Recent Accomplishments
Policy Impact
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Transportation: Organized leadership and support to pursue the Urban Partnership Agreement, resulting in $133 million in federal funding to reduce congestion through transit improvements and "free-flow pricing" in the I-35W South Corridor and in downtown Minneapolis. Read more about the Citizens League's critical role in this independent study. |
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Transportation: Gained legislative approval for further efforts to evaluate and propose alternate forms of financing transportation projects that are based on benefits received by landowners, ensuring that various methods of "value capture" are applied to road projects as well as transit projects. |
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Mental Health: Transformed mental health payment and service delivery system by convening the Minnesota Mental Health Action Group, which culminated in 2007 with the most comprehensive mental health legislation and funding reform in two decades. |
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Health and Medical Care: Advanced policy to strengthen the citizen and consumer voice in the provision of medical care through the Governor's 2008 Transformation Task Force and subsequent legislation. |
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Health and Medical Care: Recommended new governing structure to build an information system that would be meaningful and transparent for citizens. This work influenced portions of bi-partisan legislative health care reforms in 2008. |
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Education: Initiated numerous improvements to high school and higher education reform through our 2004 report, Trouble on the Horizon (pdf), including the Power of You scholarship program, which helps low income first-generation students attend higher education. |
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Taxes: Pushed for increases in the property tax refund and the renter's credit, both of which increased in 2008. |
Civic Engagement Impact
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Brought and continue to bring new voices into the policy-making process and created new engagement opportunity through our policy review and advancement groups, Action Groups, Emerging Leaders, Policy and a Pint® events, Quantum Civics™ leadership program, Inter-Generational Roundtable series, and workplace Pizza and Policy lunchtime programs. |
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Developed innovative and effective mechanisms to engage citizens in public policy on issues like property taxes, long-term care, redistricting, and high school reform through the Minnesota Anniversary Project. Examples include CitiZing, an online civic engagement platform, and www.StudentsSpeakOut.org, which brought high school students into conversations about reforming their schools. |
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Created an online library of 500 Citizens League policy reports and recommendations as a resource for our members and others to use in researching, evaluating and advancing public policy issues. |
A Healthy Organization
- Thanks to you, total membership has increased by 70% in six years.
- Thanks to you, donations have increased by almost 350% between 2003 and 2008.
- Thanks to you, members and community members provide about 1,500 hours of their time per month helping us to build and achieve our goals.
- Thanks to you, we sponsored 47 policy events and members dedicated 2,700 hours to policy development in 2009.
- Thanks to you, we eliminated our net operating deficit from 2008.
Historical Accomplishments
The Citizens League has played a central role in some of the biggest policy reforms in Minnesota history, including the Minnesota Miracle, charter schools, MinnesotaCare and the Metropolitan Council. Read more
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