Dear Neighbors,
Yesterday, the Minnesota Legislature convened to pass a package of legislation to address the health and economic security that Minnesotans deserve during this public health crisis. Here is a summary of some of those provisions:
- Grants to support child care providers who are struggling to stay open while providing essential care for children, especially for families of health care workers.
- Hunger relief funding to address food bank, food shelf, and transportation needs during the pandemic.
- Homelessness prevention funding, such as emergency services grants and resources to protect the health of our homeless and the staff working to address their safety.
- Grants and loans to support our struggling small businesses with 250 employees or less.
- Extensions to renew expired drivers licenses and other permits that cannot be updated during the Governor’s “Stay at Home” order.
- Creation of a COVID-19 fund that gives Governor Walz and our state agencies the flexibility to direct resources where they are needed most to respond to this pandemic.
I want to be clear – this is only scratching the surface of the needs our community and state will face over the coming weeks and months. In particular, we fought for several provisions over these past few weeks that ultimately did not move forward because there was not bipartisan support, including:
- Rental assistance for Minnesotans with lost wages as a result of COVID-19
- Pay for our hourly or contract school employees
- Workers’ comp for first responders
- Alec Smith Insulin Affordability Act
The legislature will continue to work. We will continue to fight for resolution on the issues vital to the health and economic security of Minnesotans and listen to you to inform our actions.
Stay at Home
A quick reminder that the “Stay at Home” order goes into effect this evening, and is scheduled to last until Friday, April 10. For many of us, this just formalizes what we’ve already been practicing this past week.
The more we do to slow the spread of COVID-19, the more precious time we’re buying for our health care professionals to prepare for and treat patients with the virus.
We are all in this together.
Michael Howard