Good morning, and welcome to another Monday.
State finance officials release another budget forecast today, and as MPR’s Dana Ferguson reports, it will be the first one in 20 years that factors inflation in on the spending side: After weathering much of the difficulty around the COVID-19 pandemic, state finance leaders said the economic outlook seems to be stabilizing. And though global factors such as the war in Ukraine continue to raise question marks, they said the state is in a good place. “Minnesota is doing really well,” Minnesota Management and Budget Commissioner Jim Schowalter said. “We're continuing to outperform other states, and really are looking really quite strong in comparison to the national economy.” In December, the forecast showed a nearly $18 billion budget surplus after the state’s economy exceeded expectations and Minnesota posted higher than expected income and sales tax revenues. Those trends have continued in the months since, and the surplus is still expected to be substantial. But a couple factors could take a bite out of the total, including a new requirement that inflation be factored in and that lawmakers have already spent some money.
Teachers at Harding High School in St. Paul and parents of some students there say they expressed concerns about safety well before 15-year-old Devin Scott was stabbed to death there earlier this month, Josh Verges at the the Pioneer Press reported: The Pioneer Press granted anonymity to five Harding teachers who wanted to talk about school safety but say they feared reprisal from a district with a history of retaliation. In separate interviews, each teacher said the school has grown increasingly dangerous in recent years. Between 40 and 70 students routinely roam the hallways instead of going to class, they said, and harassment and drug use in bathrooms is common enough that many students either hold their bladders or go to the nurse’s office. Teachers, students and parents complain to administrators, but efforts to clean things up, such as requiring ID badges and bathroom passes, are quickly abandoned or inconsistently enforced. “The issue at Harding has been an absolute profound lack of leadership, a distrust between the administration and teachers, no support,” one teacher said. “We’ve been saying this for years: Somebody’s going to get hurt because there’s no control in the hallways.”
The New York Times had a long look at migrant children on their own working at jobs in the United States in violation of federal labor laws. The story included accounts of children, many of them from Central America, working in a Michigan plant that packages products for General Mills, among other companies. The story notes: General Mills, whose brands include Cheerios, Lucky Charms and Nature Valley, said it recognized “the seriousness of this situation” and was reviewing The Times’ findings. The story also included this issue, which has come to light recently: In Worthington, Minn., it had long been an open secret that migrant children released by H.H.S. were cleaning a slaughterhouse run by JBS, the world’s largest meat processor. The town has received more unaccompanied migrant children per capita than almost anywhere in the country. Outside the JBS pork plant last fall, The Times spoke with baby-faced workers who chased and teased one another as they came off their shifts in the morning. Many had scratched their assumed names off company badges to hide evidence that they were working under false identities. Some said they had suffered chemical burns from the corrosive cleaners they used. Not long afterward, labor inspectors responding to a tip found 22 Spanish-speaking children working for the company hired to clean the JBS plant in Worthington, and dozens more in the same job at meat-processing plants around the United States. But the Labor Department can generally only issue fines. The cleaning company paid a $1.5 million penalty, while JBS said it had been unaware that children were scouring the Worthington factory each night. JBS fired the cleaning contractor.
The University of Minnesota released what it plans to ask for from state lawmakers as it works to regain control of its buildings from Fairview Health Services, in the midst of a proposed merger with Sioux Falls-based Sanford Health. MPR’s Michelle Wiley reports the preliminary estimate made public Friday includes $300 million to reacquire the four facilities — University Medical Center East and West Bank facilities, Masonic Children’s Hospital and the Clinics and Surgery Center — as well as funding for staff, union contracts and leadership for the new organization. The remaining $650 million would operate those facilities, and includes three months of “operating capital” to cover payroll and supplies, as well as other expenses. “This funding provides the opportunity to turn around not only the operations to the university, but also to begin to reduce those losses and turn it into positive financial results going forward,” said Myron Frans, senior vice president for finance and operations.
Minnesota’s members of Congress and their staffers have been taking trips funded by special interest groups. MinnPost reports: The day after winning re-election in November, Rep. Pete Stauber, R-8th District, traveled to Spain at the expense of the Rippon Society, a centrist Republican public policy organization based in Washington, D.C. Stauber’s trip was also funded by the Franklin Center for Global Policy, non-partisan, non-profit that brings together members of Congress with their counterparts in parliaments in other countries. The total cost of the trip was $20,286.32. Meanwhile, Rep. Ilhan Omar, D-5th District, traveled last March to Guatemala and Honduras with her policy adviser, Ryan Morgan. The trips were funded by Witness for Peace, a non-profit that says its mission is to “build transnational grassroots solidarity to resist U.S. government and corporate policies that contribute to violence, poverty and oppression in the Americas” and the Institute for Policy Studies, which calls itself a “progressive organization dedicated to building a more equitable, ecologically sustainable and peaceful society.” The trips were valued at $2,115.15 each. “As a member of Congress, a part of my job and my staff’s job includes having in-person visits to parts of the world impacted by U.S. foreign policy. This work has informed our oversight work, and multiple pieces of legislation,” Omar said in an emailed statement. “These are approved trips by the Congressional Committee on Ethics are officially connected travel related to the traveler’s official or representational duties.”
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