Dear Neighbors,
Temperatures continue to get warmer as spring starts next week. Ice is deteriorating rapidly and the shipping season on Lake Superior is also set to begin next week. Here’s an update from Saint Paul.
Supporting Long-Term Care Residents
Yesterday, we passed a bill off the House floor, of which I was the chief author, allowing the Minnesota Department of Human Services to establish a temporary staffing pool for long-term care facilities and other facilities and programs experiencing an emergency staffing crisis. The bill also allows DHS and the Minnesota Department of Health to reinstate a series of waivers to provide flexibility and remove barriers toward delivering services.
A temporary pool will help us target staffing resources to facilities with the most urgent needs to protect residents. Our work to defeat COVID-19 is headed in the right direction, but we still have a crisis remaining that frankly existed well before the pandemic. Residents in our nursing homes, assisted living facilities, and group homes have unacceptable staffing levels, putting them at risk of not receiving the level of care they deserve. We need to urgently enact the waivers in this bill to allow services and programs to proceed without interruption.
MinnesotaCare Buy-In Advances
This week, my legislation to enact a MinnesotaCare Buy-In moved one step closer to becoming reality following approval from the House Taxes Committee. The MinnesotaCare Buy-In will allow individuals and families to access MinnesotaCare – the low-cost, high-quality health care program that Minnesotans have trusted for 30 years – by paying their own premiums, but at a much lower cost than plans available on the private market. The bill would make MinnesotaCare available to Minnesotans struggling to afford high deductibles and small businesses who want to contribute to their employees’ coverage.
Creating an option for less expensive health insurance is one of the biggest impacts we can make for Minnesotans and their families to have a secure economic future. The pandemic has highlighted how much we all depend on accessible, quality health care, and as we work to emerge from COVID, Minnesotans shouldn’t have to worry about having health care they can barely afford or can’t afford at all. The MinnesotaCare Buy-In is another example of how House DFLers are laser-focused on reducing costs Minnesotans continue to face in their day-to-day lives.
Drought Relief
Minnesota’s agriculture and food production industries aren’t just major pieces of our economy; they are critical to ensuring we all have healthy, nutritious food to eat. Since last year, many farmers and ranchers have faced enormous challenges due to severe and persistent drought conditions. Last week, the House approved significant drought relief legislation to help them recover, with the funding targeted toward the smallest operations, including specialty crop producers who are unable to access federal crop insurance. Many of them are immigrants and those just starting out in agriculture, and have products for sale at our farmers markets.
Beyond delivering financial relief to farmers now, we need to face the reason for increased extreme weather events like droughts in the first place. It’s imperative we invest in climate resiliency, and the legislation also includes several measures to protect our forests and water supplies. The bill includes investments to help communities remove and replace impacted trees and prepare for future water challenges, replace seedlings on DNR-managed lands killed by the drought, and to help private forestland owners and tribal and county governments replace seedlings on their lands. The bill also grants to municipal, township, and tribal governments that operate public water supplies to improve water efficiency.
Standing with Ukraine
The harrowing images from Ukraine as Russia continues its violent invasion have been extremely difficult to see. My heart goes out to the Ukrainian people, including the 17,000 Ukrainian-Americans who call Minnesota home. Yesterday, we lost James Hill, a native of northern Minnesota who was senselessly gunned down while in a bread line.
A bipartisan bill is advancing through the legislature to divest Minnesota’s state pension fund from Russia and codify Governor Walz’s Executive Order barring the state from contracting with Russian companies. Prior to the invasion of Ukraine, the estimated worth of Minnesota's state pension fund investments in Russia was approximately $53 million. The legislation will also sanction Belarus for its complicity in the Russian invasion.
By passing this bill, Minnesota would join numerous other democracies in a similar action, standing with Ukraine and adding to the international pressure that will hopefully soon lead to peace. You can read more about this legislation here.
Please continue to stay in touch with your viewpoints, ideas, or if I can ever be of assistance. Thank you for the honor of working as your public servant.
Sincerely,
Jen Schultz
State Representative