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Minnesota Police & Peace Officers Endorses Rep. Ron Kresha

July 6, 2022

Dear Ron Kresha,

I am pleased to announce the Board of Directors of the Minnesota Police & Peace Officers Association (MPPOA) has issued its endorsement of your candidacy for the Minnesota House of Representatives. This endorsement is without reservation, and you may use it in any manner you deem fit to advance your candidacy, absent any action that may bring dishonor or disgrace to the MPPOA. The MPPOA logo is attached in email correspondence for your use if desired.

Thank you for your support of law enforcement in Minnesota. The men and women who work in every community across the state appreciate your support to keep them and their communities safe.

The MPPOA has been in existence since 1922 and represents 10,400 public safety professionals across the State of Minnesota and over 2,000 retired members. It is our hope that our endorsement will advance your candidacy and that you will be successful in your election efforts to the Minnesota House of Representatives.

The MPPOA sincerely wishes you well and if I can be of further assistance, please do not hesitate to contact me.

Respectfully,

Brian Peters
Executive Director
Minnesota Police and Peace Officers Association

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NFIB MN PAC ENDORSES REP. KRESHA

ST. PAUL, MN., June 28, 2022—The state’s most effective small business political action committee today announced its first round of candidate endorsements in this year’s Minnesota House and Senate.

Minnesota small businesses are facing painful economic headwinds – record inflation, skyrocketing energy costs, labor shortages, supply chain disruptions – and many have not fully recovered from the COVID-19 pandemic. Now more than ever, Main Street needs strong advocates in the Legislature. 

“These lawmakers have proven to be strong advocates for small business. They’re willing to fight for the rights of our members to own, operate, and grow their businesses,” said John Reynolds, NFIB Minnesota State Director. “They are committed to making our state a better place to raise a family and do business.” 

State legislative endorsements are decided by the NFIB MN PAC Board, which is comprised of small business owners in the state. Incumbent legislative endorsements are based on the 2021-22 NFIB MN Voting Record. Lawmakers must have a score of 70 percent or better to be considered for an endorsement. 

NFIB represents over 10,000 small businesses in Minnesota. The NFIB MN PAC endorsement is an important signal to voters across the state that a candidate will stand with small business. Today’s announced endorsements are listed below.

Minnesota House

  • District 06B—Rep. John Heintzeman
  • District 10A—Rep. Ron Kresha
  • District 26B—Rep. Greg Davids
  • District 27B—Rep. Kurt Daudt
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Summer and the Family

Taking a moment to enjoy the summer and look back at the year with my family. I hope you all get a chance to spend some family time. Here are some of my favorite photos.

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Representative Ron Kresha Announces Reelection Bid for District 10A

Ron Kresha (R-Little Falls) announced he is seeking reelection for State House District 10A which includes townships in the counties of Morrison, Kanebac, Aitkin and Mille Lacs. Kresha is seeking is 6th term in the legislature.

“I have fought to improve the future of our children and to improve elderly care,” said Kresha. “We need to support working families and business owners who continue to carry responsibility for our youngest and oldest generations. Minnesotans are generous caring people. And economic growth and jobs bring out the generosity much better than government programs.”

Kresha has been married to his wife Wendy for 28 years and together they have one son and four daughters. He taught Language Arts, coordinated technology and curriculum for the Pierz School District, co-founded Atomic Learning in Little Falls, and is currently a managing partner and founder of Golden Shovel Agency which promotes rural economic development nationwide. He is a member of Mary of Lourdes Church in Little Falls and enjoys spending time hunting and fishing with his children.

“I am proud of the accomplishments over the last three terms and I am asking for your vote of support in November,” said Kresha.

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State Representative Ron Kresha Announces Reelection Bid for District 9B

Ron Kresha (R-Little Falls) announced he is seeking reelection for State House District 9B which encompasses Morrison County and five townships in Todd County. Kresha is seeking his fourth term as a State Representative.

