GIS/LIS Consortium 1000 Westgate Drive Suite 252 Saint Paul, MN 55114 www.mngislis.org

Governor January 31, 2007 130 State Capitol 75 Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard St. Paul, MN 55155

Dear Governor Pawlenty:

The Minnesota GIS/LIS Consortium is a non-profit organization with over 1000 members across the state. Our members are public and private professionals using geographic information systems (GIS) to benefit the state and its citizens.

Our Board of Directors has requested that I write to express concern about your proposed budget, specifically relating to the substantial budget reduction for the Land Management Information Center. Our members find LMIC to be one of the most responsive and useful arms of State government, and we believe that this reduction will result in a considerable loss of services to the regional GIS community as well as to State agencies.

Just last year LMIC received an award from your office for their role in preserving the original Minnesota public land survey maps and making them digitally accessible over the internet to a wide variety of users. In 2004, LMIC received a Governor’s commendation for its key role in the Statewide Orthoimagery Cooperative, providing quality aerial imagery for the State at great savings to us all. In 2003, you personally presented LMIC with your commendation for developing the Minnesota Environmental Atlas, bringing the benefits of GIS to educators throughout Minnesota. In 2001, LMIC received the Governor’s commendation for pioneering development of the Minnesota GeoGateway, a web search tool that helps users find publicly available GIS data, and for helping other organizations establish similar tools. In 1998, LMIC received the Governor’s commendation for the “Base Maps for the 1990s” project, which produced high-resolution digital images and other valuable data for the entire state. These awards are not given lightly, nor are they given every year. For a single agency to have received so many of these awards surely indicates the importance and vitality of LMIC.

LMIC provides many essential services for our members and the State: • Offers a suite of tools that provide easy access to spatial data for customers throughout the state. The Clearinghouse is used extensively by our members to find and download spatial data. Finding data saves us time and money. More importantly, it helps us do our jobs more effectively. • Coordinates updates to statewide aerial photography. LMIC has coordinated with the federal government and state agencies to provide the people of the State updated aerial photography twice in the past 10 years. Federal agencies have contributed more than $4 million to this effort. Without LMIC to provide the facilitation, the State would not have received that funding. • Provides powerful yet inexpensive GIS software (EPPL) at little or no cost to organizations and agencies. This GIS software, packaged with statewide data has proven useful to schools, environmental organizations and wildfire management. LMIC also provides other tools and training. LMIC staff has developed software and training guides to make data documentation easier, and conducts training throughout the state helping to maximize the ability to share GIS data among organizations. • Facilitates useful dialog with federal agencies. LMIC serves as the focal point for State comment on proposed federal projects and standards related to GIS. LMIC gathers input from local users and provides input to federal agencies, such as the Farm Service Agency and United States Geological Society, regarding GIS activities and needs in Minnesota. • Supports the Governor’s Council on Geographic Information. We have found the Council and LMIC responsive to our needs. Our members participate on Council committees and benefit from Council reports. • Develops and advocates State standards relating to spatial data in Minnesota. LMIC staff leads the way in developing standards that are useful to the state’s GIS community – including modifying federal standards to suit our needs. LMIC staff did much of the work in developing the powerful Minnesota Metadata Guidelines widely used for documenting data. • Fosters communication throughout the GIS community. LMIC staff coordinates editing for our newsletter – one of the best in the country for sharing information about what is going on around the state and surrounding region. A copy of the table of contents is attached for your information. See http://www.mngislis.org/displaycommon.cfm?an=1&subarticlenbr=152 for additional details.

Throughout the years, LMIC has provided GIS leadership and coordination. It focuses on what is important and does it well. It helps simplify government, improve services, and make GIS data and technology more available and easier to use. It focuses on customers at all levels, and uses innovation and technology to improve how government works in Minnesota. Without LMIC, individual agencies would need to fund redundant efforts, leading us in the wrong direction. In this time of competing budget priorities, LMIC’s ability to avoid costly duplication of State services is more important than ever.

I hope you will reconsider the extreme cuts proposed for the LMIC budget. The organization helps the state run better by coordinating and communicating across many stakeholders. These functions have enormous benefits in operating efficiencies and in state/local relationships.

Sincerely yours,

Chad Martini, Board Chair, Minnesota GIS/LIS Consortium

cc: Dana Badgerow, Commissioner Representative Margaret Anderson Kelliher Representative Senator Representative Anthony Sertich Senator David H. Senjem Representative Senator Tarryl L. Clark Representative Chris DeLaForest Senator James Metzen Representative John Ward Senator Don Betzold Representative Sarah Anderson Senator Claire A. Robling Representative Karla Bigham Senator Rick E. Olseen Representative Bill Hilty Senator Michael Jungbauer Representative Senator Gary Kubly Representative John Lesch Senator Dan Larson Representative Joyce Peppin Senator Warren Limmer Representative Jeanne Poppe Senator Sandra Pappas Representative Senator Ann Rest |Representative Ryan Winkler Representative Representative Lyndon Carlson Representative Gene Pelowski Jr. Representative Loren Solberg