AM.MN: Walz tables town hall meeting until next week

Sitting around a kitchen table in Rochester and hearing out a half-dozen constituents on health care wouldn’t have made much news for U.S. Rep. Tim Walz a few months ago. But yesterday’s coffee klatch was well-noted for what it was not: a full-fledged town-hall style meeting. Walz will hold another quiet affair with hand-picked invitees today in Mankato but is promising an open town hall next week, complete with TV cameras.

Elsewhere in Minnesota headlines this morning …

ST. PAUL: Mayor credits feds in adding cops. Chris Coleman proposes to do a neat trick with the budget he announced Tuesday: hiring 34 officers (with $7.5 million from the federal government) even as aid from the state drops by $12 million. [Minnesota Public Radio]

ROCHESTER: Klobuchar clamps down on cell phones in the pokey. Minnesota’s senior senator used the indictment of a correctional officer at the Federal Medical Center here to push her proposed ban on cells (the kind you make calls on, anyway) in prisons. [Alexandria Echo Press]

DULUTH: Amtrak arrives. Speaking of pokey, it wasn’t exactly high-speed rail as the first Amtrak train to make it up to Duluth in 24 years took six hours to travel from the Cities. [Duluth News Tribune]

WORTHINGTON: Alleged rapist threatened to turn in victim’s family as undocumented. But the family of the 13-year-old girl who “Melvin” is accused of assaulting came forward anyway to report him. [Worthington Daily Globe]

ST. PAUL: Emerald ash borers arrive on campus. They picked the right one, as the University of Minnesota’s ag school is housed here. [St. Paul Pioneer Press]