“In the four terms, I have fought to improve the future of our children and to improve elderly care,” said Kresha. “We need to support working families and business owners who continue to carry responsibility for our youngest and oldest generations. Minnesotans are generous caring people. And economic growth and jobs bring out the generosity much better than government programs.”

Kresha has been married to his wife Wendy for 26 years and together they have one son and four daughters. He taught Language Arts, coordinated technology and curriculum for the Pierz School District, co-founded Atomic Learning in Little Falls, and is currently a managing partner and founder of Golden Shovel Agency which promotes rural economic development nationwide. He is a member of Mary of Lourdes Church in Little Falls and enjoys spending time hunting and fishing with his children.

“I am proud of the accomplishments over the last three terms and I am asking for your vote of support in November,” said Kresha.

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April 13, 2018 Legislative Update

Dear Friends,

For those of you that aren’t quite ready for spring, it looks like we are in for a few more snowy days of winter this weekend. Safe travels to anyone on the roads this weekend, and please remember to drive slowly and cautiously with this round of snow coming in. Before the weekend, I wanted to send out a quick update with some news from the Capitol.

Following the Easter/Passover break, we returned to the Capitol on Monday for the final six weeks of the legislative session. We are continuing to explore our options in order to determine the best route to take on some of this year’s big issues, such as federal tax conformity and bonding projects. I will be sure to keep you informed as the major proposals take shape in the weeks to come.

In the House Health and Human Service Finance Committee on Tuesday, I presented a bill I am authoring to combat Minnesota’s growing opioid crisis. In 2017, the legislature established and funded opioid abuse prevention pilot projects to use controlled substance care teams to reduce community rates of opioid addiction. My bill this year would provide an additional $2 million in funding to allow these pilot projects to continue carrying out their important work.

The funding in my bill would be administered through Little Falls’ CHI St. Gabriel’s to be used for various prevention pilot projects around the state, as well as for its commitment to educating other rural clinics on strategies to fight opioid abuse. The controlled substance care team at St. Gabriel’s has been an early leader in our state’s opioid abuse prevention efforts; their outstanding work has made a huge impact in fighting opioid abuse and helping save lives.

While there is no easy fix to such a serious, complicated problem, providing greater resources to those on the front lines of this crisis is an important step we can take in our ongoing efforts. I’ll continue to advocate for this bill and issue, and will provide updates as progress is made.

If you have any questions or concerns about what’s happening in St. Paul, please contact me by email at rep.ron.kresha@house.mn or by phone at 651-296-4247. My door is always open, and I appreciate your feedback and input.

Have a great weekend,

Ron

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Meet Rep. Ron Kresha, the man behind two of the most controversial education bills at the state Capitol

https://www.minnpost.com/education/2017/02/meet-rep-ron-kresha-man-behind-two-most-controversial-education-bills-state-capito

Last Thursday morning, Rep. Ron Kresha, R-Little Falls, rushed from an 8:15 a.m. House Education Innovation Policy meeting to a 10:15 a.m. House taxes meeting to present two high-profile education bills he’d authored, with little room to recharge from the impassioned debate in between.

The first bill he presented, which is centered on student discipline, proposes removing the word “willful” from the state’s Pupil Fair Dismissal Act — a modification that would allow educators to remove students from the classroom for acts they deem inappropriate or unsafe, without proof that the student had intended to cause harm or intended to violate school policy.

This comes on the heels of a state Supreme Court ruling over the summer that had asserted that a student’s intent, in fact, does matter. In the case of Alyssa Drescher, an honor student at United South Central High in southern Minnesota, the court said she had been wrongfully expelled for accidentally bringing a pocket knife to school, which she said she’d forgotten in her purse after using it to do farm chores.

In the wake of a national debate over school choice and school vouchers, Kresha’s second bill proposes a tax credit that would incentivize charitable giving to foundations to offer K-12 scholarships for qualified students that could be used to attend private schools.

Both have generated quite a bit of controversy at the Capitol, as demonstrated by the full slate of testifiers — both supporters and critics of Kresha’s bills — that managed to make it to the hearings Thursday morning.

