Minnesota lawmakers are getting a report on the coronavirus' economic toll this week, and there's widespread belief a deficit is ahead. As Brian Bakst reports, such an assessment is rare, but the unparalleled circumstances led to it. “We could estimate a couple billion, a billion, a couple billion short next year to maybe worst-case scenario, $8 [billion] or $9 billion short depending on how this goes,” Senate Taxes Committee Chair Roger Chamberlain predicted last week.
Minnesotans approve of Gov. Walz response to COVID-19 A new poll by KSTP and SurveyUSA found that "82 percent either 'strongly' or 'somewhat' approve of how Walz has responded to the coronavirus." The same poll found that only 34 percent of Minnesotans approved of President Trump's response to the pandemic.
Meanwhile, Republicans are continuing to press Gov. Tim Walz to speed up business reopenings. Senate Majority Leader Paul Gazelka, R-East Gull Lake, is continuing to lead the charge. As Tim Pugmire reports, Gazelka said he spoke to the governor several times recently, saying the return to normalcy must be quicker. “The range of emotion that I hear and feel from our public is all across the board,” Gazelka said. “Everything from fear to anxiety, to frustration, confusion — It’s just a mix of emotions as we trying to figure out how do we navigate through this.”
And still, the experts on public health are urging patience. Reopening more businesses must be done incrementally and safely, Health Commissioner Jan Malcolm said: “The stay-at-home order remains in place for another two weeks. And we really need people to observe that by staying within their household groups, and only going out for brief errands or allowable business activities."
Wondering why the small business loan program had so many problems in only four weeks? Well, NPR has some answers. And they include giant companies like Shake Shack getting loans and banks reaping more than $10 billion in fees alone. Plus, small businesses found that the loans had too many strings attached and many thriving companies got the loans, rather than those struggling amid the pandemic.
And here's a non-coronavirus story from the Minnesota Capitol. Kirsti Marohn reports on dozens of projects benefiting Minnesotans natural resources being thrown into limbo due to a political dispute: "At the center of the stalemate is a years-old disagreement among state lawmakers over whether the trust fund should be used to pay for wastewater treatment projects."
