A liberalism that builds: Minnesota should embrace abundance

Photo by Max Nesterak/Minnesota Reformer.

Over the past two years, the Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party’s legislative accomplishments have earned Minnesota widespread acclaim, and launched Gov. Tim Walz to the national stage.

How can we assess the recent spate of progressive accomplishments passed by the Minnesota Legislature?

One way is through the lens of abundance. In recent years, some writers and policy wonks have been developing this framework to think about the policy challenges that we face today. 

New York Times columnist Ezra Klein has been one leader of this movement, writing and podcasting about our need to develop “a liberalism that builds.” 

One primary focus: the legal and political roadblocks to building the stuff that we need, whether that’s housing, green energy, or transportation infrastructure. Over the past few decades, we’ve developed hyper-localized approval processes and various legal hurdles — introducing many opportunities to say “no” to a project — to protect people from destructive new construction that can wreck the environment and harm vulnerable people. However, in a time when we desperately need to build things, like more housing and green infrastructure, and bad-faith opponents are contorting the laws for their own ends, the rules require reexamination.  

This reformist approach is entirely compatible with other more longstanding progressive economic goals, such as using public resources to improve the lives of lower-income people and address climate change — indeed, as commentators like Klein argue, without building more we actually can’t sufficiently tackle these issues. 

In recent years, Minnesota policymakers can point to some clear successes in addressing the challenges that preclude abundance. But there remain areas for improvement. 

Take the recent environmental lawsuit against the Minneapolis 2040 Comprehensive Plan. Minneapolis’s much-lauded plan has received extensive recognition for allowing new housing development across the city and thereby keeping rent prices relatively low and stable. An environmental lawsuit temporarily blocked these changes in 2022, claiming that Minneapolis hadn’t completed the requisite environmental review (nevermind that increased urban housing density is quite beneficial for the environment). 

This is a typical example of the policy challenges that the abundance agenda aims to solve: well-intentioned environmental laws, which have often been used to stop bad things from getting built, can also be used to stop good things from being built. 

In 2024, the Minnesota Legislature passed a bill to stop the lawsuit, explicitly stating that comprehensive plans in the metro could not be subjected to environmental reviews (although individual housing developments remain subject to review). This effort to remove a procedural barrier was led by some environmental advocates, with strong support from allies focused on housing affordability. 

This is not the only recent example of Minnesota policymakers supporting the physical construction of new things. This year, the state passed an environmental permitting bill to help ease the path for new clean electric infrastructure. Without it, slow, cumbersome permitting of energy projects could significantly hamper Minnesota’s ability to reach carbon-free electricity by 2040. 

Minnesota’s permitting reform bill aims to simplify and speed up the process for approving new clean energy projects (it also directly echoes clean energy permitting reform debates currently active in Congress). Much like with housing: Rules aimed to protect against harmful projects can make it too difficult to build essential clean energy projects. 

Indeed, Walz even briefly spoke to this policy framing as a guest on Klein’s podcast in July, giving a quote nicely encapsulating this perspective: “We have good environmental laws in Minnesota, and that’s how it should be — we’re protectors of 20% of the world’s [fresh] water. But we also have permitting that takes too long and prohibits, or makes more expensive, doing renewable energy projects, things that we want to get done. I think that same thing applies on housing —  that we put up barriers to making it more affordable.”

These policy changes are a necessary tool as we deal with dysfunctional infrastructure, too-high cost of living, and climate change. 

To be sure, the state has not comprehensively solved these types of challenges — for example, restrictive suburban land use rules continue to block affordable housing, and we’ll have to wait and see just how effectively this first strike at permitting reform can enable a green energy buildout. 

In addition to hammering out the right policy reforms, Minnesota also needs to continue improving its state capacity if the North Star State is to achieve abundance.

All too often, our government institutions struggle to successfully implement the policies that we want to see. As Minnesota Reformer columnist Eric Bernstein wrote recently, countless government functions are outsourced to private consultants and nonprofits, diminishing our ability to effectively implement programs and widening the door for fraud or costly errors. Nowadays, Bernstein wrote, even the government consultants are managed and audited by consultants. 

This creates a host of problems, including for an abundance-focused agenda.

Consider the Southwest Light Rail Train to the suburbs of Minneapolis, one of Minnesota’s most glaring examples of a liberalism that’s unable to build. As a horribly delayed and over-budget transit project, it’s emblematic of the challenges that the public sector faces when it tries to build things. Our government simply doesn’t have the necessary capacity to achieve our aspirations. Years after the Green Line’s failures became evident, Minnesota policymakers are still struggling to enact a coherent governance reform for future light rail projects.

Minnesota is hardly an outlier — similar problems plague state and local governments across the country. Minnesota has its state capacity wins, too, though effective government execution is often more difficult to spot than failed execution. See, for example, the Minneapolis Public Housing Authority’s new homes for families, built using innovative construction techniques; or the state’s recently created Climate Innovation Finance Authority, which is currently developing a plan to assist with crucial financing for clean energy projects.

But ultimately, growing our state capacity is a more difficult endeavor than removing excessive regulatory policies. Capacity building will take decades, and we will likely see many more public sector stumbles in the future. But improved state capacity will be an equally important pursuit for a liberalism that builds.

Leaders in our state have shown an interest in improving our government to embody a liberalism that builds, which will address some of our most pressing issues around affordability and climate change. We’ve made steps in the right direction regarding legal and regulatory issues, and our government capacity. But continuing to pursue continued improvements is essential to keeping the Minnesota Miracle alive.