On Thursday Oct. 9, State DFL Rep. John Lesch came to Hamline as a guest of MPIRG and their new Voter Awareness Series. He spoke to an open forum to promote voting in the upcoming midterm elections as well as answer any questions about political issues. Though the group of people who attended was small, the questions and topics discussed were big and have serious implications for the future of Minnesota. After introducing himself and talking about his jobs and what he is working on in the House, the floor was opened up for questions.

Q: What is your level of commitment for creating a greener Minnesota? What ideas do you have to make that happen?

 A: I have a high level of commitment for creating a greener Minnesota. I believe that creating a greener Minnesota starts with increased levels of accountability for corporate polluters. Corporations have learned bad pollution policies from the past generations of business owners. I want to enable attorneys to be able to sue corporations on an individual basis to try and bring about a change to their polluting issues.

Q: What is your stance on felon voting rights?

 A: I support felons being able to vote. Convictions don’t mean what they used to in today’s society. And with a disproportionate percentage of convicted felons being minorities, it is an issue that is contributing to groups of people being disproportionately disenfranchised. I want to change that, and I hope to find a way to bring this issue up soon.

Q: What efforts are you willing to make towards affordable higher education?

 A: I am willing to put as much effort as possible into making higher education more affordable for kids like you. I am hoping that the Minnesota government can call out the federal government on its current failure to keep higher education affordable for the common college student. I also hope that we can find a way for schools to keep their prices down, as they are getting away with ramping up costs because kids are willing to pay whatever it takes to get the education they need, and I feel that something can be done to change that.

Q: What is your opinion on expanding public mass transportation?

 A: I believe that expanding mass transportation is important, obviously. At the moment, the corridors along the light rail aren’t dense enough to be fully practical cost-wise. In order to make mass transportation more cost-effective, there would have to be some changes in the zoning code and housing density would have to be increased, but I don’t know what it would take for that to happen.

Q: What are your thoughts about the rising cost of MNSure? What strategies do you have about keeping health care rates affordable for everyone?

A: While I am happy that MNSure has the lowest rates of any plan in the nation, there is more that can be done to keep the prices from going up further. I fully believe that health care needs to be reformed from the top-do

wn. Part of that reformation would have to include an audit of health-care funds to establish costs for all medical procedures that could be covered by insurance. I believe there should also be some oversight of HMO’s [health maintenance organizations], as they currently have too much influence in the healthcare field.