Budget Committee - June 04, 2025   6/4/2025

Roll Call

• • 00:00:11
    St Paul, City Council,
  • 00:03:11
    St Paul, City Council,
• • Nelsie Yang
  • 00:05:20
    To get our finance and budget committee meeting ready here, so I'm going to call our meeting to order.
  • 00:05:25
    I'm Nelsi, I'm the chair for our committee here.
  • 00:05:28
    I'm really excited about our presentation today.
  • 00:05:32
    And just for context, we know that right now our country, state, region, and city are certainly facing some serious challenges when it comes to our economic forecast.
  • 00:05:41
    Today we will have a presentation on the economic analysis and gain a clear picture of state and regional economy and the macroeconomic outlook with the budget season upon us.
  • 00:05:53
    It is crucial for all of us at the table here to understand.
  • 00:05:56
    I do want to give our Council Director Jay Wilmes a huge shout out because it was his suggestion for us to bring you all in.
  • 00:06:12
    Hi Jay, I gave you a shout out for suggesting bringing in our guest speakers today.
  • 00:06:16
    Thank you so much for your time.
  • 00:06:18
    I do want to introduce our speakers.
  • 00:06:20
    We first have Amanda Eins, Manager of the Economic Analysis Unit at the Minnesota Management and Budget, MMB.
  • 00:06:29
    This team is responsible for producing the forecast of Minnesota State General Fund revenues.
  • 00:06:34
    as well as providing updates and analysis
  • 00:06:52
    We also have our state economist, Dr. Anthony Becker, a professor of economics at St. Olaf College in Northview, Minnesota, where he has been on the faculty since 1987.
  • 00:07:02
    At St. Olaf, he has served as the Husby Johnson Professor of Business and Economics from 2016 to 2019, Chair of the Economics Department.
  • 00:07:12
    from 2012 to 2020 and as chair of numerous faculty committees as well.
  • 00:07:18
    He has also worked as a consultant in economic analysis and antitrust and as an expert witness in economic damages.
  • 00:07:26
    His expertise is in econometrics, particularly in the analysis and forecasting of time series data.
  • 00:07:33
    In addition, Dr. Becker has expertise in the field of industrial organization, particularly in the economics of antitrust and regulation
  • 00:07:41
    and in the field of public finance.
  • 00:07:43
    So just an incredible bio about the both of you and again, thank you so much for your time today.
  • 00:07:49
    During your presentation, we'll be taking questions from the council members and we'll also leave time for questions at the very end today too.
  • 00:07:57
    So I will hand it off to whoever is planning on presenting first.
• • SPEAKER_05
  • 00:08:02
    Well, I'll go first.
  • 00:08:03
    Thank you, Chair Yang, Council members.
  • 00:08:06
    It's a pleasure to be here.
  • 00:08:07
    I just want to say that, you know, if you want to do this, if you find this useful, and you want to invite us back in the future, we're very happy to come.
  • 00:08:16
    This is, you know, part of what the role of the State Economist and the Economic Analysis Division is about.
  • 00:08:21
    We also, on a quarterly basis, publish an economic outlook that you might find useful, and you can get to that from the Management and Budget website as well.
  • 00:08:31
    So we're going to start off, I'm here with my colleague, Amanda Imes, and we're going to start off, I'm going to talk about the outlook for the United States, and then Amanda will talk about the outlook for Minnesota.
  • 00:08:46
    And part of what's going to be covered here is looking at the difference between
  • 00:08:57
    the forecast we were working at from in February when we produced the statewide revenue forecast and where that forecast has shifted now because we've had a a large amount of policy changes and we still have and this is my my key word or key phrase for my life now policy uncertainty
  • 00:09:19
    We really don't know.
  • 00:09:21
    For example, just this week we saw a doubling of the tariffs on steel and aluminum.
  • 00:09:27
    We saw other tariffs struck down, but that decision stayed.
  • 00:09:31
    Uncertainty really is the key word.
  • 00:09:36
    Anyway, I thought we'd begin with the US economic outlook.
• • Matt Privratsky
  • 00:09:41
    I have to wear my glasses.
• • SPEAKER_05
  • 00:09:43
    You all are in perfect focus, but anything closer than 10 feet is a blur.
  • 00:09:49
    So we have
  • 00:09:51
    A number of assumptions that go into our economic forecast.
  • 00:09:56
    Our consultant for our macroeconomic forecasting is Standard & Poor's Global Market Intelligence, or SPGMI.
  • 00:10:07
    They released the forecast that we used for the revenue forecast on February 10th, I believe it was.
  • 00:10:16
    and then we're going to be spending some time here comparing that forecast to the May 6th forecast.
  • 00:10:25
    Now, in that May 6 forecast, they had a baseline 15% tariff.
  • 00:10:31
    Tariffs on China, much higher, 125%.
  • 00:10:33
    They even went up a little higher and now they've come down and it's, you know, again, the policy uncertainty.
  • 00:10:42
    But their assumption was that those tariffs would come down and they would gradually be reduced over the course of the year.
  • 00:10:50
    There are also these section
  • 00:10:54
    of the United States.
  • 00:11:17
    those will probably stay in place until the administration changes them.
  • 00:11:22
    We're also looking at a rather tight monetary policy which for our purposes translates into higher interest rates.
  • 00:11:33
    And that's because the Federal Reserve has been very reticent until inflation is in control with lowering interest rates.
  • 00:11:41
    And so I think it's reasonable
  • 00:11:44
    to expect that Standard and Poor's or SPGMI is correct, that there will only be one rate reduction in this year that we're going to see continuing high interest rates.
  • 00:11:57
    and the Senate.
  • 00:12:27
    and so on.
  • 00:12:48
    and the City Council.
  • 00:13:04
    and then the debt ceiling and I've heard that just in the last day or so some members of the Senate are on the GOP side are rather concerned about the effect of the current budget legislation and its effect on the national debt and so there may be some discussion there.
  • 00:13:22
    The other thing is that the Federal Reserve is not, they're sitting on the sidelines and letting the Treasury deal with
  • 00:13:32
    and the Senate.
  • 00:13:53
    what we're looking at right now, the forecast.
  • 00:13:56
    And S&P is really a middle of the road forecaster.
  • 00:14:00
    They tend to be neither overly optimistic nor overly pessimistic compared to the other major forecasters out there.
  • 00:14:09
    And they're looking at GDP, gross domestic product growth,
  • 00:14:14
    for the foreseeable future.
