Rafael E. Ortega

Name: Rafael E. Ortega
Public Office Sought: Ramsey County Commissioner-District 5
Email: [email protected]
Campaign Phone: 651-253-1252
Campaign Website: https://commissionerrafaelortega.wordpress.com/
Twitter handle: N/A
Facebook Page: N/A
Candidate Bio
After becoming a social worker and growing CLUES (Comunidades Latinas Unidas En Servicio) into one of the largest social service agencies in the twin cities, I won election to the Ramsey County Board in Minnesota in 1994. I have been elected seven times, most recently in 2018. I have served as Chair of the Board or Chair of the Regional Rail Authority for most of the last twenty years and I’m proud to have collaboratively achieved many things. I am focused on protecting Ramsey County’s most vulnerable residents, building a great transportation network in Minnesota, and making sure that Ramsey County delivers the best service in a cost-effective way.
I am a recognized leader on transit and development. In 2014, I received the Progress Minnesota Lifetime Achievement Award from Finance and Commerce newspaper for my work on job creation, business development, and the economic health of the Twin Cities and the entire state. I Chaired our Food Security Committee in 2020-21 and helped to create a new position to transform our work with food.
What would be your top three priorities if elected?
To continue to build our transit system to get people to where they need to go safely and reliably.
To strengthen our East Metro economy by supporting developments on the riverfront, Arden Hills and elsewhere in Ramsey County.
To shore up our public safety, food, housing, and mental health infrastructure so we are ready to serve our community through good times and bad.
How would you characterize the business climate in Ramsey County and what is the role of businesses supporting quality of life issues in the community?
We have serious challenges. A lack of employees, supply chain issues, unpredictable office population downtown, and crime are affecting everything. These are not unique to Saint Paul, but we have to work to solve these issues. Healthy businesses are crucial to our quality of life, providing jobs, entertainment, and community. While we are experiencing tough challenges, I am hopeful that we will succeed in Saint Paul and I will always be a big booster for our region.
I am proud of preparing and including business leaders when we are making changes, like improving streets and other infrastructure or changing the rules regarding smoking in public places. I also pride myself on responding quickly and directly when business leaders need help or share concerns.
What role do you think the county should have in attracting and retaining jobs, and what steps would you take to solicit new businesses to, and retain existing businesses in, Ramsey County?
We created a new position of Economic Development Director and she has excelled in this role in recent years. She and our board have taken a proactive role in building our economy and we are doing great work, whether trying to build a transformative park and development at Riversedge or negotiating hard to build the kind of city Ramsey County needs in Arden Hills. We will always have an important role, whether being accessible and communicating with businesses, providing support through worker training, or building transit connections.
Do you support any specific employment-related proposals in Ramsey County (such as minimum wage, sick time, or mandatory scheduling notice)? If so, what steps would you take to understand the impact of a policy on the many types of businesses in Ramsey County and how would you define any exceptions to those policies?
First of all, all these issues should be state-wide or nation-wide in scope. A patchwork of employment laws creates confusion and sometimes creates a negative competition between cities and counties.
Employees deserve the basic protections that these rules would provide and I’m listening to labor leaders, employers and others to learn how these are being instituted in the region.
What policies, if any, would you support to help employers address the labor shortage?
We have continued to work to support better transit, better housing, and a solid worker training. We are also working to bring our workers back downtown, which I think is crucial to developing the kind of environment which makes people want to come to work. Also, nobody has been talking about it, but a more welcoming immigration policy nationally is a policy I strongly support and could make a huge difference in the American labor shortage.
Public safety and rising crime rates are of serious concern to the business community and residents. What strategies or policies would you propose to address public safety issues facing your community?
To address Public Safety, we have hired 40 new county staff, including specialists in the 911 call center and social workers. The social workers will be key in helping police officers and sheriff’s deputies deal with mental health and other emotional crises. I also worked with Representative Betty McCollum to get almost $1M in Group Violence Intervention funding.
What strategies or policies would you propose to address housing issues facing your community?
To address Homelessness, we opened two new shelters in my district. In 2021, and we created the HRA Levy to provide 10 M in new funds for affordable housing every year. We are building over 400 units of affordable housing this year. And with the city and the federal government, we provided $74M for housing this year. It’s still not enough but we are doing our part. That HRA seed money will be crucial in creating new housing at multiple income levels.