Through it all, Kresha maintains he’s acting in the best interest of students and parents.

“I’m not advocating for any special interest group. I’m really advocating for kids and parents,” he said in an interview with MinnPost. “I have the discipline bill that came from conversations that we have to do a better job and figure it out. The opportunity scholarships bill that I’m carrying, that has come to me from parents — and primarily parents of color — that have said, ‘We want to give our kids choices that we see other people have that we don’t.’ And I’ve been listening to that.”

Now that he’s positioned himself on the front line of two of the most heated education debates at the Capitol this session, his bills prompt a couple of questions: Why is he so vested in these education issues? And how did he wind up smack dab in the middle of the debates over school choice and student discipline?

Brokering the discipline debate

In perhaps one of the more intense exchanges over Kresha’s student discipline bill on Thursday, Rep. Erin Maye Quade, DFL-Apple Valley, asked to see a show of hands of constituents in support of the bill to make a simple point: Support from students and parents of color — those disproportionately impacted by exclusionary discipline practices — was largely absent, at least in the room. She then implored him to run bills like this through an equity lense before bringing them to committee for consideration.

In response, Kresha framed himself as a mediator of sorts. “You can cast me however you want, [but] I’m the guy who crosses party lines all the time,” he said, adding that he has a track record of going to bat for minority groups, students facing suspension, and some of the state’s most vulnerable youth.

In his concluding remarks, he reiterated a disclaimer he prefaced his bill with — that he, himself, isn’t entirely sure where he falls on the issue. His intent, he said, was to create a space for this important conversation to take place, by bringing the concerns of school administrators to the table and listening to the concerns of those on the other side of the issue as well. But his plea for understanding — “I’m sorry I’m born this color” — only served to heighten tensions in the room.

Reflecting on that hearing, inside his office yesterday morning, Kresha said students of color probably are being overly represented when it comes to suspensions and expulsions, but he’s also sympathetic to the fact that teachers and administrators are charged with creating a safe, productive learning environment and don’t always have the necessary supports to investigate a student’s intent when they misbehave.

“It did take a bit of a turn that I thought wasn’t helpful,” Kresha said of the hearing. “I get these things are emotional, but I was trying to make policy conversations. At the end, it became more about other issues and certainly tensions and fragmentations among communities of color.”

As for the criticism brought against the makeup of his testifiers, Kresha says that portrayal was skewed. “What we didn’t see was in the hallway, the administrators of color that I was talking to,” he said. “We didn’t see the whole breadth of people that were behind this.”

Characterizations of his bill aside, Kresha says he’s motivated to facilitate this debate around the fate of the “willful” qualifier, in large part, due to his own experiences as an educator in Ivanhoe, Minnesota, where he says he saw kids with ADHD or other learning issues being mischaracterized as having behavioral problems. He also draws upon his experience working with the Onamia Public Schools district, he says, where he witnessed the tensions among administrators and school police liaisons rise as Native American students engaged in gang activity that had migrated out from the metro area.

“I think what that taught me is people just have to go back to talking about these issues. As hard as they can be, as emotionally charged as they are,” he said of Thursday’s debate. “If we’re not willing to set aside all of our preconceived notions and just have a conversation, we’re not going to get anywhere.”

Repeating what he’s already said on multiple occasions, Kresha stressed he won’t push for this proposed legislation to move forward unless the two sides reach some compromises. It’s an outcome that seems rather unlikely, at this point, given the fact that even a legislative task force tasked with digging into student discipline issues failed to reach consensus around the term “willful.”

“For me, personally, when I see an issue, I just knock the door down and say, “OK, let’s talk about this.’ And we’re getting people talking about this,” Kresha said. “I know it’s not going to be an easy issue to solve, but that doesn’t mean we should stop trying.”

