Liz Reyer
Name: Liz Reyer
Email: [email protected]
Campaign Phone:
Campaign Website: LizReyer.com
Twitter handle: N/A
Facebook Page: https://www.facebook.com/lreyer52A
Candidate Bio
I’m a long-time Eagan resident and I’ve served in the House of Representatives for four years. My husband and I raised our four kids here, and now my little granddaughter lives in Eagan, too. I have always been a problem solver. In my business career, I worked to resolve challenging situations my companies and our customers faced. In my personal life, I overcame adversity, including domestic violence. As a community member, I’ve volunteered in schools and local organizations and spoken out against racial and social injustice.
I’ve served for four years on the Health committee; a natural fit, given my years working for Blue Cross here in Eagan. I’ve been on the Capital Investment committee for four years, the last two as vice chair. I’ve also served on the Housing, Preventing Homelessness, Human Services, Workforce Development, and Economic Development committees, and am co-chair of the House Climate Action Caucus. I take pride in working across the aisle and have a track record of bringing people together to create strong legislation.
What would be your top three priorities if elected? How might these priorities be affected by the state's projected economic outlook?
It should go without saying that economic conditions will have an important impact on the specific policies that are put in place and the level of investment that is possible. However, each of these goal areas are flexible to reflect existing resources, including helpful legislation that would be “policy only” and have no impact on state budgets.
How would you characterize the business climate in the East Metro? Please elaborate on your answer.
From my vantage point in Eagan, the business climate is strong. In the most recent survey, 90% or more people rated Eagan highly as a place to do business, recommended operating a business in Eagan, and plan to keep their business in Eagan for the next five years. Likewise, in Burnsville, 93% of businesses rate Burnsville's business climate as Good or Excellent. Our area also has robust education systems, transportation, parks, and cultural organizations. These are all amenities that help businesses attract and retain excellent employees. As in other parts of the state, our communities would be strengthened by growing our housing stock, particularly in workforce and affordable housing. In Dakota County, efforts are underway, bolstered by funding passed by the 2023-24 legislature.
Please characterize your perspective on the ideal collaboration between government and the business community when it comes to tackling challenges whether they be education, housing, or workforce development? Do you feel the outcomes of the 2023-2024 legislative session positively or negatively impacted that collaboration and our state's business climate?
Government–state and local, along with our federal partners– and the business community are two of the important parties that must be included to formulate effective policies. Other important parties include workers and unions, education institutions, non-profit service providers, and social advocacy groups. In my view, all of these voices are needed to tackle challenges and create solutions that will have the best chance of success. This is more difficult than a top-down approach and requires extensive problem-solving and negotiation. One successful example of this in the 2023-24 legislative session was the Minnesota Debt Fairness Act. As House bill author, I was able to negotiate with many concerned business groups and arrive at a solution that was agreed to by all stakeholders. It’s all about relationships, and I believe that the work we did in 2023-24 will help Minnesota’s businesses now and in years to come. Relationships are built by ongoing interactions like those I’ve had with the Dakota County Regional Chamber of Commerce and the Burnsville Chamber, the Main Street Alliance, and industry-specific groups like the Council of Health Plans. They also depend on accessibility, and I make a point of meeting to talk through issues of concern with stakeholders and with visiting businesses and organizations in my district and across Minnesota.
What policies, if any, would you support to help employers address our state’s critical labor shortage?
The workforce shortage is of serious concern to me and has been an important personal priority as a member of the Workforce Development committee. We need to ensure that there are education and training options available for all types of work and that the preparation matches the needs of the position. This means supporting all options, from technical training and apprenticeships to college and professional education like medical school. We need to ensure that we continue to build pathways for advancement for people within a profession, for example, healthcare or education. And we must ensure that barriers are removed to ensure that cultural, socioeconomic, and community groups that may have been underinvested in have the access they need to programs that will help them progress. In 2023-24, we made progress, for example, funding programs for new Americans, communities of color, and people coming out of incarceration. We also took down barriers to college funding through the North Star Promise program, which provides college tuition support to those whose families have less economic means. I strongly support continuing to identify quality programs like these to help build our workforce.
The 2023-2024 Legislature passed many new mandates on employers, such as Paid Family Medical Leave, Earned Safe and Sick Time, and Worker Misclassification penalties. Do you support the PFML program in its current form or do you believe there needs to be further refinement before the program comes into effect in January 2026? If elected, what steps would you take to understand the impact of a proposal on the many types of businesses in the East Metro and how would you define any exceptions to those policies?
