Peter Callaghan covers state government for MinnPost. Follow him on Twitter or email him at pcallaghan(at)minnpost(dot)com.
Legislators from both parties worked over the summer and fall to learn about how Metro Transit enforces fare collection — and to seek some common responses. Metro Transit also used that time to implement changes in response to GOP complaints about crime and safety on the system.
In response to an “intensifying” legalization conversation, Senate Republicans are pushing an effort to do away with Minnesota’s unique ban on letting medical users smoke marijuana.
Republicans said the new numbers prove that tax hikes would only further burden families and businesses. DFLers are taking a much different approach.
The forecast is a dramatic improvement for a budget that was once projected to have a $4.7 billion shortfall.
The spirit of the Minnesota Capitol is to be open, but the invasion of the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6 “was a wake-up call,” says Lt. Gov. Peggy Flanagan, who chairs an advisory committee looking at security issues at the complex.
State officials also said Tuesday said they’re partnering with dozens of organizations that serve people of color, American Indians, LGTBQ+ people and those who have disabilities in order to connect them to vaccines.
The purpose of the lawsuit is to put the issue before the courts in case the Legislature can’t agree on new political maps — which is highly likely.
To be illegal according to the bill, disseminating the information would have to pose “an imminent and serious threat” to the safety of a police officer or a member of their household.
The most recent data show 710,305 Minnesotans, or roughly 12.8 percent of the state population, have received at least one dose of a COVID-19 vaccine.
Bills that attempt to change Minnesota liquor laws run into several interconnected obstacles.
The latest bills offered in the GOP-controlled Senate and DFL-controlled House are stand-ins for a continuing argument over the governor’s emergency powers.
On Wednesday, Gov. Tim Walz also tipped attendees at a League of Minnesota Cities webinar that an upcoming budget forecast would be good news — that the state’s current surplus would grow and the projected shortfall in the future would “shrink even substantially more.”
That still doesn’t mean lawmakers will pass legislation to make a key state tax credit permanent before it expires.
In many ways, the bill introduced at the Minnesota Legislature this session reflects the latest national trends around the issue.
In 2020, the DFL-affiliated groups vastly outspent their GOP counterparts and saw their House majority shrink, while also failing to retake the state Senate.
What had been a tense-but-civil relationship has become one of open antagonism, for the same reason much of state and national politics has: the outcome of the 2020 presidential election.
Yes, Minnesota’s corporate income tax is borne by owners and shareholders. But also by workers and consumers.
State Senate Majority Leader Paul Gazelka said tax increases are a non-starter with Senate Republicans, however, calling it “a line in the sand.”
Lieutenant Governor Peggy Flanagan, who chairs the state’s Capital Security Advisory Committee, said the state must balance building security and access for the public.
And why a lot fewer of those bills have been introduced this year.
