A legislative proposal to repurpose Hennepin County sales tax revenue to rescue the state’s largest safety-net hospital from a grim financial outlook faces bipartisan support — and bipartisan questions.
Hennepin County Medical Center (HCMC), part of the broader Hennepin Healthcare nonprofit system, is the state’s busiest Level 1 adult and pediatric trauma center, seeing almost 115,000 patients in 2025. It is also a safety-net hospital, meaning it accepts patients regardless of insurance status or ability to pay.
But the Minneapolis hospital is now financially on the rocks for a variety of reasons, including the massive costs to treat uninsured or publicly insured patients, which make up HCMC’s majority, changes to Medicaid eligibility brought on by the One Big Beautiful Bill Act and the shutdown of Minnesota-based health insurer UCare, which owes HCMC $115 million. Now, HCMC faces up to $50 million in operating losses in 2026 and $1.7 billion in losses over the next decade, according to projections shared with the Hennepin County Board’s budget committee in March.
Related: With HCMC’s survival threatened, staff and leaders call for state action
Hennepin County Commissioner Angela Conley told MinnPost that without swift legislative action, HCMC could start closing this summer, a process that could cost upward of $100 million. Health care staff and leaders warned in an April 1 news conference at the Capitol that HCMC’s closure would be dire for the state’s health infrastructure.
How the proposed HCMC funding bill would work
The bill, House File 4841, was introduced Thursday during a House tax committee hearing by chief author Rep. Esther Agbaje, DFL-Minneapolis and co-author Rep. Danny Nadeau, R-Rogers. The proposal is a first draft and would repurpose the county’s 0.15% sales tax used to pay off bonds for the Minnesota Twins stadium into a 1% tax that would generate roughly $337 million, Agbaje said at the hearing.
Of the projected revenue the repurposed tax would be able to raise annually, $7 million would go to the Twins ballpark, up to $24 million would be used for extra financial support for North Memorial, another Level 1 trauma center in the metro area, and the remainder would assist HCMC.
“HCMC is at a tipping point that it might not be able to return from, and losing any hospital would put our health care system under incredible pressure, but closing HCMC would be a disaster to the state’s entire health care system,” Nadeau said in his opening remarks at the hearing.
The nature of a tax proposal having both DFL and Republican is a unique sight, but it is also a necessary one, Hennepin County Commissioner Jeffrey Lunde told MinnPost last week. Both Conley and Lunde said they expect the bill to receive strong bipartisan support.
“I don’t recall a time in the tax committee, at least, where I’ve seen a Republican and a Democrat present a bill together,” Rep. Aisha Gomez, DFL-Minneapolis, who serves as co-chair of the committee, said during the Thursday hearing. “I think that your presence here and the work that you both have put in, and that people on both sides of the aisle have put into, really trying to take this issue seriously … speaks to the importance of the issue.”
While there was no shortage of support from community members for HCMC and the proposed plan — 19 individuals spoke in favor of the bill at the hearing – some lawmakers showed skepticism of whether a repurposed ballpark tax is the best way forward.
Rep. Steve Elkins, DFL-Bloomington, said the proposed sales tax increase would mean most Hennepin County residents would be paying a cumulative rate of 10%, a figure that he said was too high. Instead, Elkins expressed support for a separate bill by Nadeau, HF 4143, that identified a 1.56% hospital surcharge currently being paid to the state’s general fund that could be redirected to hospitals like HCMC.
This solution would mean that richer hospitals would be able to subsidize poorer hospitals, according to Elkins, and would be a “much more appropriate way” for the state to address HCMC’s financial troubles.
Questions over who should pay
Other lawmakers, like Rep. John Huot, DFL-Rosemount, and Rep. Mike Freiberg, DFL-Golden Valley, also questioned if Agbaje’s bill would be the best possible solution, with Freiberg asking whether it was fair for Hennepin County taxpayers to bear the brunt of the tax, noting the statewide reach of the hospital.
Huot added that while the repurposed ballpark tax is an option, the Legislature needs to come up with a bigger solution to properly address the hospital’s future.
“I hate that we’re depending on a ballpark tax, because we all know in a recession … people don’t go to the ballpark, right,” Huot said. “I think this is a great bandage, but we need a trauma dressing.”
Rep. Kristin Robbins, R-Maple Grove, also asked why HCMC’s charity care spending has increased substantially in the past few years and is significantly higher than other trauma hospitals in the area. A Hennepin County official said he would not be able to answer this question and that he would instead defer to the hospital’s chief financial officer.
Gomez said there are still many issues and lawmaker questions about the proposal that would have to be addressed during a future hearing. Currently, Agbaje’s bill is being held over for potential inclusion in the tax committee’s omnibus bill.
“This is our safety-net hospital,” Agbaje said at the end of the hearing. “We have to protect it. We have to find a way to do that.”