  • 00:14:19
    Now, back in February, they were looking at just over 2% in 25 and about 2% in 26.
  • 00:14:28
    And now, and this is mostly tariff related, and it's not just our tariffs, but it's also retaliation from other our trading partners that are sort of giving us that decreased
  • 00:14:43
    and the City Council.
  • 00:15:04
    at the same time, and this is a difficult thing for the monetary policy people at the Federal Reserve, we're seeing some upward revisions in expected in what the forecasts are for inflation as much as 3.4% for 2025, so up about half a percent from that earlier forecast.
  • 00:15:28
    Now, on the other hand, the recent
  • 00:15:31
    and I think
  • 00:15:47
    some of that is because the tariff effects haven't necessarily fully kicked in businesses did a lot of pre-buying earlier in the year and so they're running things off of inventory running sales off of inventory now but we'll just have to see how that goes for the rest of the year
  • 00:16:04
    but we are expecting higher inflation for this year and inflation not really moderating back to the 2% or so range for a couple years from now.
  • 00:16:19
    This picture gives a little bit more detail.
  • 00:16:24
    The others were annual averages.
  • 00:16:26
    This is on a quarterly basis, so these would be annual rates of inflation over three month periods.
  • 00:16:33
    And what we can see there is that our consultants, SPGMI, were expecting a spike in inflation in the second quarter, which is where we are now.
  • 00:16:42
    We won't know about that spike really if it happens probably until maybe next month or so.
  • 00:16:51
    My guess is
  • 00:16:52
    and this is a guess that I'm not sure that we're seeing the signs of that spike.
  • 00:16:58
    So things might, that spike may have shifted or we may not realize as pronounced a spike in prices.
• • Nelsie Yang
  • 00:17:10
    Dr. Becker, I'll take a question from our Council Member Rebecca Baker.
  • 00:17:14
    Thanks.
• • Rebecca Noecker
  • 00:17:15
    Dr. Becker, can you remind us or tell me for the first time, what's the difference between CPI and core personal consumption expenditures?
• • SPEAKER_05
  • 00:17:22
    Okay, so CPI consumer price index is based on a collection of goods that a typical urban consumer purchases.
  • 00:17:34
    The personal consumption expenditure index is based on the collection of things that go into the macroeconomic
  • 00:17:47
    definition of consumer spending or consumption expenditure.
  • 00:17:54
    So household expenditure sort of in the aggregate for the United States.
  • 00:17:59
    And the core personal consumption expenditure index excludes food and energy goods because those prices tend to be more volatile.
  • 00:18:13
    and so the core PCE index tends to look at a more stable, less on a month to month basis, less variable measure to give us an idea of what the underlying inflation is.
• • Matt Privratsky
  • 00:18:30
    Thank you.
• • 00:18:30
    You're welcome.
• • SPEAKER_05
  • 00:18:32
    Okay.
  • 00:18:34
    Now, because of the possibility of inflation, we are anticipating minimal changes in monetary policy.
  • 00:18:44
    That is, we don't expect the Federal Reserve to change its target interest rate, which is the federal funds rate, the lower set of lines here.
  • 00:18:55
    until December and then possibly hold things steady through most of 2026 before lowering rates down into about the 3% range in the long term.
  • 00:19:11
    Now, that's the rate that banks pay each other when they have to do overnight borrowing.
  • 00:19:20
    and the City Council.
  • 00:19:37
    and the City Council.
  • 00:19:54
    and the Federal Reserve.
  • 00:20:15
    expected inflation by consumers is rising, then those higher expectations can get built into longer term interest rates.
  • 00:20:28
    And that could further retard the decline in the mortgage rates.
  • 00:20:39
    Now, the slowdown in economic activity is probably going to be closely related to a slowdown in household expenditure.
  • 00:20:52
    This shows the amount of real consumer spending that is spending by households on new goods and services.
  • 00:21:02
    so like a lot of the ebay purchases don't count but you know that's minor right you know this is your your food your housing your medical care your even insurance expenditures
  • 00:21:19
    all the things that you can think of on a macroeconomic level.
  • 00:21:23
    And in real dollars that is correcting for the effect of price changes, we're expecting some substantial declines in the growth rate.
  • 00:21:31
    I mean, still growing, but at a much lower rate, especially out there in 2026.
  • 00:21:36
    We're looking at fairly low growth in household expenditures.
  • 00:21:44
    Now, if we don't correct for inflation, that is, if we look at this in what we call nominal terms, and this would be closely related to things like, you know, the amount of business or transactions that businesses are experiencing, retail sales and so forth.
  • 00:22:03
    we see that there are still declines even with the the rising prices that are predicted we still see that there are declines and especially that we see there are declines relative to the numbers that we had available to us back in February so that with
  • 00:22:23
    In 2026, we're looking at substantial downward revision in the amount of total spending by households.
  • 00:22:33
    And then it rises again.
  • 00:22:35
    By the end of the forecast horizon here, what we're looking at there is something like the 2% growth plus the 2% inflation.
  • 00:22:44
    That gives you the 4% total growth in nominal consumer spending.
  • 00:22:50
    The worrisome picture for me as someone who deals with macroeconomic data a lot is the forecast for real business fixed investment.
  • 00:23:03
    That is, this is expenditures by
  • 00:23:07
    Businesses on capital goods, structures, vehicles, software, computers, and so forth.
  • 00:23:15
    And our consultant is now predicting actually negative growth, that is a decline in the amount of business fixed investment in 2026.
  • 00:23:27
    I will say that as somebody whose job is to study these things and has been for many years, a drop-off in investment often precedes a recession.
  • 00:23:42
    Now, I'm not in the business of predicting recessions.
  • 00:23:45
    I mean, the joke is economists have correctly predicted nine of the last five recessions.
  • 00:23:52
    and so I'm not going to predict one but what I will say is that historically when you get a drop in investment that tends to create a shockwave that sometimes can throw an economy into a recession not always but it does occasionally there are other factors at play too but we are looking at lower levels of investment sort of in the aggregate and some of that is driven by higher interest rates
  • 00:24:15
    and then business expectations.
  • 00:24:19
    And I'll also say that policy uncertainty coming at the federal level contributes to businesses not wanting to do things that make them incur debt.
• • Rebecca Noecker
  • 00:24:30
    I'm curious why 2026 is appearing over and over again as the outlier bad year.
  • 00:24:39
    I mean, I can understand why it could be worse than 25 given that some of the policy decisions in 25 could take a while to have impact.
