Good morning and welcome to another Monday. Looks like maybe spring is finally here.
The Legislature comes back to St. Paul tomorrow. With a little more than a month left in the legislative session, lawmakers have passed and the governor has signed 23 bills into law. MPR News has an update on where legislation currently stands. Lawmakers have already hinted at where they want the money to go.
Rochester Public Schools have canceled classes for today as they investigate unusual activity on the school's technology network. MPR’s Estelle Timar- Wilcox reports that the district discovered what it calls "irregular activity" on Thursday, and limited access to computer networks on Friday. Now, technology staff and third-party experts are working on solving the problem. That means the schools' internet is shut off. The district says staff will plan classes for Tuesday that can go ahead without technology and internet access. This comes after a computer system hack in Minneapolis Public Schools, which resulted in student data being posted online. Minneapolis did not cancel schools during its investigation into the hack.
MPR’s Dan Gunderson reports that a Minnesota farm group is hoping to convince lawmakers to increase funding for agriculture in the last few weeks of the legislative session. Pierce Bennett, public policy director for the Minnesota Farm Bureau, said farm groups were disappointed in the spending proposed for ag programs in the governor's budget. "I don't think the page has been turned yet on that,” Bennett said. “We're still advocating that ag can receive more funding. And we think as we head into this last month or so of session, there's plenty of opportunities for us to continue funding ag at what we think is a more appropriate level." Top legislative issues for the Minnesota Farm Bureau include financial assistance for new farmers, expanded biofuels use, and more affordable health care.
Hennepin County Attorney Mary Moriarty compared Gov. Tim Walz and Attorney General Keith Ellison — two of her fellow Democrats — to Republican politicians in other states as she reacted Friday to their decision to intervene in a case she was prosecuting. “This governor and this attorney general are doing exactly, precisely, what their opponents in the last election promised they would do,” Moriarty said. “The governor and the attorney general are doing what Scott Jensen and Jim Schultz promised they would do if elected. I am keeping a promise. They are not." The case involves two juveniles accused of shooting and killing Zaria McKeever last October at the direction of her former boyfriend. Moriarty reached plea deals to keep the two in the juvenile system rather than seeking to charge them as adults. Ellison declined to respond directly to Moriarty’s criticism when I talked to him on the radio on Friday , but he did say he did not intend making it a regular practice to intervene on cases county attorneys are prosecuting. “I do respect the fact that county attorneys are elected in our state. They overwhelmingly do a wonderful job, and I absolutely respect what they do,” Ellison said, adding, “But the reason the Minnesota statute exists is that there are very rare occasions where a county attorney does something so far outside the lines of community standards and acceptable understanding of justice that the statute is necessary for the governor to be able to intervene on behalf of the people of that county."
As Moriarty took questions Friday after her remarks, McKeever family members and friends questioned the prosecutor’s decision-making. When she spoke of the potential trauma the 15-year-old would face in prison, family members interjected that McKeever faced the ultimate trauma. The governor told reporters during a Friday morning stop in Moorhead that he’d heard from people upset with Moriarty’s decision, including many leaders in the Twin Cities Black community. "It sends a message to the community that there are standards, no matter how young you are, that we have to adhere to,” Walz said.
Ellison’s action is a flip from what he said before last year’s election, MinnPost noted: In an October interview, Ellison denounced his Republican opponent Jim Schultz for saying he might try to sidestep Moriarty if she wasn’t tough enough on crime. Ellison narrowly defeated Schultz weeks later. “I recognize the fact — and I want to say f-a-c-t fact — that they’re colleagues,” Ellison said of county attorneys like then-candidate Moriarty, who he endorsed. “They don’t work for me, we work together. And because I respect them, they respect me and we cooperate and we get justice done.” Ellison said at the time that Schultz was trying to “demagogue crime” and said that avoiding an intervention would be a “pragmatic thing” to avoid unnecessary conflict with county attorneys.
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