What strategies or policies would you propose to address transportation issues facing your community? Have your strategies or views changed on transportation since we’ve seen shifts in road use, public transportation use, work from home models, etc. due to the pandemic?
With the Gold Line to Woodbury coming on line, the Purple Line taking shape, and the County in the middle of the Riverview study, I remain confident that a strong east Metro transit network will feed a vibrant downtown and a vibrant downtown will feed a strong transit network.
Many workers have never stopped going in to work and people will always need transit to get to education, training and medical appointments. Transit remains critical for these folks and continues to provide efficiencies, fun, and productivity that cannot be achieved by workers working from home.
Our study of the Riverview Line will take into account the latest travel patterns and we will advocate to make our transit lines safe and welcoming.
What are your priorities for the county’s budget?
We always have budget pressures, and we are always careful spending taxpayers’ money.
That is part of the reason that our average annual levy increase over the past 10 years has been 2.2% and that we are one of 4 counties in Minnesota with a AAA bond rating every year since 2001.
I will always fight to protect our services to the most vulnerable first – services to folks with disabilities, shelter for the homeless, access to these services by everyone who needs them. But transit, parks and libraries are also critical.
What will you do to expand Ramsey County’s tax base?
I have worked hard to expand the county’s tax base.
I have worked to get support from the legislature to build Riversedge Park and have led the county effort to build related housing, office and retail. I led the acquisition and cleanup of the Rice Creek Commons property and have not let up in trying to build the housing, retail and offices that will answer the needs of our county.
I helped build both the green line and blue line and I support the tremendous amount of housing and development that have come with them.
How will you work with K-12 and post-secondary educational institutions and businesses to ensure our region develops and retains an educated workforce?
In the last two years, we have partnered with local colleges to help our public policy department. This has given the students important, real-world problems to work on and brought new ideas to our Ramsey County team.
I’ve built excellent relationships with members of the Saint Paul School Board and our suburban school boards and have an open door to learn more about needs or partnering opportunities.
Doing a better job to help families with housing and nutrition, and to keep children safe, will always the most consequential thing we can do to help kids succeed in school. We are doing careful assessment right now of how we can reduce burdensome paperwork, relieve our stressed workforce, and get our health and human services departments to work better.
Are there any services currently provided by the county that you believe should be cut back or eliminated? Are there new opportunities to share services with other entities?
We are still, in many ways, reeling from COVID, but we dived into exciting new partnerships because of it. I led the countywide Food Security Committee and worked with cities and school districts in new ways to make sure food was delivered to hungry families. I helped appoint our first Food Security Coordinator who is overseeing the transformation of Ramsey County's food support system.
We also worked really smoothly with the city of Saint Paul in our homeless response team and it was a model of how to use the staff and the tools available efficiently and effectively.
Also, many of the new Public Safety staff that we hired were social workers who will work WITH police officers to address crises in ways that reduce danger and make fatal accidents less likely. This is a partnership that may lead us to much better results in the future.
What is the role of the County Board in fostering increased minority- and women-owned businesses in Ramsey County?
We directly helped minority-owned businesses during 2020 and 2021 by making sure they were some of the businesses who received contracts to provide culturally appropriate food for hungry people.
We continue to directly require a large percentage of our construction work to be done by minority- and women-owned businesses.
I’m proud of the work our economic development staff has done in recent years to reach out and support small businesses, letting them know about what supports there are, helping them to get those supports, and helping them with things like taxes.
What further policies can Ramsey County adopt to help the business community recover from the COVID-19 pandemic?
In just the last two weeks, we have tightened up our return-to-work policy, and as one of downtown’s largest employers, this should have a significant impact.
I will continue to work tirelessly to support transformative developments and transit lines that will bring new jobs, new employers and new employees to our region and our staff will continue to work with partners like the Chamber, the Port and our cities so we can all succeed.
Is there anything else you would like to share with voters not covered above?
Many leaders have taken an EITHER OR approach to policy. They are either for labor OR they are for business. They are either for energy OR they are for the environment. They are either for roads OR they are for bicycles.
Leaders and voters know that I will work with leaders from different backgrounds, sometimes from opposite sides, to get good things done, and usually find ways for every side to benefit from a solution.
