Sen. Draheim covers PFMLA, mental health | News, Sports, Jobs

ABOVE: Senator Rich Draheim talks to a full room Wednesday night at the Green Mill/Best Western in Fairmont during a Fairmont Area Chamber of Commerce meeting.

FAIRMONT– More than 30 people were present Wednesday evening at the Fairmont Area Chamber of Commerce’s combined Bureau 14/Agri Business meeting. The larger crowd was due in part to the guest speaker, Senator Rich Draheim, who provided a legislative update and touched on a number of hot topics including Paid Family Medical Leave Act (PFMLA), mental health, school security and more.

One of the questions Draheim was asked about was his decision not to run for re-election in 2026– which he announced in November– and whether he thinks the district will be left in good hands.

“I think it’s up to everyone in this room to help pick whoever replaces me,” Draheim said.

He added that several people have approached him in the last year, informing him that they want to run for his his seat when he retires. He said one of those people is from Fairmont.

“I wanted to make sure that I announced soon enough, that if there are good people who want to run, that they get their affairs in order,” Draheim explained.

He has spent nearly 10 years in the senate and currently sits on the Finance, Housing and Homelessness Prevention and Jobs and Economic Development committees.

Draheim said that when he looks at politics, he considers what the responsibility of the state is and said he thinks it’s gone too far and needs to get back to the basics.

“To me that’s education. Education should be the pathway to a career job, not just a job, but a career job where you can support your family. That should be the goal. And then that should lead to a pathway to homeownership. And then the last pathway to me is that pathway to retirement,” Draheim said.

He said 20 years ago he didn’t think there would need to be a pathway to retirement but that he talks to a lot of people now who are struggling with retirement and can’t afford to stay in their homes.

“We have to figure that out and to me, we need to reevaluate what the state’s involved in, what the county’s involved in, what the city’s involved in,” Draheim said.

He acknowledged that the state has recently thrown a lot of mandates at different entities, including about 80 mandates to the schools and many mandates to the counties.

Draheim of course touched on the Paid Family Medical Leave Act, which goes into effect Jan.1. He said there are good reasons to have family leave, but the problem is that it makes it hard for an insurance product to come in and offer the leave.

“Our position, from my side of the aisle, was an insurance product and we would give the company a tax break to offer the product to their employees. We uploaded the program with about $900 million… that’s what I would have done. That’s what I voted for,” Draheim said.

Moving to another big topic, Draheim said he doesn’t think enough is done for mental health and that there needs to be a funding source to address the issues.

“When you look at mental health, substance abuse is one of the items that go hand in hand with mental health,” he said.

Years ago, Draheim said the state ran mental health facilities, where unfortunately things that were unethical were likely done. However, he said now it’s gone from one extreme to another.

“We had facilities and there was a problem, but instead of adjusting and making corrections, we went away with them. The problem is our health care system knows that mental health isn’t very profitable. It is the least profitable of almost all medical fields. The reimbursement rate from the federal government is really low on mental health,” he said.

Instead, he said people going through a mental health episode are being “dumped” in the jails and in emergency rooms. Draheim is working on a few different bills and said he thinks a 16 bed facility is needed in every congregational district.

“I think that is a good start,” he said.

In the same vein, Draheim talked about school security. He spoke about a hearing that was held on the shooting that took place earlier this year at a school in Minneapolis.

“My biggest takeaway from that hearing, was that one of my colleagues across the aisle told me it wasn’t a mental health problem to have someone come up to a window and shoot at little kids. It’s not a mental health problem, it’s a morality problem,” Draheim said.

While he disagreed, Draheim said it was a good point to look at and questioned whether society has lost its moral compass.

“Do we not know that it’s not okay to shoot people? How crazy is that. It’s very scary and we need to do more and give tools to the schools that can’t afford to do it themselves,” Draheim said.

He’s working on a few bills that will help offset the costs to local schools to put in hardening items to make them more defensive. Draheim spoke about a project that the Lakeville school did to greatly increase its security.

“I want to give the schools every resource possible that heaven forbid, if there’s an incident here in this district, that they would have the tools to do what they can to minimize the danger,” Draheim said.

Some special technology for security was also talked about and Draheim noted that many school districts can’t afford it.

“I don’t want just the rich school districts to have this. How do we balance it out so my kid’s little school district in Cleveland has an opportunity, along with Lakeville, a very wealthy community?” Draheim asked.

An attendant asked, as a small business owner, if anything can be done for small businesses regarding the Paid Family Medical Leave Act.

“I personally have had probably 50 amendments just on Paid Family Medical Leave, trying to adjust it,” Draheim said.

He said the biggest problem he has with it is the definition of family, which is now infinite.

“If we’re going to do it, we need to identify what a core family is,” Draheim said. “We can’t have this open-ended. It’s just inviting fraud.”

The burden that it’s going to put on cities, counties and school districts will be huge, Drahiem said, even more so than industry.

He also touched on the increases to property taxes and insurance costs.

“It’s stopping people from being able to afford a home. We need to figure that out,” Draheim said.

The joint meeting in December has traditionally been one that provides a legislative update and Chamber President Kandi Menne said she was pleased with the turnout. She also said she was glad to hear from Draheim and to know that he’s working hard in his final year.

“It surprises me every year how they lobby for different things that will benefit their districts. Sometimes they’re successful and sometimes they’re not, but we’re appreciative of everything they do, especially when ti brings support to rural areas,” Menne said.

She also gave a reminder that 2026 is an election year and encouraged everyone to do their due diligence and conduct early research on the candidates.