Between late afternoon Tuesday and early Wednesday morning, the Minnesota Legislature passed budget bills that will fund more than $35 billion in state government and end the 19-day shutdown. Most lawmakers, however, didn’t have time to read the bills, which were only made available in the hours just before the votes.
Ominous news about job losses and financial woes at Minnesota hospitals over the last week coincide with Gov. Pawlenty’s line-item veto of $381 million in General Assistance Medical Care (GAMC) grants and his vow to make more cuts by unallotment. But as bad as the doomsday scenarios are, they shouldn’t include St. Paul’s Regions Hospital closing — a prospect that a DFL press release warned of over the weekend.
Should 13-year-olds be prosecuted as adults in first-degree murder cases? That was the provocative issue raised at the Minnesota House of Representative Friday afternoon.
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