Public Office Sought: Ramsey County Commissioner-District 5
Email: [email protected]
Campaign Phone: 651-253-1252
Campaign Website: https://commissionerrafaelortega.wordpress.com/
Twitter handle: N/A
Facebook Page: N/A
Candidate Bio
After becoming a social worker and growing CLUES (Comunidades Latinas Unidas En Servicio) into one of the largest social service agencies in the twin cities, I won election to the Ramsey County Board in Minnesota in 1994. I have been elected seven times, most recently in 2018. I have served as Chair of the Board or Chair of the Regional Rail Authority for most of the last twenty years and I’m proud to have collaboratively achieved many things. I am focused on protecting Ramsey County’s most vulnerable residents, building a great transportation network in Minnesota, and making sure that Ramsey County delivers the best service in a cost-effective way.
I am a recognized leader on transit and development. In 2014, I received the Progress Minnesota Lifetime Achievement Award from Finance and Commerce newspaper for my work on job creation, business development, and the economic health of the Twin Cities and the entire state. I Chaired our Food Security Committee in 2020-21 and helped to create a new position to transform our work with food.
What would be your top three priorities if elected?
To continue to build our transit system to get people to where they need to go safely and reliably.
To strengthen our East Metro economy by supporting developments on the riverfront, Arden Hills and elsewhere in Ramsey County.
To shore up our public safety, food, housing, and mental health infrastructure so we are ready to serve our community through good times and bad.
How would you characterize the business climate in Ramsey County and what is the role of businesses supporting quality of life issues in the community?
We have serious challenges. A lack of employees, supply chain issues, unpredictable office population downtown, and crime are affecting everything. These are not unique to Saint Paul, but we have to work to solve these issues. Healthy businesses are crucial to our quality of life, providing jobs, entertainment, and community. While we are experiencing tough challenges, I am hopeful that we will succeed in Saint Paul and I will always be a big booster for our region.
I am proud of preparing and including business leaders when we are making changes, like improving streets and other infrastructure or changing the rules regarding smoking in public places. I also pride myself on responding quickly and directly when business leaders need help or share concerns.
What role do you think the county should have in attracting and retaining jobs, and what steps would you take to solicit new businesses to, and retain existing businesses in, Ramsey County?
We created a new position of Economic Development Director and she has excelled in this role in recent years. She and our board have taken a proactive role in building our economy and we are doing great work, whether trying to build a transformative park and development at Riversedge or negotiating hard to build the kind of city Ramsey County needs in Arden Hills. We will always have an important role, whether being accessible and communicating with businesses, providing support through worker training, or building transit connections.
Do you support any specific employment-related proposals in Ramsey County (such as minimum wage, sick time, or mandatory scheduling notice)? If so, what steps would you take to understand the impact of a policy on the many types of businesses in Ramsey County and how would you define any exceptions to those policies?
First of all, all these issues should be state-wide or nation-wide in scope. A patchwork of employment laws creates confusion and sometimes creates a negative competition between cities and counties.
Employees deserve the basic protections that these rules would provide and I’m listening to labor leaders, employers and others to learn how these are being instituted in the region.
What policies, if any, would you support to help employers address the labor shortage?
We have continued to work to support better transit, better housing, and a solid worker training. We are also working to bring our workers back downtown, which I think is crucial to developing the kind of environment which makes people want to come to work. Also, nobody has been talking about it, but a more welcoming immigration policy nationally is a policy I strongly support and could make a huge difference in the American labor shortage.
Public safety and rising crime rates are of serious concern to the business community and residents. What strategies or policies would you propose to address public safety issues facing your community?
To address Public Safety, we have hired 40 new county staff, including specialists in the 911 call center and social workers. The social workers will be key in helping police officers and sheriff’s deputies deal with mental health and other emotional crises. I also worked with Representative Betty McCollum to get almost $1M in Group Violence Intervention funding.
What strategies or policies would you propose to address housing issues facing your community?
To address Homelessness, we opened two new shelters in my district. In 2021, and we created the HRA Levy to provide 10 M in new funds for affordable housing every year. We are building over 400 units of affordable housing this year. And with the city and the federal government, we provided $74M for housing this year. It’s still not enough but we are doing our part. That HRA seed money will be crucial in creating new housing at multiple income levels.