School choice

His tax credit bill — which would allocate $35 million in public dollars a year to incentivize individual and corporation donations in support of K-12 scholarship that students could use to attend private or parochial schools — has put him on the defensive as well. Under his proposed legislation, a married couple could qualify for $21,000 in credits, and corporations would max out at $105,000.

Echoing the concerns of staunch public education advocates, several of his colleagues have raised issue with the legality and merits of opening up an avenue for indirectly routing public dollars to religious private schools.

But that hasn’t rattled Kresha.

“What’s crystal clear to me is — and I get this through child protection, all the kids that I’ve worked with — that there are kids that, through no fault of their own, are born into a situation that they can’t control,” he told Minnpost yesterday. “And when we eliminate their choices, we eliminate their paths out. I’m all about ‘Let’s open up your possibilities.’ ”

As he interprets state statute, the state’s job is to offer options. It’s the parent’s job, he says, to decide how or where their children will receive instruction. And, in some cases, the preferred option happens to be a tuition-based private school that’s become a beacon of hope in a poor community.

“Let’s give [donors] one more option that says, ‘Why not invest right back into your community where you have really, really tough situations where kids are in disadvantaged homes that could use a way out? Why not use your dollars to help them?’” he said. “People have made this into a school choice issue. It really isn’t. What it is, is a community that’s donating to their community to see kids with a path for success.”

He’s been backing opportunity scholarships for preschoolers for the past six years, he says — a track record he’d like to think sets him ahead of the national school choice trend.

His personal tie to education issues goes back even further. Kresha started out as an English teacher in Ivanhoe. Then he took a job focusing on curriculum and technology in the central Minnesota area and eventually moved on to work for an online education company. For the past eight years, he’s been working for an economic marketing and development company.

As a parent, he’s experienced both the private and public education systems. He has five children — one in the Air Force, one in college, one in high school, one in middle school and one in grade school — who all started out attending the local Catholic school and have, or will, graduate from Little Falls High School.

Whether he’s trying to navigate through a spectrum of experiences and testimonies at home or at the Capitol, he says he does his best to keep an open mind.

“One of the things that I do is I always walk around with the idea that I could be wrong,” he said. “And I want to hear from everybody else because, if I’m wrong, I want to know so I can fix it. That always leads me to understand whatever the other side is.

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March 29, 2018 Update

Dear Friends,

I’d like to wish you and your family a Happy Easter and a Happy Passover.  I hope you are able to enjoy some time celebrating this weekend with your loved ones.

My colleagues and I are wrapping up another busy deadline week today.  There will be no legislative business at the Capitol next week, as we are off for our Easter/Passover break.  Once legislators return after the break, the pace will start to pick up even more at the Capitol.  At this point, we will have a clearer picture of what bills will continue their way through the legislative process and have a chance to ultimately be signed into law.

Among the issues the legislature will be addressing during the remainder of session will be statewide bonding projects.  Like last year’s, any bonding bill we pass this year will be geographically balanced and focused heavily on local infrastructure and transportation projects.

Another matter that will be at the forefront is federal tax conformity.  The House tax committee has held numerous hearings and done extensive research in order determine the best plan to conform to the recently changed federal tax code.  As we unveil our tax conformity proposal after the break, we will focus on avoiding a tax increase for Minnesotans as well as preventing headaches for filers next spring.

I will also personally be working on child protection legislation during the remainder of session.  Bills to fight sex trafficking, better train child protection workers, and educate foster parents on fetal alcohol syndrome, are a few that I am looking to get across the finish line this session.  These bills are important steps in our state’s ongoing efforts to protect vulnerable children and I am proud to advocate for them in the legislature.

School Safety Package

House Republicans unveiled yesterday a legislative package designed protect our schools and students. The proposal includes resources for the hiring of more school resource officers, student counselors and mental health professionals, in addition to making vital building security upgrades.