  • 00:24:47
    But then what's the reasoning for assuming that things are going to get better after that?
• • SPEAKER_05
  • 00:24:50
    okay so I mean there are two possible explanations the first one is that there are these things we call fiscal lags the federal government acts and it takes a while for those effects to be felt and I think some of this is assuming that you know we're gonna get a drop in consumption then drop in investment and those things are gonna take a while but then the economy
  • 00:25:15
    Committee.
  • 00:25:27
    Another explanation is that when you're dealing with these big dynamic models, if you shock it one way, it might tend to decline and then rise and kind of go back to seeking its equilibrium.
  • 00:25:42
    And a lot of these big macroeconomic models have as their
  • 00:25:46
    I like the first explanation better, but the second one is an anomaly of big macroeconomic models.
  • 00:26:10
    so that could be it, but I think the 2026 decline in investment really has to do with
  • 00:26:19
    and then also consumption being suppressed.
  • 00:26:28
    And also, I will say that we don't show it in this presentation, but part of the assumptions of the trade policies that are built into these models are that we're going to see substantial decreases in demand for U.S. products from abroad, and that will also discourage businesses from investing.
• • Nelsie Yang
  • 00:26:51
    Dr. Becker, I have a question for you about the real consumer spending on slide 8 there.
  • 00:26:57
    I know 2020 and 2021, that was during the pandemic, but I was wondering if you could dive deeper into why there was such a drastic change in the bar graph there from those years, even compared to 2022 and so on.
• • SPEAKER_05
  • 00:27:13
    Sure.
  • 00:27:13
    So a couple of things happened.
  • 00:27:15
    So 2021, we know we had a lot of lockdowns and a lot of consumption we couldn't do.
  • 00:27:21
    So there was a lot of suppressed demand.
  • 00:27:28
    At the same time, the federal government was engaging in quite a lot of stimulus spending.
  • 00:27:34
    And so people entered 2021 with a lot of cash and a lot of suppressed demand.
  • 00:27:46
    And so you had a lot of spending.
  • 00:27:52
    what happened thereafter by 22-23 and especially by 23 is that the if you will the excessed funds in household balance sheets if you will had pretty much been expended so
  • 00:28:09
    there was a suppression of demand at the same time as a stimulus so then as soon as the brakes came off things things really bounced up and then they went back to pretty much their their normal growth rate by 23-24.
  • 00:28:22
    Thank you.
  • 00:28:23
    Okay then
  • 00:28:33
    The forecast now is for, and we did have a forecast previously, of corporate profits being somewhat lower in the near term and then beginning to rise again.
  • 00:28:44
    S&P has adjusted their forecast to have corporate profits being even lower in the near term and then not rising as much in the future.
  • 00:28:57
    I'm not sure how much implication this will have for your city's finances on the state level.
  • 00:29:04
    We see this as possibly having a negative impact on state revenues from the corporate franchise tax.
  • 00:29:16
    It remains to be seen how much this is going to happen.
  • 00:29:20
    We're not going to know this is happening until it's already happened is one of the things because data comes to us with a substantial lag.
  • 00:29:27
    But this is one of the things we're keeping a close eye on at the state level.
  • 00:29:33
    of the City of St. Paul.
  • 00:29:47
    We're expecting a much lower growth.
  • 00:29:53
    And again, this is in nominal dollars.
  • 00:29:55
    This is not corrected for inflation, but we're expecting much lower growth in wage and salary disbursements over the next couple of years with things then returning to more akin to or pretty much the same level as we were expecting back in February in the longer term.
  • 00:30:17
    and one of the one of the other if you will constraints on the economy is of course the labor force and we're looking at and so we have and I'm sure our state demographer will will cover some of these issues issues for you as well but we've got you know this this baby boom bulge working its way through the population profile and
  • 00:30:44
    and the
  • 00:31:02
    of the City of St. Paul, City of St. Paul.
• • Nelsie Yang
  • 00:31:28
    Council President Eaker.
• • Rebecca Noecker
  • 00:31:30
    Thanks, Madam Chair.
  • 00:31:31
    Is there any reason why on this slide it seems like the May at least further outlook is a little bit rosier than February?
  • 00:31:37
    I don't even know if it's statistically significant, but it seems like different from some of the other slides where May is always worse.
• • SPEAKER_05
  • 00:31:44
    Yeah, I'm not sure.
  • 00:31:46
    I think
  • 00:31:48
    In the longer term, now they're maybe expecting higher employment because of greater economic activity.
  • 00:31:59
    And some of that is why we see maybe some lower levels in 2025 and 26, because we're now expecting lower levels of economic activity.
  • 00:32:09
    I mean, this is the number of people employed.
  • 00:32:11
    It's not the available labor force.
• • Matt Privratsky
  • 00:32:14
    But it's still going to be related.
• • SPEAKER_05
  • 00:32:20
    Then one of the other things that S&P does for us is they give us both an optimistic and a pessimistic scenario.
  • 00:32:31
    Baseline is what they think is more likely than not.
  • 00:32:34
    The baseline scenario, usually they assign a probability of 50%, 55% somewhere in that neighborhood.
  • 00:32:44
    In this forecast, they gave us the pessimistic scenario and we're showing just real gross domestic product here.
  • 00:32:50
    And when that real gross domestic product goes negative, that's
  • 00:32:54
    in all likelihood of
  • 00:33:16
    our major trading partners backing off retaliatory measures and so we then get back up to you know a higher temporarily higher rate of growth than we would have otherwise predicted but this this just gives a little more detail of that
  • 00:33:38
    of those different scenarios.
  • 00:33:39
    So if you were to take sort of a weighted average of these things, we're still not predicting, or S&P, I should say, is still not predicting recession.
  • 00:33:51
    None of the major forecasters that I'm aware of, and we actually watch,
  • 00:33:57
    basically we get a summary of all the major forecasters on a regular basis.
  • 00:34:02
    Various Federal Reserve Banks do that as well.
  • 00:34:05
    Nobody's saying, oh yeah, we're going to have a recession, but the chances out there.
  • 00:34:10
    And the other thing is that when you get fairly low growth, it doesn't take a very big disturbance in the economy to actually push you into a recession, which is why low growth in itself is sometimes a concern.
  • 00:34:24
    Now, we talk about these things as forecast risks.
  • 00:34:28
    That is, what can make our forecast not very good?
  • 00:34:32
    And yeah, I put policy uncertainty first because that's my life.
  • 00:34:37
    And we really don't know what's going to go on with trade policy and tariffs.