Policies such as Paid Family Medical Leave, Earned Safe and Sick Time, and Worker Misclassification, as well as other worker safety legislation, are necessary to pass from a variety of perspectives. Most importantly, they ensure quality of life for workers and their families. I’ve had the personal experience of having to work when I’m sick due to lack of ESST, and also having to drain my vacation and sick time to care for a family member in their time of need. In many cases, workers need to quit their jobs, which benefits neither employer nor employee. I’ve also heard from many businesses that look forward to PFML creating a level playing field for attracting and retaining top employees. All that said, legislation evolves. I will be asking questions and listening for ways to continue to adjust programs like these through our routine legislative processes.
What are your strategies to address public safety challenges in your district and the state?
Community members want and deserve to feel safe. To do this, we need to provide sufficient funding for public safety including funds flexibility for communities to use to address their specific needs. Funds also are needed to continue to attract and retain top public safety personnel. We also need to ensure that clear expectations are set for public safety teams, as we’ve done through the POST board changes and SRO clarifications.
We need to continue to pass sensible gun laws to protect community members and first responders. In the past two years, we’ve passed universal background checks and red flag laws. We also banned binary triggers and increased penalties for straw purchases following the tragic shooting of three first responders in Burnsville in Feb. 2024. This is a good base for continued attention.
Crime prevention needs to remain a high priority. Efforts with youth to help them find positive paths, interventions like restorative justice to help kids, and preparing people in custody for successful reintegration into the community all need to be continued and expanded.
It’s encouraging to see declines in crime rates in Minnesota overall and in the seven county metro area.
Finally, we can continue to identify areas where new laws can reduce crime. Recent successes include addressing car-jacking, catalytic converter theft, and organized retail theft.
How would you work to improve transportation options in the district/state, including improved safety for transit riders, pedestrian/bike, and drivers alike?
It’s important to expand and strengthen our transit system. This will help businesses by making it easier to tap into a geographically broader base of employees and consumers. In my community, the Minnesota Valley Transit Authority provides flexible access to transit through the MVTA Connect program. We also need to ensure bicycle and pedestrian safety. I’ve passed a bill to construct a multi-purpose trail from Hwy 77 to Lone Oak Road in Eagan, connecting the sections that extend to Burnsville and St. Paul. In 2023, the Legislature added funding to the very important Safe Routes to School program, in an example of promoting pedestrian safety. Finally, funding statewide was stabilized after 20 years of declining resources, investing in roads and bridges from major highways to rural local roads.
What ideas do you have to address housing shortages and affordability?
There are two paths we need to follow: constructing new housing and maintaining naturally occurring affordable housing (NOAH).
For new housing, especially affordable and workplace housing, state investment is a valuable way to leverage other funding sources through the Minnesota Housing Finance Agency. Partnerships with foundations and developers are also important for furthering investment in our housing stock. I also support a critical assessment of the housing regulatory environment and permitting processes. Quality, sustainability, efficiency, and worker protections are essential. That leaves plenty of room for discussion on how the current system creates challenges that could be avoided.
For NOAH, we need to help homeowners maintain their homes. For example, expanding housing audits and weatherization programs is a quick way to help homeowners maintain their homes and manage their expenses. For renters in public housing, Minnesota made a major investment in 2023 to boost maintenance to address substandard conditions. Our public housing stock is essential, especially to our lowest-income seniors and people with disabilities.
In light of projected budget deficit/"structural imbalance," what are your priorities for the State's budget?
We are in a strong position going into the 2025-26 biennium. There is a projected structural imbalance, where expenses for the time period are expected to exceed revenue; the February forecast projected a $636 million structural imbalance for FY26-27. However, in the 2024 session, the Legislature left $2.45 billion on the bottom line for FY26-27. Because of this fiscal discipline, we are very likely to avoid budget cuts for existing programs. Further, confidence in these projections is strengthened by the Legislature’s decision to require inflation to be accounted for in State budget forecasts.
My priorities would be to return to having regular robust bonding bills, which help local communities, preserve state resources, and create good-paying jobs. We also must address problems in healthcare access and affordability.
Email: [email protected]
Campaign Phone:
Campaign Website: LizReyer.com
Twitter handle: N/A
Facebook Page: https://www.facebook.com/lreyer52A
Candidate Bio
I’m a long-time Eagan resident and I’ve served in the House of Representatives for four years. My husband and I raised our four kids here, and now my little granddaughter lives in Eagan, too. I have always been a problem solver. In my business career, I worked to resolve challenging situations my companies and our customers faced. In my personal life, I overcame adversity, including domestic violence. As a community member, I’ve volunteered in schools and local organizations and spoken out against racial and social injustice.
