With Walz emergency powers gone, the state can't set restrictions. And lawmakers debate how to distribute essential worker bonuses.
COVID cases are rising in Minnesota, largely due to the highly contagious delta variant, but without a peacetime emergency in place, the state can't place blanket restrictions. Instead, individual cities and counties and businesses will choose to respond — or not respond — on their own.
So far:
St. Paul, Minneapolis and Duluth are requiring people to wear masks in all city buildings and urge masking in all indoor public spacesSt. Paul and Minneapolis are encouraging, not mandating, that businesses follow suit and require masking againHennepin, Ramsey and Olmsted counties are also requiring indoor masking in county buildings Mask mandates took effect this week at University of Minnesota and Minnesota State systems — for the U, on all of its campuses and for Minnesota State, on all campuses in areas with high or substantial transmission
Also, new COVID cases are growing far faster among Black Minnesotans, who are seeing nearly twice the per capita case growth of any other racial or ethnic group during this current wave.
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| Residents at the Gardens of Episcopal Homes in St. Paul receive COVID vaccines in December. | Christine T. Nguyen, MPR News 2020 |
Minnesota lawmakers are debating how to distribute bonuses meant for front-line workers who made personal sacrifice during the pandemic. They have until early September to do so.
The nine-member Frontline Worker Pay Working Group heard from long-term care and nursing home staff Tuesday, many of whom faced exposure, quarantine or serious illness while caring for the most frail and medically vulnerable. An advocacy group estimated that $1,500 checks (two weeks of pay for a typical worker) to full-time workers in the field and prorated amounts for part-timers would cost about $96 million.
Legislators also heard from grocery store employees, meatpacking plant workers, custodial staff, teachers, paraprofessionals in schools, and child care centers and others.
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Attorney General Keith Ellison's conviction review unit is taking applications from people who are currently incarcerated for felony level criminal convictions and believe they were wrongfully convicted.
"Every criminal case has room for error,” Ellison said. “Because the justice system is run by human beings and human beings make mistakes, do the wrong thing, and don't always get it right. It's important to understand when we do not hit the mark of justice and to correct those occasions when that happens."
The unit sprung up from a grant. Part of its goal, he says, is to restore trust in the criminal justice system.
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