The following bills are currently advancing through the committee process and will be included in a larger proposal:

  • School resource officers, student support personnel, and other school security programs funded through increased Safe Schools revenue, including a floor level of funding for small schools
  • School building security upgrades, and expanded use of Long-Term Facility Maintenance revenue for security projects, including emergency communications systems
  • School-linked mental health programming to ensure better outcomes for all kids
  • Physical security audit grants to provide state assistance to review facility security and crisis management policies
  • Suicide prevention training for teachers to help educators learn how to engage and assist students experiencing mental distress
  • School-based threat assessment teams established to assess, intervene, and report threats facing students, teachers, and staff

In my conversations with students, parents, teachers, and school administrators, it has become clear that school safety is a priority for everyone.  As legislators, we owe it to our children to pass meaningful legislation to secure our schools and stop school violence.  These bills have a broad, bipartisan backing, and I look forward to continuing to advocate for them.

MinneMinds Advocacy for Children Day

Yesterday, I had the privilege of speaking at a rally in the Capitol for MinneMinds Advocacy for Children Day.  MinneMinds is an organization dedicated to advocating for the importance of childcare and education for Minnesota’s youngest children.  Ensuring access to high quality childcare and education for every child in our state stands as a key component to best preparing our students for the future.

Fish Fry Friday

With Lent almost over, tomorrow is your last chance to get in on Fish Fry Friday.  If you’re looking for a bite to eat, be sure to stop by the American Legion in Little Falls tomorrow evening from 5:00-8:00pm for a fish fry.

Please Contact Me

As always, please do not hesitate to contact me if you have any thoughts or questions on any legislative issues.  I welcome your feedback and input as it allows me to best represent our communities.

Have a great weekend,

Ron

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News from Ron Kresha, March 24, 2016

Dear Neighbors,

I want to wish you and your family a Happy Easter weekend! Tomorrow, I’ll attend our Good Friday service. Although this is a solemn day, we know there’s hope in the future. On Sunday we’re fortunate to celebrate the resurrection of Christ; what an amazing reason to rejoice!

I hope you enjoy your Easter weekend with your family and friends! I know my youngest can’t stop thinking about egg and basket hunts. Whatever your plans, have fun, and don’t forget the reason we celebrate!

I’ll be in touch next week to update more happenings in St. Paul. We’re staying busy and accomplishing lots for Minnesota. In the meantime, feel free to contact me with suggestions or questions; I’d love to hear from you.

Have a great Easter!

Ron

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March 3, 2016 Legislative Update

Neighbors,

Congrats to the Pierz Pioneers wrestling team for their third-place finish at state last week! Great job, guys! And a shout out to the Long Prairie Boys and Girls basketball teams for their successful season. The #5 ranked boys team lost to Sauk Centre in the postseason and the girls ended the season on a high note of four straight wins.

As always, good luck to our other local teams competing in their end-of-the-year tournaments. Make us proud!

Session Preview

The legislative session starts in just a couple days, and I wanted you to be aware of some of the things I plan to advocate for in 2016.

Roads and Bridges

Greater Minnesota’s economic growth depends on safe roads and bridges. I am committed to passing an infrastructure bill that maintains and repairs our roads and bridges. I believe we can put together a robust roads and bridges bill that leverages our state surplus money and general obligation bonds without raising our gas tax.

Broadband Expansion

Another issue that has seen bipartisan support is the need for increased broadband funding in our rural, underserved areas around the state. Our students, local governments, and small businesses need high-speed internet to keep pace with the Twin Cities and surrounding areas.

Child Protection & Excellence in Education

As the co-chair of the Legislative Task Force on Child Protection, I’ve been working to reform Minnesota’s child protection laws to prevent children from slipping through the cracks in our system. This issue transcends political parties, and is something where both Republicans and Democrats can find agreement. By helping these children reach their full potential, we ensure their academic success and build a better future.

Fish Fry Friday

As customary during lent, we gather on Fridays for fish and conversation.

March 3, 2016
Pierz Lions at the Backyard in Pierz

March 18, 2016
St. Mary’s Catholic Church in Upsala

Enjoy your weekend, and stay safe getting your ice house off the lake.

Ron

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