Lower Minnesota River Watershed District Board Honors Speaker Melissa Hortman
Posted: 06/26/25
Statement on Melissa Hortman for Board Meeting
June 18th, 2025
Colleagues,
Before we turn to the business of our agenda tonight, I would ask for a moment to acknowledge a profound loss—not only to our state, but to those of us who serve in governance of public resources.
The assassination of Speaker Melissa Hortman is a brutal and senseless act of violence against one who chose to serve. She was not a distant figure to those of us who care for the Minnesota River Basin. She was a leader who understood that this work—our work—is about stewardship across generations. She championed investments in flood mitigation, sediment removal, habitat restoration, and the long, patient work of protecting a living river.
Melissa Hortman stood for a kind of leadership that often goes unheralded—a leadership that listens to agencies like ours, that supports the complex, often invisible work of water management, and that sees the river not as an abstraction but as a vital, living artery of our state’s health, economy, and future.
But beyond the policy, I want to speak to what I believe many of us feel tonight: when anyone who serves is targeted for violence, it strikes at all of us who serve. We know—each of us—that to sit at these tables, to deliberate over budgets and permits and sediment loads, to navigate the pressures of governance, is to expose ourselves to public scrutiny. We do this not for fame or fortune, but because we believe that communities are best served when people of good will step forward.
Political violence aims not only to take a life, but to strike fear into the act of public service itself. Tonight, we reject that fear. We affirm the dignity and necessity of public service — whether in the halls of the Legislature or in watershed boardrooms. We honor Melissa Hortman’s service not with rhetoric, but by recommitting ourselves to the work.
The Minnesota River still flows, as it did yesterday, as it will tomorrow. But tonight, we pause to mark that it does so with one less advocate standing on its banks.
May her memory be a blessing. May her courage strengthen ours.
Thanks,
Joseph Barisonzi