ST. PAUL, Minn. (AP) - The Minnesota Senate has approved its plan to spend part of the state’s budget surplus on programs geared toward the youngest learners and the care of the elderly patients.
The budget plan that passed 37-27 on Tuesday is far from completed. The vote sets the stage for budget negotiators with the House and Gov. Mark Dayton’s administration that are unlikely to wrap up for weeks.
Earlier in the day, Dayton urged lawmakers to spend less of the surplus now that the state finally has escaped its deficit days.
The combined spending in the Senate bill is $209 million.
About $80 million would pay for a 5 percent rate increase for long-term care workers. More than $20 million would augment preschool and school readiness programs.
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MINNEAPOLIS (AP) - Gov. Mark Dayton lashed out at critics of Minnesota’s health insurance exchange on Tuesday, accusing them of waging a propaganda campaign to destroy it.
The Democratic governor spoke to reporters a day after GOP members of the Legislature’s MNsure oversight committee said they wanted to use a hearing set for Wednesday to raise tough questions about the troubled launch of MNsure last October and the decision to proceed despite evidence that the website still had serious problems.
Dayton called their plans for raising those issues a “farce.” Rather than focusing on problems that happened six months ago, he said, the important thing to know was that over 175,000 Minnesotans used MNsure to get health coverage by March 31, including many who didn’t have it before.
“The fact that they can pretend this is part of an oversight process is just ludicrous,” he said. “They just want to trash MNsure, they want to trash the Affordable Care Act, they want MNsure to fail.”
GOP Reps. Tara Mack, of Apple Valley, and Joe Hoppe, of Chaska, responded with a statement saying the oversight committee “isn’t a ’farce,’ it’s the law. With recent news reports stating Governor Dayton and MNsure leaders chose to expose Minnesotans to a program that wasn’t ready for consumers, it’s clear we need more oversight of ObamaCare not less.”
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HERMANTOWN, Minn. (AP) - A court settlement requires a man convicted of sexually assaulting an elderly woman at a northern Minnesota senior home to pay $10 million if he commits another sexual crime or abuses a vulnerable adult in the next ten years.
Andrew Merzwski was sentenced in January to more than four years in prison after pleading guilty to assaulting the 89-year-old woman at Edgewood Vista in Hermantown last year. The 30-year-old man was a nursing assistant at Edgewood and gave the woman some medication that impaired her mind.
The Star Tribune (https://strib.mn/1oJHqLwhttps://strib.mn/1oJHqLw ) says the $10 million settles a civil lawsuit filed in the case. If Merzwski does not commit another similar crime, he will not be required to pay the damages.
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Information from: Star Tribune, https://www.startribune.comhttps://www.startribune.com
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ST. PAUL, Minn. (AP) - A possible Minnesota House vote on legalizing medical marijuana has been delayed for a couple of weeks.
Republican Rep. Pat Garofalo of Farmington was hoping to attach an amendment that would legalize medical marijuana to a separate health bill. But that bill has been pulled from Wednesday’s docket until after the Legislature’s Passover/Easter break that begins the next day.
Garofalo’s amendment calls for a broader medical marijuana law than Gov. Mark Dayton has said he is willing to back. Dayton didn’t issue a veto threat Tuesday but said legislators “have hidden behind their desks” while he strained to bridge concerns of advocates and law enforcement.
A stand-alone medical marijuana bill has stalled. Even some of those who support the cause could balk at tying it to a separate bill.
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