Dear Neighbors,
We’ve had two successful weeks at the Minnesota House of Representatives since my last legislative update. Again, I want to thank our communities in Columbia Heights, New Brighton, and St. Anthony for allowing me to be your voice at the Capitol. Here is an update on our work at the legislature.
This Week’s Progress
We recently passed a historic bill to fund our Board of Public Defense. This ensures adequate funding to our public defenders - without them, we cannot guarantee the constitutional right to adequate representation to every American. Public defenders play a critical role in our criminal justice system, but they are historically overworked and understaffed. HF 90 addresses longstanding budget shortfalls and ensures the Board of Public Defense has adequate resources to keep up with growing caseloads. Excitingly, the bill passed with unanimous support!
On Thursday, the Minnesota House voted to pass two important bills aimed at addressing food insecurity in our schools and community. HF 5 would create a state program for schools to provide up to two free meals per day to all students, and HF 213 would provide an investment of $5 million for food shelf programs in light of record numbers of visits to food shelves last year.
We have a real opportunity to make a large quality of life improvement for many struggling Minnesota families. It's simple: hungry kids can’t learn at their full capacity. One in six students in Minnesota is food insecure, and this bill will ensure that all students are equally able to be present and ready to learn. I have introduced a bill that partners with the Universal Meals bill to ensure that our funding formula remains in alignment. I’m excited to be a part of this transformational change for Minnesota students. I was proud to vote for these bills to ensure we feed every Minnesotan in need.
Finally, my first bill of the session passed the House unanimously! Hooray for good governance! This bill enacts the Uniform Electronic Wills Act in Minnesota to update our laws around electronic and remotely-witnessed wills.
Bill Presentations and Introductions!
This past week I presented several bills with Rep. Matt Norris (DFL - Blaine) that focus on the rights of residents in manufactured housing communities. The Housing Finance and Policy Committee heard three bills. The first, HF 156, will ensure utility price transparency and fairness to residents of manufactured home parks. The second, HF 817, provides the opportunity for residents to purchase when a manufactured home park owner announces the sale of the park. The third, HF 814, authored by Rep. Matt Norris, invests a total of $65 million over the next two years through grants and loans to improve park infrastructure, finance the purchase and repair of manufactured homes, and allow residents to purchase parks when an owner looks to sell.
These bills are about providing stability and fairness in the lives of residents in manufactured housing communities. These housing units are unique. Residents own the home, but not the property beneath them. So, when a park owner decides to sell the property, entire communities can be uprooted, or their rent dramatically increased. We saw this in Lowry Grove in St. Anthony, where an entire community was displaced after the sale by the park owner. Providing an opportunity for residents to purchase the land beneath their homes, and to ensure that they are only paying the actual cost of utilities are both measures that will support manufactured home residents who reside in nearly every county across Minnesota. You can watch our committee hearing here.
This session I am leading HF 1048, a bill to fund our Youth Intervention Program (YIP). The original bill passed in 1976 and was authored by State Senator Skip Humphrey. There are currently 75 YIP grantees that provide a diverse range of programming to help youth develop into healthy adults. This program has been historically underfunded and in 2021 the Office of Justice Programs requested five times the amount available for YIP funding. On Tuesday, I toured one of our YIP grantees, Bolder Options in Minneapolis, and saw the work the mentors are doing with vulnerable youth referred to their program. It was a wonderful opportunity to see the great outcomes these programs provide. You can watch the bill presentation here.
I introduced two new bills this past week to improve our juvenile justice system, creating more privacy for these young people during the process, and also ensuring that the process systematically assesses risk in more objective ways. I love this work to improve the system and outcomes for justice-involved youth. Notably, I also introduced HF 1300, which ends juvenile sentences of life without parole, which was found unconstitutional over a decade ago. This inhumane, unconstitutional, and racially unjust practice must end.
In addition to my juvenile justice improvement bills, I am also focused on protecting publican safety through data-driven, evidence-based responses. To this end, I introduced and recently presented HF 818, a bill to fund The Violence Project, which invests $2,000,000 in research and public-facing data around gun violence prevention, with an emphasis on mass shootings. This bill has bipartisan support at its hearing, which was very heartening. You can watch the presentation of the bill here.
Lastly, I am honored to be carrying the Keep Nurses at the Bedside Act this session, working closely with the Minnesota Nurses Association to advance this legislation to create a new framework for ensuring a collaborative approach to safe staffing in hospitals, a public-facing grading system to inform patients and their families, and measures to prevent violence and attract nurses to the profession. Collectively, these measures will enhance patient outcomes, address nurse burnout, and advance a system of healthcare that Minnesotans deserve.
Here’s a photo of me and my colleague, Rep. Liz Olson, who carried the bill last year and is also a champion for nurses in our state. We “dropped” the bill into the “Hopper” this past week and I can’t wait for a hearing to be scheduled so that we can share nurses’ stories with the legislature.
Updates
February is Black History Month! Every day is a great day to celebrate the legacy and talents of our Black and African American communities in Minnesota. It’s a time to reflect on the history of our neighbors' ancestors and uplift their stories. I’m thankful for their contributions here in Minnesota and look forward to working with them to make a more equitable Minnesota.
I’m so thankful for our school counselors here in Minnesota. School counselors help students with barriers we can’t always see, and the best learning happens when our kids feel supported in school. House DFLers have great bills this year to improve our school counselor funding and ensure every kid gets the best start possible.
Stay in Touch
If you have questions, ideas, or feedback that you’d like to share, please don’t hesitate to reach out. You can email me at rep.sandra.feist@house.mn.gov or call (651) 296-4331. Also, you can follow my official State Representative Facebook Page.
Sincerely,
Sandra Feist
State Representative