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Down to the wire

The Minnesota Legislature was cutting it close, as usual, on Wednesday. While most of the state’s budget bills have been passed and signed, legislators were still working on an education funding bill that will pump $1.2 billion more into the state’s classrooms over the next four years. This is money that will be going to school districts largely through the general fund formula, giving school districts the ability to spend it where they need it. We hope they passed it by midnight last night to prevent repercussions in school programs this year. One thing the Republicans managed to ...

Accurate information on CRT is needed

Critical Race Theory, or CRT, has become the latest point of contention in our particularly contentious society. Conservatives and liberals argue about what it is, and what it is going to do to our country. Conservatives feel it is a wild-eyed, marxist condemnation of White people as racists in control of a racist society, and is being used to sully our nation’s history, poison our school children’s minds and divide the people. Liberals see it as a recognition of the how racism has shaped policies in our social system, and that recognition is the first step to eliminating the ...

Police reforms won’t come all at once

The agreement Minnesota legislators reached on the public safety budget bill over the weekend contains some police reforms, but not enough for those pressing for changes in the way police interact with the public. The agreement contains regulation of no-knock warrants, creating a police misconduct database, and creation of an office dealing with the issue of missing and murdered indigenous women, plus a task force on missing and murdered black women. But proponents of police changes want more. They want to stop police using traffic stops for minor offenses as a pretext for further ...

Session looks to end on time

The Minnesota legislative special session seems on its way to finish work on the state budget bills before the July 1 government shutdown date. Legislative leaders announced an agreement on the last contentious issue, the police accountability measures included in the public safety bill. Democrats had been pushing to add a host of new restrictions on police procedures to the bill, while Republicans were loath to add measures that they considered anti-police. The agreed-upon measures include regulations on no-knock warrants, creation of a police misconduct database to prevent problem ...

Thumbs Up/Down

A fair sentence THUMBS UP: Derek Chauvin, the ex-Minneapolis police officer convicted of killing George Floyd on May 25, 2020, was sentenced to 22 1/2 years in prison on Friday. It was an upward departture from the state sentencing guidelines, and the longest sentence handed down to a police officer in the U.S. for the killing of a Black person, but still not as much as Floyd’s family and their supporters wanted. They would have liked the full 40 years the law allowed. Judge Peter Cahill kept his comments in the courtroom brief, but did say his decision was not based on “emotion ...

COVID vaccines are working

There are signs that the COVID-19 vaccines being injected into people these days are doing their job. You can see it in the statistics showing the falling number of new cases and deaths. And, unfortunately, you can see it in the continuing rise of cases in states where people are avoiding vaccination. The case of the State of Missouri was highlighted earlier this week. According to the Associated Press, Missouri is seeing a rise in cases as the fast spreading delta variant sweeps through and finds a population where most people are not vaccinated. One county in Missouri has a ...