Good morning, and happy Tuesday.

Whatever happened to those bonuses for workers who braved the pandemic?  A legislative panel is still working and is inching toward a deal. DFL House Majority Leader Ryan Winkler, who chairs the panel, said a rough outline would provide compensation for up to 670,000 critical workers who stayed on the job amid uncertainty or worse. But the size of their bonuses still hasn’t been finalized. “We could also look at providing two different groupings where some workers get a set dollar amount and others get a bit more if they were engaged in caring for patients and at particularly high risk,” Winkler said. Vice Chair Karin Housley, a Republican state senator, said that’s the approach that makes the most sense to her.. “We don’t want to devalue anybody who stepped up and went to work. Everybody needs to be commended,” Housley said. The panel is set to meet as soon as next week to ratify recommendations that would then go to the Legislature. But a special session won’t be called until Gov. Tim Walz and key legislators agree on an agenda.  Walz also wants approval of a farm aid package and agreement from Senate Republicans that they won’t fire more agency commissioners or force votes on vaccine-related legislation -- promises they have yet to make. Housley said she’s confident the working group can find consensus; where it goes from there is up to others, she said. Winkler said it’s hard to view this issue in isolation. “It’s not the numbers, it’s not the merits. I think we can reach an agreement on the merits” of a pandemic pay program, Winkler said. “I think it’s the broader vaccine politics and politics of who is going to be the next Republican nominee for governor that’s getting in the way.” Brian Bakst has the story.

School nurses and other staffers are getting burned out because of COVID-19. Elizabeth Shockman of MPR News has the story : Most Minnesota schools are into their third full week of classes, but already some staff members are worried about how much longer they’ll be able to continue running short-staffed. It’s not just nurses. Schools need more bus drivers and cafeteria workers. Even school board members are resigning in unusually high numbers.

From MPR’s Mark Zdechlik: Minnesota officials are closely watching the battle in Washington over infrastructure. The Biden administration says  the $1.2 trillion bipartisan bill would direct billions of federal aid dollars to Minnesota, including nearly $5 billion for road and bridge upgrades. Minnesota Department of Transportation spokesperson Jake Loesch said  the additional money would not cover all needed upgrades but would go a long way in addressing the backlog of repair work. "These dollars that Congress is debating this week, they're going to mean huge, huge tangible impacts for folks in every corner of the state of Minnesota. And so obviously MnDOT is watching it closely and we're very eager, if it passes, to get to work and figure out where and how we can allocate that money." The bill would also fund improvements to drinking water, public transportation and expanded access to high-speed internet, among other things. 

Figures released by the FBI Monday show the country saw its biggest one year increase in murders ever recorded in 2020.From the New York Times: Although major crimes were down overall, an additional 4,901 murders were committed in 2020 compared with the year before, the largest leap since national records started in 1960. The significant rise in homicides has roughly coincided with the 18 months of the Covid-19 pandemic. The high murder rate has continued into 2021, although the pace has slowed as the year has progressed. Overall, the toll of some 21,500 people killed last year is still well below the record set during the violence of the early 1990s. Still, several cities, like Albuquerque, Memphis, Milwaukee and Des Moines, are recording their highest murder numbers ever, according to the report. 

Some cities and towns that were divided the last time political boundaries were drawn are asking to be made whole in next year’s redistricting.  This is from Briana Bierschbach’s story in the Star Tribune : More than a dozen communities across the state were split between two congressional districts during the last round of redistricting, from inner-ring suburbs such as Edina to townships in far-flung corners of the state. For smaller communities, the lines have become a headache, zigzagging through city streets or cutting across farm fields and dividing their towns. It added layers of uncertainty for voters and extra costs to administer elections for cash-strapped local governments.