Minnesota legislators who have been working outside the public eye to reach a deal on COVID-19 relief say they will convene Thursday at the Capitol to approve the aid.
Minnesota legislators will meet Thursday for action on COVID-19 relief
Legislators are reviewing Gov. Tim Walz's funding requests for food shelves and other emergency services.
March 25, 2020 at 3:37PM
While lawmakers have essentially recessed until mid-April because of the COVID-19 emergency, members of the state House disclosed details Tuesday of meetings they have been holding for the past week to discuss bills ranging from driver's license expiration forgiveness to child care policy proposals related to the coronavirus.
They are also reviewing Gov. Tim Walz's proposal to spend an additional $356 million on COVID-19 response.
Walz's supplemental budget proposal would include money to help child care centers, food shelves, homeless shelters and veterans weather the pandemic. It would create a $200 million COVID-19 fund in the state treasury that state agencies could use broadly to respond to the pandemic. The fund could be used to pay for increased staff and health care needs in prisons, or overtime for people working with direct care and treatment programs that serve people with developmental disabilities, mental illness and addiction.
"Legislative leaders have agreed to reconvene on Thursday. We are continuing to work closely with the Walz Administration on urgent COVID-19 matters to protect the health and well-being of Minnesotans. We will publicly release details on specific legislation on the House and Senate websites as soon as we can," Democratic House Speaker Melissa Hortman and Senate Republican Majority Leader Paul Gazelka said in a joint statement.
For lawmakers to pass the relief bills on Thursday and send them to Walz for his signature still requires the politically divided Legislature to strike a deal.
Hortman, DFL-Brooklyn Park, said in a statement that Minnesotans are facing significant medical concerns and financial hardships and the House's goal is to pass legislation to safeguard people's health and economic well-being.
She released an outline Tuesday of informal working group meetings that have taken place via conference calls that were not open to reporters and the public. She said the House is trying to create opportunities for people to engage in the process, possibly by making committee hearings available to the public online. For now, people can submit comment forms on the state's website or reach legislators to share their thoughts.
Thousands of people have contacted DFL House members and heard back in the past week, Hortman said.
As lawmakers gather this week, Hortman and Gazelka said they will follow Minnesota Department of Health guidelines to keep legislators, staff and the public safe.
Jessie Van Berkel • 651-925-5044
This article originally appeared in Nuggets, the Minnesota Star Tribune’s free, weekly newsletter about legal cannabis in Minnesota. Sign up at startribune.com/nuggets.
Gov. Tim Walz weighed in Thursday on the Office of Cannabis Management’s decision to cancel an early cannabis license preapproval lottery after a judge blocked it last month. The ruling came in response to lawsuits filed by applicants who said they were unfairly denied entrance to the lottery. In an interview with the Minnesota Star Tribune, Walz said he wasn’t surprised that litigation tied up the licensing process, saying, “I talked to other governors — this happens in every state.”
But he said he is disappointed that Minnesota won’t preapprove some social equity applicants for cannabis business licenses.
”I think there’s some equity pieces in there that’s important,” Walz said. “But the courts are the courts. And I just told [OCM], ‘We’re not going to get hung up on that. Just move forward.’”
A key goal of the canceled license preapproval lottery was to allow a select number of cultivators to immediately begin growing, helping build the state’s supply chain before the market launches. Now, cultivators won’t be able to begin growing until the market starts to roll out next year. At this point, the governor said he doesn’t think there’s much else the state can do to build supply ahead of time.
“The market, the supply and demand, will catch up. When they first launch, will there be shops that aren’t able to fill them? Probably,” Walz said. “Look, by the end of ‘27 or so, the ‘28 season, they’ll make up for it.”
The returns were filed on behalf of themselves and others, according to federal prosecutors.