  • 00:34:43
    They change on a daily basis, sometimes within the course of a day.
  • 00:34:48
    We also really haven't seen immigration policy take shape yet.
  • 00:34:53
    and we're seeing some things on energy policy and especially we're seeing some pushback from rural senators and rural representatives on some of the administration's energy policies, especially with respect to clean energy.
  • 00:35:11
    And so we don't know how that's going to shake out.
  • 00:35:17
    There are also disruptions from a lot of the
  • 00:35:22
    of the City of St Paul.
  • 00:35:39
    The fiscal 26 budget proposal from the administration is to cut, for example, National Science Foundation by 50%.
  • 00:35:46
    That's going to have an effect on the education sector.
  • 00:35:50
    The education sector then has a decline that can sort of add in other places, but there's also, you know, there are also other cuts in there too.
  • 00:36:01
    I'm just thinking about that one.
  • 00:36:04
    because Minnesota's economy has a substantial amount of education.
  • 00:36:11
    I mean, just look at the U of M, look at all the private colleges we have.
  • 00:36:17
    And so that's potentially a major shock to the system here.
  • 00:36:23
    We also don't know about fiscal policy.
  • 00:36:26
    We don't know how much of the current House bill is going to survive in the Senate.
  • 00:36:32
    It may be modified.
  • 00:36:35
    There's going to have to be some compromise when it gets back to the House.
  • 00:36:39
    And so there's an uncertainty.
  • 00:36:40
    There are also external factors that can affect inflation.
  • 00:36:45
    Things like energy prices.
  • 00:36:47
    Right now it looks like energy prices on the international level are going down.
  • 00:36:51
    But that might not always be the case.
  • 00:36:54
    and so there are some risks there.
  • 00:36:56
    There might be some upside risks if energy stays low, if energy prices stay low, that could help spur economic growth, though of course it's going to have some effects domestically which are not good if international prices stay low.
  • 00:37:12
    For example, probably get decreased production and exploration in our oil producing states.
  • 00:37:20
    and also decreased incentives for clean energy products as well or production as well.
  • 00:37:26
    Monetary policy, we kind of have an idea what the Fed's going to do, but we're not sure.
  • 00:37:30
    And then there's some things going on in the bond markets right now with higher
  • 00:37:38
    and the City Council and the City Council and the City Council and the City Council and the City Council and the City Council and the City Council and the City Council and the City Council and the City Council
  • 00:38:07
    and the City Council.
  • 00:38:26
    on a statewide basis and certainly your revenues on a city basis, all of these macroeconomic uncertainties translate into state uncertainties which translate into revenue uncertainties.
  • 00:38:40
    And so that's, yes, we have a number.
  • 00:38:46
    Committee.
  • 00:38:57
    of the City of St. Paul, City of St. Paul,
  • 00:39:21
    or what we expect with 90% confidence where our revenues will be at the end of the forecast period.
  • 00:39:32
    So that's all that I have about the national outlook.
  • 00:39:38
    If there are no more questions, I'll turn it over to my colleague.
• • Rebecca Noecker
  • 00:39:43
    Thanks, Madam Chair.
  • 00:39:43
    Thank you so much.
  • 00:39:44
    This has been really informative and terrifying at the same time, especially with all of the uncertainty.
  • 00:39:51
    I'm just, could you say a little bit more about inflation?
  • 00:39:54
    I'm curious, usually I'm used to associating inflation with higher spending, higher wages, a heating up economy.
  • 00:40:01
    It seems like what you're saying is everything is slowing down and yet still seeing inflation.
  • 00:40:08
    Can you help paint the picture for why that is?
• • SPEAKER_05
  • 00:40:12
    Boy, if I had a chalkboard.
  • 00:40:18
    Yeah, so there are two kinds of inflation.
  • 00:40:22
    Often we think about inflation as when you have an expanding economy and there's greater demand for goods and that's almost pulling prices up.
  • 00:40:30
    And we actually talk about demand pull inflation.
  • 00:40:34
    So expanding demand for goods, forcing rising prices.
  • 00:40:38
    What we're expecting or what S&P is expecting, what I personally am expecting is that a lot of the trade policies
  • 00:40:46
    are going to, and the policy uncertainties are going to be actually pushing costs up.
  • 00:40:53
    So firms that rely on imported lumber from Canada and a large proportion of our lumber is imported and it's now been hit with 25% tariffs and maybe that will be rising.
  • 00:41:06
    So home builders are going to be faced with higher costs.
  • 00:41:10
    Our auto producers are going to be paying more for steel and aluminum and
  • 00:41:17
    when you put
  • 00:41:33
    basically going to push up, for instance, you know, even from the point of, you know, beer and soft drink producers paying more for cans to automobile manufacturers paying more for steel and aluminum, all the costs are rising.
  • 00:41:49
    And so we have this thing we call cost push inflation.
  • 00:41:52
    And that's a real and some people call it stagflation.
  • 00:41:56
    That's that was the name that was coined during the Carter administration, where
  • 00:42:01
    Committee.
  • 00:42:12
    place to be for a monetary policy authority like the Federal Reserve.
  • 00:42:15
    Because if they lower interest rates to handle the suppression of economic activity, they risk pushing up inflation by creating more demand.
  • 00:42:26
    And if they raise interest rates, they have the effect of decreasing production and also, well, it might suppress demand, but it might also decrease production.
  • 00:42:38
    So they're kind of stuck.
  • 00:42:40
    which was the quandary that the monetary policy authorities were in in the in the late 70s as well in early 80s so I don't know did that answer
  • 00:42:53
    I'm sorry for being terrifying.
  • 00:42:55
    It's not normally my job to be terrifying.
• • SPEAKER_04
  • 00:42:57
    Thank you Chair Yang and thank you Dr. Becker.
  • 00:43:05
    Thank you for this presentation.
  • 00:43:07
    I'm having a lot of flashbacks to my economics class in college and figuring out how much I actually remembered from that class.
  • 00:43:15
    So it says here that the February 2025 forecast is the second of six.
  • 00:43:21
    So are these forecasts monthly that you do or put together?
• • SPEAKER_05
  • 00:43:28
    Well, we are actually updating this analysis on a monthly basis.
  • 00:43:35
    But when we talk about the number of forecasts we do, we do a revenue forecast in November and again in February.
• • SPEAKER_04
  • 00:43:41
    Oh, I see.
  • 00:43:41
    OK, I see.
• • Nelsie Yang
  • 00:43:46
    Okay, so I'm really excited to talk to you.
