Well . . .
There are good things that can be said about having a state-wide communications strategy, particularly when you have the rare, but horrendous, public safety emergency. In my course of 39 years as a first responder, I've been on probably half a dozen or so ultra major incidents where agencies from two or three counties away coming in to help. Communications issues are consistently bones of contention when the critiques are done.
If a situation becomes untenable and responders have to act quickly for their own safety, getting the message to act can't be delayed because it has to be relayed through several different systems.
While the people doing the actual system maintenance may be state employees working for the department of transportation, the Minnesota's system has a governance board of some 21 members. These folks, I understand, are the policy setters and they represent a variety if interests from EMS, law enforcement, fire service and so on. I imagine, if anything, the DOT was merely the messengers from the state radio board.