What strategies or policies would you propose to address transportation issues facing your community? Have your strategies or views changed on transportation since we’ve seen shifts in road use, public transportation use, work from home models, etc. due to the pandemic?
With the Gold Line to Woodbury coming on line, the Purple Line taking shape, and the County in the middle of the Riverview study, I remain confident that a strong east Metro transit network will feed a vibrant downtown and a vibrant downtown will feed a strong transit network.
Many workers have never stopped going in to work and people will always need transit to get to education, training and medical appointments. Transit remains critical for these folks and continues to provide efficiencies, fun, and productivity that cannot be achieved by workers working from home.
Our study of the Riverview Line will take into account the latest travel patterns and we will advocate to make our transit lines safe and welcoming.
What are your priorities for the county’s budget?
We always have budget pressures, and we are always careful spending taxpayers’ money.
That is part of the reason that our average annual levy increase over the past 10 years has been 2.2% and that we are one of 4 counties in Minnesota with a AAA bond rating every year since 2001.
I will always fight to protect our services to the most vulnerable first – services to folks with disabilities, shelter for the homeless, access to these services by everyone who needs them. But transit, parks and libraries are also critical.
What will you do to expand Ramsey County’s tax base?
I have worked hard to expand the county’s tax base.
I have worked to get support from the legislature to build Riversedge Park and have led the county effort to build related housing, office and retail. I led the acquisition and cleanup of the Rice Creek Commons property and have not let up in trying to build the housing, retail and offices that will answer the needs of our county.
I helped build both the green line and blue line and I support the tremendous amount of housing and development that have come with them.
How will you work with K-12 and post-secondary educational institutions and businesses to ensure our region develops and retains an educated workforce?
In the last two years, we have partnered with local colleges to help our public policy department. This has given the students important, real-world problems to work on and brought new ideas to our Ramsey County team.
I’ve built excellent relationships with members of the Saint Paul School Board and our suburban school boards and have an open door to learn more about needs or partnering opportunities.
Doing a better job to help families with housing and nutrition, and to keep children safe, will always the most consequential thing we can do to help kids succeed in school. We are doing careful assessment right now of how we can reduce burdensome paperwork, relieve our stressed workforce, and get our health and human services departments to work better.
Are there any services currently provided by the county that you believe should be cut back or eliminated? Are there new opportunities to share services with other entities?
We are still, in many ways, reeling from COVID, but we dived into exciting new partnerships because of it. I led the countywide Food Security Committee and worked with cities and school districts in new ways to make sure food was delivered to hungry families. I helped appoint our first Food Security Coordinator who is overseeing the transformation of Ramsey County's food support system.
We also worked really smoothly with the city of Saint Paul in our homeless response team and it was a model of how to use the staff and the tools available efficiently and effectively.
Also, many of the new Public Safety staff that we hired were social workers who will work WITH police officers to address crises in ways that reduce danger and make fatal accidents less likely. This is a partnership that may lead us to much better results in the future.
What is the role of the County Board in fostering increased minority- and women-owned businesses in Ramsey County?
We directly helped minority-owned businesses during 2020 and 2021 by making sure they were some of the businesses who received contracts to provide culturally appropriate food for hungry people.
We continue to directly require a large percentage of our construction work to be done by minority- and women-owned businesses.
I’m proud of the work our economic development staff has done in recent years to reach out and support small businesses, letting them know about what supports there are, helping them to get those supports, and helping them with things like taxes.
What further policies can Ramsey County adopt to help the business community recover from the COVID-19 pandemic?
In just the last two weeks, we have tightened up our return-to-work policy, and as one of downtown’s largest employers, this should have a significant impact.
I will continue to work tirelessly to support transformative developments and transit lines that will bring new jobs, new employers and new employees to our region and our staff will continue to work with partners like the Chamber, the Port and our cities so we can all succeed.
Is there anything else you would like to share with voters not covered above?
Many leaders have taken an EITHER OR approach to policy. They are either for labor OR they are for business. They are either for energy OR they are for the environment. They are either for roads OR they are for bicycles.
Leaders and voters know that I will work with leaders from different backgrounds, sometimes from opposite sides, to get good things done, and usually find ways for every side to benefit from a solution.