• • SPEAKER_03
  • 00:44:01
    I love talking about the economy.
  • 00:44:05
    and in Minnesota I think I just want to start out by saying I am lucky that I get to tell a good story about Minnesota's economy and the reason why I get to tell a good story is that people like you are working to make our cities vital and places that people want to live and work and so
  • 00:44:24
    that we can
  • 00:44:49
    Number one, because you're lumped with Minneapolis, it's kind of hard sometimes to parse out St. Paul.
  • 00:44:54
    And number two, because the Minneapolis St. Paul MSA is so significant, it's really not that different than the state in a lot of these indicators.
  • 00:45:03
    So when we talk about what's happening at a statewide level, it really translates very nicely to the Minneapolis St. Paul.
  • 00:45:11
    And so I apologize that I can't speak more specifically to St. Paul.
  • 00:45:15
    I think
  • 00:45:44
    We have a very highly educated, specialized labor force here.
  • 00:45:51
    We consistently have one of the highest educational attainment rates in the country.
  • 00:45:57
    We have a diverse industry base, which I'll show you on one of the next slides.
  • 00:46:01
    We have a strong headquarters economy here and very high levels of innovation, which I'll talk about a little bit.
  • 00:46:09
    We have per capita personal income that's persistently above the US average.
  • 00:46:14
    a low poverty rate and again we perform well on many standard of living indicators so the diverse industry base what that means is the the dark blue bar is Minnesota and the gray bar is the United States and then it's showing as a share of total employment how much is made up in education and health services is the top one and then it kind of goes down with you can see so
  • 00:46:42
    it's helpful to be grounded because sometimes we talk a lot in Minnesota about mining and logging but if you look at as a share of total employment how small it is relative to everything else that's happening here and what's special about Minnesota is that you can see our bars are pretty well matched to the US and so what that means is if there is a shock to any one industry like if agriculture has a really difficult year
  • 00:47:08
    of the state of Minnesota.
  • 00:47:19
    It's a good thing to have this diverse industry base.
  • 00:47:39
    and we have a larger share of employment in the U.S. in manufacturing, wholesale trade and financial activities.
  • 00:47:52
    The manufacturing is both durable and non-durable goods.
  • 00:47:57
    Durable goods being like food
  • 00:48:03
    and then your non durable goods are things that you would buy like at a Target.
  • 00:48:06
    So we do have a larger share of that happening here and we have for a long time.
  • 00:48:11
    Part of that is kind of our history as a agricultural state where we have a lot of manufacturing related to food.
  • 00:48:19
    and then now in 2025 we have a lot of manufacturing of like medtech type of things.
  • 00:48:26
    So one thing I'm sure you're aware of is that we are among the top states for Fortune 500 companies.
  • 00:48:34
    So headquarters, when you look at a slide like this, these are called NAICS codes and one of these is called
  • 00:48:42
    it's called management of companies and enterprises and so everyone who works at Ecolab no matter what their job is if they're in HR or finance or whatever they fall into this management of companies and enterprises saying everything who works at like the 3 a.m. headquarter would fall under this and Minnesota has in 2024 had over 88,000 jobs in that category which by concentration of jobs Minnesota ranks first among states
  • 00:49:11
    at 83% higher than the national average.
  • 00:49:15
    Some other top states include Arkansas, Washington, Ohio, and Maine.
  • 00:49:19
    Those types of jobs tend to be higher earnings, so the average earnings for that type of job is 168,000 per year.
  • 00:49:26
    And Minnesota had 2,400 businesses that fall into this category in 2024.
  • 00:49:31
    So Fortune 500 is a subset of this industry.
  • 00:49:36
    We are currently home to 17 Fortune 500 companies
  • 00:49:40
    and eight of Forbes' largest private companies.
  • 00:49:43
    And one thing that's really interesting is that if you go back 50 years, we still had about 17 Fortune 500 companies, but almost none of them are in existence today.
  • 00:49:53
    Which means that, you know, even as companies come and go, Minnesota is this staying power as a place where these type of businesses either want to be located or they're located because we have well-educated people who
  • 00:50:08
    you know, enter and build businesses and start companies.
  • 00:50:13
    And the Twin Cities ranks third in Fortune 500 per 1 million people among the 30 largest US metros.
  • 00:50:22
    Many of the nation's largest and most recognizable companies are based in Minnesota.
  • 00:50:26
    I think you all can read through those at your own
  • 00:50:30
    this is kind of just shows how it breaks out by by industry and so you know some if we focus on just fortune 500 you miss a lot of things because they're like these hidden headquarters that are not fortune 500 but maybe they're a non-profit a really large nonprofit or they're like for example Thompson Reuters has a huge presence here but it's not their tip that's not actually their headquarters
  • 00:50:57
    and you can kind of see how those are broken down like again I mentioned the food processing, financial services, health and medical or some of the big ones, retail.
  • 00:51:09
    And then these are the high quality or high standard of living indicators that I mentioned.
  • 00:51:15
    So it's worth noting that these don't capture disparities and we know that these you know that these
  • 00:51:24
    We have a pretty high home ownership rate here in the state.
  • 00:51:47
    So you don't think like, why is a patent per capita high quality standard of living thing?
  • 00:51:51
    And it kind of just gets back to that idea that if people have resources, good roads, access to a good labor force to be employed there, they're going to be able to be innovative in, you know, having filing patents.
  • 00:52:07
    Whereas if you don't have those things, it becomes harder.
  • 00:52:11
    And then we have one of the highest labor force participation rates in the country.
  • 00:52:16
    of the state of Minnesota.
  • 00:52:20
    We have one of the highest rates of people with
  • 00:52:39
    and the Senate.
  • 00:52:55
    again we're pretty much always lower than the U.S. One rule of thumb that people like to talk about not just in Minnesota but everywhere we'll talk about is they say that Minnesota is like first in first out of a recession and COVID is kind of an outlier to that because that was a not a nutritional business cycle recession but that's just something that might be helpful for you to have in your mind if you ever notice like Minnesota's unemployment rate ticking up
  • 00:53:26
    Committee.
  • 00:53:41
    The labor market has maintained its resiliency despite some of these headwinds over the last few months and that's true in both Minnesota and the U.S. And I think that's all I want to say about that for now.
• • Nelsie Yang
  • 00:53:53
    I'll take a question from Council Member Johnson.
• • SPEAKER_03
  • 00:53:55
    Oh, yes.
• • Cheniqua Johnson
  • 00:53:57
    Thank you.
