don’t think people are considering is the “bang for the buck” you get out of the ENRTF. The amount of money put in from the lottery each year is about $40,000,000. The trust fund structure with restricted spending has allowed the ENRTF to grow to where they are able to use around $80,000,000 a year now and the faster the fund grows the faster this number gets bigger.
If that 40 million goes to the general fund do you think it’s going to get invested and the legislature only spend 5.5% of it each year? I think they’ll spend all of it, 40 million per year.
Maybe we won’t get more squirrel research (and maybe we will, the legislature approves ENRTF funding so they already did once) but it’s also only half as much money overall in the first place and it’s going to stay relatively fixed over time.
That article says “Instead, excess lottery funds will simply flow to the general fund, making them available for other purposes — dare we say a tax cut?”
There are about 3.7 million tax payers in Minnesota. 40 million dollars is about $11/person. Instead of giving me back $11, from people who willingly threw it away on entertainment, we doubled the spending power to fund things like this in 2024 appropriations:
– 5,425,000 to acquire high-priority inholdings from willing sellers within boundaries of state parks, recreation areas, and trails
– 727,000 acquire land for Wannigan Regional Park
– 1,919,000 for SNA habitat development
– 3,802,000 for local parks, trail connections, and natural and scenic areas
– 4,952,000 for rehabilitating and enhancing existing state trails and replacing or repairing existing state trail bridges
– 2,689,000 to construct a segment of the Gateway State Trail between the city of Scandia and William O’Brien State Park
There’s a lot more, go down to Article 2 here: https://www.revisor.mn.gov/laws/2023/0/Session+Law/Chapter/60/