I’ve served for four years on the Health committee; a natural fit, given my years working for Blue Cross here in Eagan. I’ve been on the Capital Investment committee for four years, the last two as vice chair. I’ve also served on the Housing, Preventing Homelessness, Human Services, Workforce Development, and Economic Development committees, and am co-chair of the House Climate Action Caucus. I take pride in working across the aisle and have a track record of bringing people together to create strong legislation.
What would be your top three priorities if elected? How might these priorities be affected by the state's projected economic outlook?
- Making healthcare more affordable and accessible so that the focus can be on the relationship between the patient and the caregiver. Currently, there are far too many administrative barriers created by intermediaries, such as insurers and pharmacy benefit managers. The administrative burden adds cost and, too often, delays access to needed care.
- Continuing to prioritize workforce development. We are experiencing workforce shortages in many sectors of our economy, including education, healthcare, trades, and knowledge workers. We’ve made progress in promoting the proper education and training for the jobs that each person may want, but this effort needs to accelerate and expand.
- Continue to reduce greenhouse gas emissions across all major sectors of agriculture, transportation, and the built environment. The climate crisis is costly for business in terms of insurance rates and impact on facilities and equipment.
It should go without saying that economic conditions will have an important impact on the specific policies that are put in place and the level of investment that is possible. However, each of these goal areas are flexible to reflect existing resources, including helpful legislation that would be “policy only” and have no impact on state budgets.
How would you characterize the business climate in the East Metro? Please elaborate on your answer.
From my vantage point in Eagan, the business climate is strong. In the most recent survey, 90% or more people rated Eagan highly as a place to do business, recommended operating a business in Eagan, and plan to keep their business in Eagan for the next five years. Likewise, in Burnsville, 93% of businesses rate Burnsville's business climate as Good or Excellent. Our area also has robust education systems, transportation, parks, and cultural organizations. These are all amenities that help businesses attract and retain excellent employees. As in other parts of the state, our communities would be strengthened by growing our housing stock, particularly in workforce and affordable housing. In Dakota County, efforts are underway, bolstered by funding passed by the 2023-24 legislature.
Please characterize your perspective on the ideal collaboration between government and the business community when it comes to tackling challenges whether they be education, housing, or workforce development? Do you feel the outcomes of the 2023-2024 legislative session positively or negatively impacted that collaboration and our state's business climate?
Government–state and local, along with our federal partners– and the business community are two of the important parties that must be included to formulate effective policies. Other important parties include workers and unions, education institutions, non-profit service providers, and social advocacy groups. In my view, all of these voices are needed to tackle challenges and create solutions that will have the best chance of success. This is more difficult than a top-down approach and requires extensive problem-solving and negotiation. One successful example of this in the 2023-24 legislative session was the Minnesota Debt Fairness Act. As House bill author, I was able to negotiate with many concerned business groups and arrive at a solution that was agreed to by all stakeholders. It’s all about relationships, and I believe that the work we did in 2023-24 will help Minnesota’s businesses now and in years to come. Relationships are built by ongoing interactions like those I’ve had with the Dakota County Regional Chamber of Commerce and the Burnsville Chamber, the Main Street Alliance, and industry-specific groups like the Council of Health Plans. They also depend on accessibility, and I make a point of meeting to talk through issues of concern with stakeholders and with visiting businesses and organizations in my district and across Minnesota.
What policies, if any, would you support to help employers address our state’s critical labor shortage?
The workforce shortage is of serious concern to me and has been an important personal priority as a member of the Workforce Development committee. We need to ensure that there are education and training options available for all types of work and that the preparation matches the needs of the position. This means supporting all options, from technical training and apprenticeships to college and professional education like medical school. We need to ensure that we continue to build pathways for advancement for people within a profession, for example, healthcare or education. And we must ensure that barriers are removed to ensure that cultural, socioeconomic, and community groups that may have been underinvested in have the access they need to programs that will help them progress. In 2023-24, we made progress, for example, funding programs for new Americans, communities of color, and people coming out of incarceration. We also took down barriers to college funding through the North Star Promise program, which provides college tuition support to those whose families have less economic means. I strongly support continuing to identify quality programs like these to help build our workforce.
