In addition to being known for having "twin cities," the Minneapolis-St. Paul metropolitan area is home to 180 local cities within the seven-county region. Each community has its own identity and energy and brings with it both strengths and challenges. We can offer people a broad variety of places to live, things to do, and people to hire and work with — in part because of the diversity of our marketplace.
The challenge in this unique marketplace is to effectively blend this diversity into a coordinated vision. Public- and private-sector leaders in Minneapolis and other communities have advocated a broad vision for the entire marketplace that allows for regional growth to strengthen our economy and allows us to better compete across the country and around the world.
One of the strongest advocates for a regional approach has been the city of Minneapolis, which is home to a number of Fortune 500 companies, a burgeoning small-business sector and significant public venues within its boundaries. Minneapolis enriches our metro area while benefiting from being part of a thriving region. We are stronger when we work together to compete with Denver, Seattle and other cities.
After years of urging the entire metro area to take a regional approach to complex issues, today we stand at a crossroads, as Minnesota's largest city takes the dramatic and amazingly autonomous step of creating a sick and safe leave mandate. This mandate will not resolve the challenge of how to better support employees. Rather, it threatens the foundation of our regional vision.
The Metropolitan Advocacy Coalition of Chambers — a group of 21 chambers of commerce throughout the Twin Cities metro area, with a combined membership of more than 10,000 businesses — urges the Minneapolis City Council to consider the effects its action will have on our regional vision. Our members are employers who hire thousands of people from across our region, purchase goods and services from companies across the area, and work in collaboration to make our regional economy strong and vibrant. Yet they will have to pause and consider how business is done in the city of Minneapolis once this mandate takes effect.
Mayor Betsy Hodges has stressed the need to take a regional approach to key challenges. Yet Minneapolis now seeks to enforce a system that will create new burdens and costs for companies, negatively impacting the entire region's ability to compete with other markets for customers and employees. Our economy is too diverse for a one-size-fits-all sick and safe leave policy to work, particularly if enacted differently in each local community. While Minneapolis is an economic hub, it is not an island — rather it is surrounded by and supported by businesses and workers from communities throughout the Twin Cities area.
As a regional economy, we are interconnected in a way that helps make this a great place to start and grow businesses. We have an amazingly skilled workforce that is incredibly important to each company and to our region's ability to grow. Our member employers know this and do all they can to attract and retain employees with generous benefit packages that best meet their business needs.
This Minneapolis decision to enact its own set of rules creates a new and dangerous challenge to our interconnectivity.
Together, let's focus on creating a regional environment where businesses across city boundaries are encouraged to offer benefits; an environment where our workplaces promote innovation and flexibility — two things that simply cannot be mandated.
Brad Meier is president of the TwinWest Chamber of Commerce. This article was also submitted on behalf of the following chambers of commerce: Apple Valley, Bloomington, Burnsville, Dakota County Regional, Eden Prairie, Edina, Elk River Area, Hastings Area, Hudson (Wis.) Area, MetroNorth, Midway, Minneapolis Regional, North Hennepin Area, Northfield Area, River Heights, St. Paul Area, Shakopee, SouthWest Metro, Twin Cities North, Waconia.
