Agenda Minnesota — Brad Kohler 2026
This is the Minnesota worth fighting for.
The Duluth Complex holds ninety-five percent of confirmed U.S. nickel reserves, eighty-eight percent of cobalt, seventy-five percent of platinum group metals, and the world's richest confirmed helium deposit. At 2026 commodity prices that is between $2.3 and $4.2 trillion in confirmed in-ground value. Every Minnesotan should know that number. Almost none of them do. Because the politicians who knew chose not to tell them.
The mines never opened. The permits sat in review for decades. The heat from the furnaces went up the stack. The airport serving the Iron Range has one gate and a vending machine. The children of the Range left. And politicians from both parties called that governance.
This was not bad luck. This was a choice — made repeatedly, by the same minds. The Iron Range stayed poor. The minerals stayed in the ground. The money flowed to the Democratic Republic of Congo, where children dig cobalt by hand so your devices can charge. That is the direct consequence of sixty years of political failure with a known address.
Minnesota's entire annual state budget is $54.1 billion. Property taxes hit $13.7 billion in 2025 — up nearly $4 billion since 2020. The typical Minnesota homeowner pays $3,501 per year, nearly $300 more than the average American, and that number has risen every year for a decade.
At 6% severance on gross production, responsible development generates $138 billion to $252 billion over the production lifecycle. That is arithmetic applied to USGS-confirmed tonnage and current market prices. Here is what it means.
Illustrative projections based on USGS MCS 2025 confirmed tonnage and 2026 market prices. Not guarantees — what the arithmetic produces when you stop leaving the money in the ground.
It emptied because they could not afford to stay. A mining wage of $96,000 a year means nothing when the house you need costs $375,000 and the land it sits on was never yours to begin with. The politicians who presided over sixty years of undevelopment never once asked why the children were leaving.
The current federal tax code rewards capital expenditure. Buy a machine, depreciate it, reduce your taxable income. That incentivizes automation over people. Minnesota inverts that model. Raise wages — reduce your tax burden. Invest in people the way every other state lets you invest in machinery. Three instruments. One compact. Any corporation willing to commit is eligible.
Annual wage increases above the Minnesota median wage depreciate against state corporate franchise tax over five years. The delta between last year's average wage and this year's average wage generates a deductible basis at 20% per year.
A corporation committing to a new Minnesota facility or significant expansion receives a front-loaded credit against the first three years of state corporate franchise tax liability, funded from the Minnesota Resource Sovereignty Trust infrastructure allocation.
A corporation that signs a Minnesota Business Compact agreement locks their effective state corporate tax rate for the duration of the contract. This is not a promise. It is a contract enforceable under Minnesota law. No other state is offering this instrument for long-term capital deployments.
| Lock Term | What You Get | What You Commit To | Enforcement |
|---|---|---|---|
| 5-Year Lock |
Current statutory rate locked for five years. Wage Appreciation Deduction included throughout the term. | Wage floor at or above Minnesota median for all Minnesota positions. Annual compliance reporting. | Annual wage reporting to Department of Revenue. Rate reverts to statutory if floor is breached in any year. |
| 10-Year Lock |
Negotiated rate not to exceed current statutory rate. Both Wage Appreciation Deduction and Infrastructure Down Payment Credit included for full term. | Wage floor commitment for full contract term. Minimum Minnesota workforce size maintained. Annual public wage reporting. | Annual OLA audit compliance. Rate differential clawback on early facility exit. Published compliance record. |
| 20-Year Lock |
Negotiated rate with floor. All three instruments included plus CBA multiplier. Maximum tax certainty available in any U.S. state for a capital deployment of this duration. | Community Benefit Agreement concurrent with lock period. Annual public wage reporting. OLA audit compliance. Wage floor enforced throughout all twenty years. | Full clawback of discounted tax differential for remaining contract years on early exit or floor breach. Annual compliance published publicly. No exceptions. |
The clawback is the discipline. The rate lock is only as good as the commitment behind it. A rate lock without a clawback is a promise. A rate lock with a clawback is a contract. Minnesota is offering contracts.
Every previous administration let resource revenue dissolve into the general fund. Subject to annual legislative appetite. Gone before Iron Range families saw a dollar. The Trust changes that permanently. Constitutionally protected principal. Three-fourths supermajority to touch it. An auditor the governor cannot appoint.
Directs agencies. Deposits severance revenue. Zero unilateral authority over principal by design.
After the constitutional amendment, touching the principal requires a three-fourths supermajority. Montana's same mechanism has blocked every raid attempt for decades.
The Office of the Legislative Auditor is appointed by the bipartisan Legislative Audit Commission. Zero governor role. Minnesota fixed this conflict of interest in 1973. The Trust is built on that fix.
