Beltrami County, Bemidji Leaders Urge State Aid for Windstorm Recovery Costs

Beltrami County is $2.5 million short of completing its recovery from last summer's catastrophic windstorm, and the county's top administrator told Minnesota legislators on April 8 that absorbing that cost is not an option.

County Administrator Tom Barry and Bemidji Mayor Jorge Prince testified virtually before the House Public Safety Finance and Policy Committee, urging passage of House File 3530, a bill that would reimburse Beltrami County for 100 percent of eligible June 2025 storm cleanup costs rather than the standard 75 percent. Barry, whose county operates on a total 2026 budget of roughly $36 million, told the committee: "Our community suffered an unprecedented loss in the June 21st windstorm, and now we risk falling short of full recovery due to an unintended loophole."

That loophole has a specific and counterintuitive cause. When state officials calculated Beltrami County's storm damages, destruction on Leech Lake Band of Ojibwe land was properly excluded from the county's official total, because the tribe pursues federal assistance through a separate government-to-government process. The result was that the county's official damage figure fell about $800,000 below the threshold needed for a federal disaster declaration, despite regional losses clearly exceeding it. The June 21 storm drove winds matching a Category 3 hurricane, felled an estimated 9 million trees, and caused more than $11 million in public infrastructure damage across northwestern Minnesota.

Minnesota's Disaster Assistance Contingency Account covered 75 percent of eligible costs. The remaining 25 percent, roughly $2.5 million, landed with local governments, with Barry estimating $1.7 million to $2.1 million sitting specifically on Beltrami County's books. As the second-poorest county in the state, with median incomes well below the state average and a 2026 budget that already included a proposed 42 percent cut to community services, Barry told the committee the county has no capacity to absorb costs at that scale.

Prince put the stakes more starkly, telling committee members the storm had created "a second storm, this one financial" that threatens essential city services.

HF 3530 would also apply retroactively, reimbursing costs the county has already paid since June 2025. The committee laid the bill over, leaving it eligible for inclusion in an omnibus spending package later in the session. The Department of Public Safety opposed the proposal, arguing it would undermine long-standing precedent for state disaster cost-sharing.

If the Legislature does not act before the session ends, Barry and Prince warned that county and city budgets face unavoidable tradeoffs: higher property taxes, deeper service cuts, or delayed road and infrastructure repairs, all of which will be on the agenda at upcoming public hearings and board meetings.