  • 00:53:58
    I appreciate just kind of getting the state outlooks as well, especially as we dive into the unemployment rates.
  • 00:54:09
    My question was actually related to the previous slide on the standard of living mostly, because I was kind of wondering if it varies, like if some of these vary by, you mentioned, I think the previous slide was like
  • 00:54:25
    anything around like rural, urban, do you see differences in when the data is desegregated by certain portions of the space just out of curiosity?
• • SPEAKER_03
  • 00:54:35
    So absolutely I would say I wish I could present that data to you but it's like either not available or very sometimes it's very unreliable when you move down so like for example
  • 00:54:48
    when you look at
  • 00:55:13
    I'm sorry, I wish I could give you more.
  • 00:55:17
    As we all know, it's obviously not the same experience for everyone everywhere.
  • 00:55:30
    That being said, as I see things that I think might be of interest, if I see a better breakdown, I can always email Jay and he can pass it along.
  • 00:55:41
    Okay, so talking about the labor market Minnesota if you look at the history like 2010 or 2011 to 2019 we averaged around 38,000 new jobs created per year and a job creation is like actually a person in a job not a job opening and
  • 00:56:02
    and then we had the job loss from the COVID pandemic and then you know 21 and 22 was a lot of drawing those people back into their jobs and now we're bumping up against the demographic reality that people have been worrying about for many years.
  • 00:56:22
    You know in the person before Tony
  • 00:56:25
    was there for
  • 00:56:51
    and the
  • 00:57:07
    of the city of St. Paul.
  • 00:57:14
    I think this is one thing
  • 00:57:26
    And part of the driver of this job growth is immigration.
  • 00:57:32
    So there's three components of population growth.
  • 00:57:36
    One is your natural increase, so your births minus your deaths.
  • 00:57:40
    The second component is how many people are choosing to stay in Minnesota or move to Minnesota versus how many people are choosing to leave Minnesota.
  • 00:57:49
    So we want to have more people moving to Minnesota than leaving Minnesota.
  • 00:57:53
    And then the third component is international immigration.
  • 00:57:56
    And as it turns out, in 23 and 24, I think a lot of that growth in those blue bars can be attributed to higher levels of international immigration, which is my next slide.
  • 00:58:09
    So this slide shows those three components of population change.
  • 00:58:14
    The lime green bars are the domestic net migration.
  • 00:58:18
    so how many people are we losing or gaining from other states and in 2017 and 2018 some of my first years on the job we were gaining people from other states and we were all just like yes this is you know we're turning the tide Minnesota's place to be and then we haven't repeated that since but we're really excited about this tiny little sliver in 2024
  • 00:58:41
    So that's a much better, so we hope we can flip it to positive.
  • 00:58:46
    And then the international immigration is the teal bar and, oops, so if I could just delete the other bars for you so it would be easier for you to tell, you would be able to easily see that in 22, 23 and 24 we experienced
  • 00:59:06
    really, really high levels of international immigration, like double our normal basically.
  • 00:59:11
    And so that was really sustaining and allowing us to have job growth in years where we otherwise might have bumped up to that demographic reality a little sooner.
  • 00:59:19
    And we know in 2017 and 2018 and 2019 that those international immigration bars got pretty small.
  • 00:59:31
    So the last time we were in this administration,
  • 00:59:34
    So if we expect that to continue in 2526, you know, I think we would expect those bars to get pretty small in the next few years.
  • 00:59:44
    Oh, sorry, go ahead.
• • Rebecca Noecker
  • 00:59:46
    No, thanks so much.
  • 00:59:48
    This is fascinating.
  • 00:59:50
    What are the factors behind the negative domestic migration?
  • 00:59:53
    Why do we tend to lose people to other states?
  • 00:59:57
    Is it all the Sunbelt effect and it's only going to get worse as boomers retire or high tax or other
• • SPEAKER_03
  • 01:00:04
    I think that's a great question for Dr. Brower when she comes.
  • 01:00:09
    So she's kind of the expert on that and we work with her all the time.
  • 01:00:12
    She is like an honorary member of our team.
  • 01:00:14
    But I think she could answer that better than I could.
• • Rebecca Noecker
  • 01:00:20
    And then just sort of as a corollary, how does our international immigration compare to other states and what are the factors behind
• • SPEAKER_03
  • 01:00:27
    So if you think about some states along the southern border, for example, their international immigration is going to be much higher than ours.
  • 01:00:38
    But we perform pretty well for being deeply inside the continental 48.
  • 01:00:47
    So we tend to be a pretty welcoming place for international immigrants.
  • 01:00:53
    And again, I think Susan might be able to answer that.
  • 01:00:56
    Councilmember Przybylski
• • Matt Privratsky
  • 01:01:06
    Thanks, Chair Yang.
  • 01:01:07
    Yeah, I was going to just note on top of Council President Naker's question, I think there's a lot of things in this presentation and the earlier presentation that impact us and we need to be aware of.
  • 01:01:18
    And there are certain things in here where we can play a driving role as a city.
  • 01:01:22
    And I personally find, for example, domestic migration, I guess, not necessarily directly with international immigration, but even if folks immigrate to the US and then have to find a place to go, we as a city can
  • 01:01:36
    and the City Council.
  • 01:01:45
    by upzoning so more housing can come through, by having transportation and parks and library systems that families want to come to.
  • 01:01:52
    And so particularly, I have vivid memories of when the census was going on and we barely, barely, barely hooked on to our eight seat.
  • 01:02:02
    I always thought about how it really is like the city's, individual city's jobs to welcome new neighbors and bring in new neighbors because otherwise we're relying entirely on international immigration where
  • 01:02:14
    I'm so excited that grew over the last three years.
  • 01:02:17
    I doubt we're going to be in a place where that's I doubt people are going to be coming here in the same numbers.
  • 01:02:22
    You know, who knows?
  • 01:02:23
    We're not exactly being welcoming as a country.
  • 01:02:25
    So I think that domestic migration, even what we can do to welcome international immigration by the time they're in the US is something we can drive a lot of.
  • 01:02:34
    So a lot of our housing and transportation and land use work is a big driver there.
• • SPEAKER_03
  • 01:02:39
    Yeah, thank you for sharing that.
  • 01:02:40
    I think the governor also focuses a lot on like how can we make Minnesota a place that people want to come and you know from my perspective like even like the park system and things like that so I and this is a question maybe write down for Susan Brower maybe I'll have to come to her presentation.