The 2023-2024 Legislature passed many new mandates on employers, such as Paid Family Medical Leave, Earned Safe and Sick Time, and Worker Misclassification penalties. Do you support the PFML program in its current form or do you believe there needs to be further refinement before the program comes into effect in January 2026? If elected, what steps would you take to understand the impact of a proposal on the many types of businesses in the East Metro and how would you define any exceptions to those policies?
Policies such as Paid Family Medical Leave, Earned Safe and Sick Time, and Worker Misclassification, as well as other worker safety legislation, are necessary to pass from a variety of perspectives. Most importantly, they ensure quality of life for workers and their families. I’ve had the personal experience of having to work when I’m sick due to lack of ESST, and also having to drain my vacation and sick time to care for a family member in their time of need. In many cases, workers need to quit their jobs, which benefits neither employer nor employee. I’ve also heard from many businesses that look forward to PFML creating a level playing field for attracting and retaining top employees. All that said, legislation evolves. I will be asking questions and listening for ways to continue to adjust programs like these through our routine legislative processes.
What are your strategies to address public safety challenges in your district and the state?
Community members want and deserve to feel safe. To do this, we need to provide sufficient funding for public safety including funds flexibility for communities to use to address their specific needs. Funds also are needed to continue to attract and retain top public safety personnel. We also need to ensure that clear expectations are set for public safety teams, as we’ve done through the POST board changes and SRO clarifications.
We need to continue to pass sensible gun laws to protect community members and first responders. In the past two years, we’ve passed universal background checks and red flag laws. We also banned binary triggers and increased penalties for straw purchases following the tragic shooting of three first responders in Burnsville in Feb. 2024. This is a good base for continued attention.
Crime prevention needs to remain a high priority. Efforts with youth to help them find positive paths, interventions like restorative justice to help kids, and preparing people in custody for successful reintegration into the community all need to be continued and expanded.
It’s encouraging to see declines in crime rates in Minnesota overall and in the seven county metro area.
Finally, we can continue to identify areas where new laws can reduce crime. Recent successes include addressing car-jacking, catalytic converter theft, and organized retail theft.
How would you work to improve transportation options in the district/state, including improved safety for transit riders, pedestrian/bike, and drivers alike?
It’s important to expand and strengthen our transit system. This will help businesses by making it easier to tap into a geographically broader base of employees and consumers. In my community, the Minnesota Valley Transit Authority provides flexible access to transit through the MVTA Connect program. We also need to ensure bicycle and pedestrian safety. I’ve passed a bill to construct a multi-purpose trail from Hwy 77 to Lone Oak Road in Eagan, connecting the sections that extend to Burnsville and St. Paul. In 2023, the Legislature added funding to the very important Safe Routes to School program, in an example of promoting pedestrian safety. Finally, funding statewide was stabilized after 20 years of declining resources, investing in roads and bridges from major highways to rural local roads.
What ideas do you have to address housing shortages and affordability?
There are two paths we need to follow: constructing new housing and maintaining naturally occurring affordable housing (NOAH).
For new housing, especially affordable and workplace housing, state investment is a valuable way to leverage other funding sources through the Minnesota Housing Finance Agency. Partnerships with foundations and developers are also important for furthering investment in our housing stock. I also support a critical assessment of the housing regulatory environment and permitting processes. Quality, sustainability, efficiency, and worker protections are essential. That leaves plenty of room for discussion on how the current system creates challenges that could be avoided.
For NOAH, we need to help homeowners maintain their homes. For example, expanding housing audits and weatherization programs is a quick way to help homeowners maintain their homes and manage their expenses. For renters in public housing, Minnesota made a major investment in 2023 to boost maintenance to address substandard conditions. Our public housing stock is essential, especially to our lowest-income seniors and people with disabilities.
In light of projected budget deficit/"structural imbalance," what are your priorities for the State's budget?
We are in a strong position going into the 2025-26 biennium. There is a projected structural imbalance, where expenses for the time period are expected to exceed revenue; the February forecast projected a $636 million structural imbalance for FY26-27. However, in the 2024 session, the Legislature left $2.45 billion on the bottom line for FY26-27. Because of this fiscal discipline, we are very likely to avoid budget cuts for existing programs. Further, confidence in these projections is strengthened by the Legislature’s decision to require inflation to be accounted for in State budget forecasts.
My priorities would be to return to having regular robust bonding bills, which help local communities, preserve state resources, and create good-paying jobs. We also must address problems in healthcare access and affordability.