Peter Callaghan covers state government for MinnPost. Follow him on Twitter or email him at pcallaghan(at)minnpost(dot)com.
GOP Senate Majority leader Paul Gazelka has forced DFLers to vote on providing money the governor has requested — at the same time the party’s base has argued the funds will enable over-policing.
The DFL governor said true justice for George Floyd isn’t the conviction of former police officer Derek Chauvin. That will only come “through real systemic change to prevent this from ever happening again.”
The question is whether the numbers are a blip — or a trend.
Getting the new rental assistance program, RentHelpMN, up and running soon is key to the Senate’s plan to phase out the current eviction moratorium.
Republicans have been hesitant to consider new changes to policing standards after enacting a set of reforms following the death of George Floyd. But GOP lawmakers have also come under increasing pressure to consider additional DFL-backed measures in the wake of Daunte Wright’s killing.
The march of the omnibus budget bills shows how far apart the GOP-controlled Senate and the DFL-controlled House really are.
Aimed at addressing “community intimidation,” the legislation would broaden the law to cover crimes based on a victim’s ethnicity, gender identity and gender expression.
The ranking Republican on the House Taxes Committee, Rep. Greg Davids, said the plan would be ‘dead on arrival’ in the state Senate.
On the eve of opening arguments in the trial of the police officer charged with killing George Floyd, Walz asked Minnesotans to “make your voices heard,” while heeding Martin Luther King’s advice: “that nonviolence is the only way to truly move hearts and create change.”
How many more people just became eligible. Why now. And how you can get an appointment for a shot.
According to numbers released Thursday, about 22 percent of the state’s licenses are considered “REAL ID ready.”
Under a provision in state law, the governor will get to decide how to spend the state’s federal stimulus funds — unless the House and Senate can agree to spend some of the money in a budget emerging from the 2021 session, and provided Walz agrees to sign such a budget.
Due to the way the Legislature writes budgets, the bill itself is unlikely to reach a vote on the House floor, but various sections could end up in some of the budget committee bills that surface this session.
The revised proposal would spend $52.269 billion — $2.18 billion a month over two years. The current budget is $48.3 billion.
Getting cash directly from the feds to spend on state construction projects is rare. So rare that many of the legislators and state officials who deal with the issue have little idea how they can use the money.
In a ruling issued this week, U.S. District Court Judge David Doty dismissed a suit brought by PhRMA that sought to have the legislation declared unconstitutional.
Most analyses find that Minnesota already has one of the nation’s most progressive tax systems, even that isn’t the only measure of what makes for a good system.
During the 2020 election, some of the candidates who filed under the banner of Minnesota’s marijuana legalization parties had tenuous — or nonexistent — connections to the parties or the cause of legalization.
According to the most recent data, 1,086,936 Minnesotans, or roughly 19.5 percent of the state’s population, have received at least one dose of a vaccine so far.
The U.S. House could vote to approve the bill by Tuesday.
