Ahead of an expected announcement this week by Governor Walz loosening Minnesota’s COVID restrictions, Rep. Deb Kiel, R-Crookston, is calling for transparent and concrete dates and/or metrics for the end of the peacetime emergency. Just this week, Florida lifted all remaining COVID restrictions, and Governors of Democrat states like New York and California have established target dates for the lifting of capacity limits and other COVID restrictions. Other deep-blue states like Connecticut lifted capacity limits starting as far back as March.
“Minnesota families and businesses have been kept in limbo for far too long, waiting for the Governor to unilaterally decide how the state should move forward,” said Kiel. “With multiple statements from the Governor saying that Minnesotans can assume this summer will be ‘very normal-looking’, it is clear that the emergency phase is over and the Legislature can take up its duty as an equal branch of government in these final weeks of session. It is long past time to end this period of governing by only one branch of government. It is time for the emergency powers to end.”
House Republicans have voted more than a dozen times to end the peacetime emergency, and have put forward numerous proposals to end or modify the Governor’s Chapter 12 powers, as well as proposals to establish timelines and metrics that would end the peacetime emergency. Democrats have refused to advance those proposals in the House, and have even stonewalled proposals from their own party to wind down the Governor’s emergency powers.
