Legislative Update - Happy New Year!

Dear Granite City Neighbors, 

Happy New Year! I hope you had a festive holiday season and that your 2024 is off to a stellar start. I was blessed to spend time with my beloved Grandma Hilda and other family members, and I hope you got the chance to celebrate with your friends and loved ones too.

Now that we’re in 2024, I’m hitting the ground running as we prepare for this year’s legislative session to begin in February.

Here’s the latest on what I’ve been up to in St. Cloud:

St. David’s Center for Children & Family Development

Last month, I toured the St. David’s Center for Children & Family Development, a leading nonprofit provider of early education, early intervention, and social services for children. This session, I plan to introduce legislation for St. David’s to expand their services at a new facility in St. Cloud.

Serving 1,500 children annually, the new facility will include an early childhood education center, culturally-responsive preschool with mental health treatment for classrooms for young children impacted by trauma and diagnosed with autism, and outpatient medical health and pediatric therapies.

Bringing St. David’s to St. Cloud will provide services that change lives!

“Sit-Along” with Stearns County Dispatch

Recently, I completed a 5 hour “sit-along” at the Stearns County Dispatch Center. I experienced first-hand the intense, impressive, and life-saving work done 24/7 by our dispatchers.

Dispatchers are the “first-first responders” on the frontlines of public safety

These heroes respond to emergency calls dealing with everything from fire, crime, mental health crises, fraud, and more, and even provide real-time support for administering CPR and delivering babies. Dispatchers are life-saving multi-tasking masters, and we owe them recognition, gratitude, and support!

Supporting a Local Visionary Author

Last weekend I attended the book launch of “My Family Tree: Branches Near and Far”. It was quite the celebration!

Our community showed up with incredible support for this visionary and representative literature, and gratitude to author Naima Haji for her hard work and determination to write a book that all of our children will enjoy and learn from.

I highly recommend you get this book for the kiddos in your life, my daughter Polly loves it!

New Year, New Laws

A new year brings new laws, so on January 1st, 2024, several new laws went into effect.

A few highlights include Earned Sick & Safe Time for more of Minnesota’s workers, extreme risk protection orders to curb gun violence and suicides, and new protections for meat and poultry processing workers.

You can check out all of the newly enacted laws here.

Stay Connected

Thanks as always for reading! As I get ready for the 2024 legislative session, I’m hoping you’ll stay in touch. I enjoy reading all the replies I receive from these emails, so let me know if you have any questions or feedback about the things mentioned in this email or anything else, and how I can be of service to you.

My best wishes to you and your family for a successful 2024!

Sincerely,

Rep. Dan Wolgamott

Speaker Pro Tempore

District 14B