  • 01:02:58
    She had shared with us like the statistics of people moving here from Illinois from Chicago there's been like over the past decade like a pretty big shift of people
  • 01:03:08
    Council.
  • 01:03:10
    I think it makes a lot of sense what those two cities have to offer for people.
• • Cheniqua Johnson
  • 01:03:17
    Another thing that is important for families is the public school system.
  • 01:03:38
    under what which administration and I guess I'm just wondering from like the projections of years that are now since we're repeating um the you know like the earlier years of where it looked like there was a little bit of a decline in international immigration but increases in domestic migration are you are there predictions of what the trajectory would look like like in the 2025-2026
• • SPEAKER_03
  • 01:04:02
    and the City Council.
  • 01:04:17
    have a big role to play in this chart.
  • 01:04:20
    Sorry, I don't know when it's me and when it's the chart, but in this chart of the employment growth.
  • 01:04:26
    And so part of the reason why we're seeing this really slow employment growth is assumed lower levels of immigration.
  • 01:04:35
    So our macro forecast lowered their forecast by 500,000 people per year.
  • 01:04:39
    And that is baked in at this point.
• • Cheniqua Johnson
  • 01:04:44
    OK.
  • 01:04:45
    Thank you for that.
• • SPEAKER_03
  • 01:04:48
    Okay, so another thing I would say they're not very good.
  • 01:04:52
    None of us are very good at forecasting the net domestic migration I think that's more of an unknown
  • 01:04:58
    This next chart I wanted to show that this is by industry what's happening in job gains and losses and I think my chart is slightly different than yours because I updated it by a month after I sent you those slides but the point of this chart is to show that some industries are gaining jobs and some industries are losing jobs and we're not experiencing job growth across the board and we just hope that the gains can continue to outpace the losses I guess.
  • 01:05:28
    This is employment by MSA in the state.
  • 01:05:34
    This is the seasonally adjusted year-over-year percent change by MSA and you can see Minnesota still having a positive employment growth year-over-year and Rochester is really carrying us all I think a little bit with employment growth down there.
  • 01:05:52
    So just wanted to show that.
  • 01:06:00
    So I saw a headline recently that said something like, everyone is worried about recession and it's everywhere except for the data.
  • 01:06:10
    And I think that Dr. Becker shared, you know, sometimes like you can be in a recession before the data really shows up.
  • 01:06:17
    So we watch these things called like leading indicators to show us signs of
  • 01:06:22
    of issues and so none of the big indicators are you know the job market is hanging steady consumer spending has been hanging steady so but some indicators I'll show you are maybe a little more concerning so job openings you can see that in Minnesota the job openings have been drifting downward and the number of unemployed averages have been creeping up and one thing that's captured in those number of unemployed people
  • 01:06:50
    that can sometimes be missed
  • 01:07:06
    and then the private work week is something that's typically associated like a recession indicator because employers can cut your hours without cutting you as an employee as like a cost-saving measure so we see the number of hours coming down and then similarly temporary help is something that goes way up right at the beginning of a recovery and it goes down during a recession because it's one of those things where it's like well we can let go of the temp help
  • 01:07:35
    and then when you're coming back maybe I don't want to bring back a salary employee yet but I'll bring in temp help and so we see that also kind of flashing a little bit of an indicator for us.
  • 01:07:47
    This is our total non-farm employment.
  • 01:07:49
    You can see that we are past our pre-pandemic peak.
  • 01:07:52
    We got there a year after the US.
  • 01:07:54
    The labor force growth in the US is at 104% of its pre-pandemic level, and we're just at 101%.
  • 01:08:04
    So our labor force hasn't recovered as much, and that's because of our older population here.
  • 01:08:10
    People retired, they're not coming back to work.
• • Cheniqua Johnson
  • 01:08:12
    and then I'll take a question.
  • 01:08:15
    Council Member Johnson.
  • 01:08:17
    Thank you and sorry to interrupt your flow.
  • 01:08:19
    I just was wondering I know in the national presentation or the national outlook we talked a little bit about salary and wages and I'm just wondering you know kind of in regards to the last slide just on like private work week and temporary help what is Minnesota's trajectory around like salary and wages is it pretty in alignment with the national outlook when it comes to just like
  • 01:08:42
    how we're paying our workers here and I guess how does that relate to like the numbers in the future around the poverty rate, the unemployment rate, and things like that?
• • SPEAKER_03
  • 01:08:53
    Yes, another excellent question.
  • 01:08:56
    So we, for a very long time, had wage growth that exceeded the US.
  • 01:09:01
    So the US would grow 5% in wages, Minnesota would grow 6%.
  • 01:09:05
    We were always growing a little bit faster than the US.
  • 01:09:08
    And since 2017, that's flipped.
  • 01:09:11
    So we're growing a little bit slower than the U.S., which is a bit puzzling because of our super tight labor market.
  • 01:09:17
    You wouldn't expect that.
  • 01:09:19
    I think you would expect that we would still be kind of growing a little bit faster than the U.S.
  • 01:09:24
    So that's another thing that kind of like concerns us or worries us.
  • 01:09:28
    But we do still perform very well.
  • 01:09:31
    I mean, we're in line with the U.S., but just under usually.
  • 01:09:38
    That's actually my last slide, so if you have any questions for Dr. Becker, we're happy to answer them for five more minutes.
• • Rebecca Noecker
  • 01:09:47
    Thanks, Madam Chair.
  • 01:09:48
    Following up on Ms. Johnson's question, because she got an A, so I wanted to.
  • 01:09:52
    It sounded like a good question.
  • 01:09:54
    I thought you astutely pointed out that there's only one slide that actually projects forward, which is the stagnating payroll employment growth.
  • 01:10:04
    I'm curious what the outlook is for all these other
• • SPEAKER_03
  • 01:10:09
    for the City of St. Paul, City Council,
  • 01:10:39
    you know the stories usually go together so it's like if wage growth is expected to grow in the US we expected to grow here maybe just like it's just not going to be at the same growth rate or if we're expecting consumer spending to decrease in the US it's gonna decrease here and you know so I think we just don't tend to go to that level under the hood with audiences.
