Commentary: Daunted by our nation's big problems? The solutions start small and local

No one gets into public service to steal money from kids. But soon after I became a state government official, that’s exactly what it felt like I’d just done.

It happened a few years ago, at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic. Many high school students who supported their families through full- or part-time jobs had recently become unemployed because of pandemic-era business restrictions.

Minnesota’s economic development agency, which I oversaw for Gov. Tim Walz, had sent these workers tens of thousands of dollars in unemployment insurance payments — only to realize later we’d made a mistake by doing so: According to a 1939 state law, they weren’t eligible for them.

Our agency sent letters to the students to claw back the cash — and when I discovered we had done that, I was mortified. Like other workers who had lost their jobs, many of these young people were using unemployment checks to feed their families and keep the heat on during a Minnesota winter.

But what happened next gave me renewed hope for the ability of people in our divided nation to come together to solve problems — especially at the local level.

A little explanation of how I came to be at the center of this mess: After careers working in technology in Silicon Valley, my wife, Mary, and I moved back to my home state of Minnesota, where I hadn’t lived in 20 years. I left my career at Google, and joined the state government — curious if I might bring something unique to the role as an outsider.

The pandemic that followed a year later, along with the murder of George Floyd just a few miles from our new home, brought this new chapter of my life into hyperdrive. I found myself working with new colleagues to tackle crisis after crisis, often with no playbook.

Minnesota’s unemployment insurance program, which I ran, was one of them. The program was a lifeline to so many of my new neighbors, but the antiquated law that prevented us from sending payments to laid-off students, many of them immigrants, was unfair. Employers were already paying into the system on their behalf, just like they did for every other worker.

Changing the law seemed daunting. Minnesota had the only split legislature in the country at the time: The Senate was Republican, and the House was Democratic.

Cole Stevens, a teenager from whom my agency had demanded the return of more than $10,000 in benefits, found other young students in the same precarious position. Together, they mobilized with a local organization called Youthprise to make their case to the Minnesota Legislature.

I jumped on board right away, eager to make up for the painful mistake our agency had made and to fix the system for good. We lobbied legislators on both sides of the aisle, putting a face to the problem. The students testified in hearing after hearing about the unfair law and how it affected their families.

One unlikely ally was a rural Republican senator, a union electrician named Jason Rarick. His party wasn’t eager to expand the social safety net, but he took a risk and joined their cause.

“They made it easy to advocate for them because they were so willing to tell their story,” Rarick told me.

The campaign also found allies in AARP, the lobbying group, which wanted other changes to unemployment insurance law that affected seniors. Young and old activists made a compelling coalition.

By the end of the legislative session, they had the votes to pass the bill, sunsetting the 86-year-old law and retroactively letting young workers keep the payments they had received. The notion of basic fairness, strengthened by a hard-won respect for the students, prevailed.

This one story from Minnesota isn’t especially newsworthy to people who aren’t affected, but it teaches a lesson that can benefit all of us: When you start local, there’s much more opportunity for positive change. If a group of immigrant high school students, a union electrician from rural Minnesota and a rookie government official fresh from Silicon Valley can work together to serve the public interest, it’s possible anywhere.

We live in a time of declining trust in the basic pillars of our society, such as government, media and organized religion. It’s a uniquely American problem, and requires urgent action. However, the destabilizing words and actions of the current administration — taking a chainsaw to government services and ignoring the rule of law — only further degrade trust in our systems and in each other.

So where’s the hope? The secret to building back trust in government and other institutions, I found, is not centered on what’s happening in Washington, but in our own communities. It’s long been the case that our trust for institutions gets stronger the more local you go. The reasons are simple: There’s less polarization over local issues, there’s more accountability, and the effects of the work are more tangible. Local institutions are more attuned to the immediate needs of the community, too.

We need a resurgence of people investing in rebuilding local institutions. Building momentum at the local level, the great “laboratory for democracy,” as Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis once called it, can ultimately drive change at the federal level, too.

Since concluding my chapter in state government, I’ve turned to another local venture, this time in journalism as the publisher of the Minnesota Star Tribune. It’s not a career move I could have imagined a decade ago, but I’ve become a believer in local action, and strong local news is at the heart of what makes communities connected and informed.

Of course, we don’t all have to change our careers to invest in our communities. The main switch to flip is believing that taking action at the local level can make a difference.

Volunteer in local elections. Subscribe to your local newspaper. Support a local business. Donate to a food bank or shelter. Check on your neighbors. The best antidote to anxiety about our country is taking action, and there are plenty of opportunities right outside your front door.

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Steve Grove, the chief executive and publisher of the Minnesota Star Tribune, is the author of the forthcoming book “How I Found Myself in the Midwest: A Memoir of Reinvention.”

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