Good morning, and happy Tuesday. A few days left in our fall member drive, so this reminder that it’s a good time to help to pay for the news on MPR.
Minnesota government’s revenue shattered expectations again to the tune of $657 million more during the past three months, another signal that the Legislature will have plenty of money to work with in their election-year session. Brian Bakst has the story : The quarterly economic update released Monday covering July through September showed all tax types ran way ahead of projections, and the combined total is 12.4 percent more than officials forecast back in February. Corporate tax receipts were nearly double what was expected. The Department of Minnesota Management and Budget report said tax refunds across the categories were also lower than predicted. That could be a matter of timing, so the state’s finance agency says it won’t know if the pattern will continue until it crunches the numbers ahead of a full economic forecast this fall. The state began a new fiscal year in July. It finished the previous one with revenues outpacing estimates by more than $2.67 billion.
MPR’s Catharine Richert has been looking at some of the pressure COVID-19 is putting on parents of young kids: COVID-19 cases and a host of other illnesses have exploded in schools this fall, as kids head back to class, in some cases unmasked. The state Health Department says it's seeing 3,000 new COVID-19 cases a week in children under 12, which is the highest it’s been in the pandemic. To combat these cases, the state has adopted a set of best practices from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, that includes in-school testing protocols. But not every district has adopted in-school testing plans, and only a handful are testing students on a regular basis. About 67 percent of the state's school districts, charter schools and tribal schools have accepted grant funding for COVID-19 testing programs from the state, says Stephanie Graff, an assistant commissioner with the Minnesota Department of Education. Soon, private schools will be able to access that money, too.
MPR’s Dan Kraker reports the Duluth City Council passed a resolution Monday night acknowledging the trauma caused by U.S. boarding school policy on Native Americans living today. Between the 1860s and 1970s the U.S. government forcibly sent tens of thousands of Native American children to boarding schools, including 16 in Minnesota. Children were forbidden from speaking their language or practicing their culture or religion. Many suffered physical and emotional abuse. Duluth City Council President Renee Van Nett introduced the resolution, which calls on Congress to investigate the human rights violations of federal boarding school policy. "We want something done. This town is 2.5 percent American Indian. We deserve that right. We deserve to ask that. And it's time for us to get that." The resolution also encourages the federal government to accept responsibility for the harm caused by boarding school policy, and to provide and fund reconciliation for those harms. And in Wisconsin, Gov. Tony Evers noted Indigenous Peoples Day by issuing a formal apology for the state’s role in Native American boarding schools.
Kelly Jahner Byrne announced her campaign for Minnesota Secretary of Statevia Twitter . She ran unsuccessfully for Minnesota House in 2020 and is the winner of the 2001 Mrs. Minnesota pageant. She’s seeking the Republican nomination to rub against DFL incumbent Steve Simon.
Nationally a new poll shows people are still struggling economically amid the pandemic.NPR reports : Two-thirds of parents say their kids have fallen behind in school. And 1 in 5 households say someone in the home has been unable to get medical care for a serious condition. These are some of the main takeaways from a new national poll by NPR, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. Thirty-eight percent of households across the nation report facing serious financial problems in the past few months. Among Latino, Black and Native American households, more than 50 percent had serious financial problems, while 29 percent of white households did. This disparity is echoed in many other poll findings, with minority families bearing a disproportionate share of the pandemics' socioeconomic impact. The poll showed a sharp income divide, with 59 percent of those with annual incomes below $50,000 reporting serious financial problems in the past few months, compared with 18 percent of households with annual incomes of $50,000 or more. | 