• • Rebecca Noecker
  • 01:11:08
    Well that was sort of what I was wondering about because you started with all the good news about Minnesota and I was wondering if does that mean that we are somewhat protected from some of the negative effects that might be happening nationwide or to your point just now do we pretty much tend to follow where the rest of the country goes and so for
• • SPEAKER_03
  • 01:11:26
    I think it's a little bit of both because I think number one yes like we are economy is going to respond the way that the US economy responds but like also we're in a really different position in terms of how our state government is managed and our you know we have a rainy day fund and we forecast out four years in advance and we balance the budget
  • 01:11:55
    and so we are very responsible in a lot of ways that can protect the state if there is a recession we have the rainy day fund whereas in other states that's not the case so they're in a different position than we are and then I think like some of the things I mentioned offer some economic resilience for us where it's like if we suddenly were to lose a lot of jobs and
  • 01:12:22
    Food production manufacturing, maybe those people would shift to medtech manufacturing, you know.
  • 01:12:31
    We hope.
• • Nelsie Yang
  • 01:12:33
    I'll just share my overall thoughts that as I am reflecting on the presentation from the both of you, this is just another really important reminder about how important elections are and why it matters so much who is sitting in these seats where policy makers are decision makers of budgets.
  • 01:12:52
    And for me personally as somebody who is so opposed to a lot of what's happening at the national level in terms of our government here, I think that
  • 01:13:03
    for me I'm so proud to live in Minnesota where there are so many things that we can continue to protect and be really proud about immigration especially being one of those and building resilience in our communities here and just continuing to advance progress in our communities and I think that in some way shape or form I continue to see that show up in the Minnesota
  • 01:13:28
    Committee.
  • 01:13:39
    just the budget presentation from our Office of Financial Services.
  • 01:13:43
    That way we can get a really close look on what, you know, similar to this, like what are the, hopefully the trends that we're seeing in St. Paul here.
  • 01:13:51
    What's the impact of a different, you know, of like these different trends on our St. Paul residents.
  • 01:13:59
    I'm even thinking about, you know, what is the experience of St. Paul residents when it comes to their work experiences and inflation and everything.
  • 01:14:07
    and I'm wondering if you both can each just name the top three things that you would urge city elected officials to consider as we are entering into our budget season here.
• • SPEAKER_03
  • 01:14:23
    I'll let you go first.
• • SPEAKER_05
  • 01:14:30
    I think from a city perspective,
  • 01:14:35
    Some of the thoughts that come to mind are livability and so
  • 01:14:46
    that involves housing, transportation, and also things like crime rate and urban aesthetics and so forth, recreation, so the parks and so forth.
  • 01:15:09
    So I think that's a big one.
• • Matt Privratsky
  • 01:15:12
    People thinking about
• • SPEAKER_05
  • 01:15:14
    will be
  • 01:15:36
    and the City Council.
  • 01:15:56
    and get them to come here.
  • 01:15:58
    Because once they come here, they're pretty well going to stay.
  • 01:16:02
    And so thinking about, and I don't have an answer for this, but how do you attract people from other places to come here to provide the vibrant community that we want?
  • 01:16:18
    and then I guess I would also you know in terms of livability I would actually say also there's got to be consideration of the arts and social situation which I think Minnesota is very good on and especially the Twin Cities is very good on and
  • 01:16:43
    In so far as you can encourage location of jobs and so forth, bring those in to the city, I would say that would be another issue.
  • 01:16:59
    But also we have to be mindful of the fact that people might live in Minneapolis, work in St Paul or vice versa, or they live in South St Paul and work in the city.
  • 01:17:08
    We are mobile.
• • SPEAKER_03
  • 01:17:13
    I think my three like big answers are pretty simple so education education education education I think is really really important and then number two is like connecting people to jobs so people who aren't working finding creative ways to connect people to jobs and helping
  • 01:17:33
    that pipeline from high school to the trades or whatever it is.
  • 01:17:38
    And then the third thing is housing.
• • Cheniqua Johnson
  • 01:17:43
    So affordable housing.
  • 01:17:45
    Yep.
• • Nelsie Yang
  • 01:17:47
    Thank you so much for having us.
  • 01:17:48
    Council President.
• • Rebecca Noecker
  • 01:17:50
    Thanks, Madam Chair, and I'm sorry, I know that was a perfect closing question and we're trying to wrap, but because I had the same question too and I really appreciate your asking it, I'm wondering if I could just piggyback on it by asking if there's anything in particular
  • 01:18:02
    to our Chair's point as we go into our budget season in a time, I mean it sounds like all of these recommendations I completely resonate, I understand them, they make sense sort of all the time.
  • 01:18:12
    I'm wondering if in this particular moment of particular uncertainty fiscally, anything that you're advising the legislature as they think about budgeting that you would maybe advise cities as they're thinking about specifically when it comes to our fiscal policy.
• • SPEAKER_03
  • 01:18:31
    I'm sure that your analysts are thinking about this but I think just like being aware that like sales tax revenue might soften up or that other streams of revenue might soften up so kind of trying to have a like a good understanding of where is that like lower bound and planning accordingly like where could things be if you know if this turns from a positive growth story to a recession having a good
  • 01:19:01
    Dr. Becker do you have anything in addition?
• • SPEAKER_05
  • 01:19:04
    No, I think that's good.
  • 01:19:06
    I mean, we tend to not advise the legislature and the governor on spending, but just to keep both the governor and legislature aware of what's going to happen or what is likely to happen with revenues.
  • 01:19:20
    And so, yeah, sales tax could soften if we have an economic downturn.
  • 01:19:28
    If the economic downturn
  • 01:19:32
    and actually higher interest rates are suppressing the housing market that could certainly have an effect on property taxes as well and just to be aware of those things.
• • Nelsie Yang
  • 01:19:45
    All right.
  • 01:19:45
    Well, thank you both again so much for your time, your expertise.
  • 01:19:49
    Just so you know, this is the first year we've launched having an all year round Finance and Budget Committee.
  • 01:19:54
    I just want to put it out there that I think having a topic like this every single year at the beginning of the year here would be really great for all council members moving forward.
  • 01:20:03
    If we have more questions, we will definitely send it your way.
  • 01:20:06
    And again, thank you so much.
  • 01:20:08
    I will wrap up our meeting here by sharing that our vice chair,
  • 01:20:14
    Kim will be chairing our committees moving forward because I'll be on maternity leave starting June 16th.
  • 01:20:22
    But I will still be here every Wednesday for our council meetings, boards, and our official city business work.
  • 01:20:28
    So I know that you and also Abdi Hamid, your legislative aide, will do a fantastic job carrying on the baton for the committee here.
  • 01:20:36
    So I want to say thank you for your work and also for you to pull out too for assisting.
  • 01:20:40
    So thanks everybody and our meeting here is adjourned.
• • 01:20:51
    The President steps up