Hot dish Thursday, Feb. 8

By Kelly Smith

One year after she was attacked in her Washington D.C. apartment building, U.S. Rep. Angie Craig is reflecting on the traumatic incident and the need for more public safety, mental health and addiction resources nationwide. My colleague Briana Bierschbach interviewed Craig about the incident this week and how legislation she carried has helped her process what happened.

“I started to understand the complexity of my feelings about what I had experienced, but also understand that I have an extraordinary opportunity,” she said. “To take what I experienced to understand — at a deeper level — the public safety, mental health and addiction crisis in our country.”

INSULIN: Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison announced Wednesday a new settlement that will result in Minnesotans with diabetes paying no more than $35 monthly for Eli Lilly’s brand-name insulin products, at least for the next five years. My colleague Jeremy Olson reported that Minnesota is still suing Novo Nordisk and Sanofi, two other manufacturers of synthetic insulin, but Ellison said he hopes to reach similar terms with them soon to make their versions affordable.

“This settlement is welcome news for Minnesotans – no one should be priced out of life-saving medicine,” Gov. Tim Walz said in a statement.

SRO: The latest proposal from DFL lawmakers on school resource officers would require police to have special training but would exempt them from rules that regulate how and when educators may restrain students. That’s based off concerns that a 2023 law left them liable to civil suits for routine interventions, my colleague Eder Campuzano reported.

“And at the end of the day this is about making sure that our kids are safe,” said Rep. Cedrick Frazier, the DFLer who cosponsored the new bill.

“Fortunately, there is a major political party for legalization supporters,” he said. “The party that actually legalized cannabis, the Minnesota DFL.”

In response, Legal Marijuana Now said in a statement: “We did our due diligence and worked closely with the [Minnesota] secretary of state’s office to comply with the rule changes recently passed to use specifically to target our party our success and silence the voices of the thousands of Americans who have voted for us,” said party chairman Dennis Schuller. “I feel sad that they the un-democratic party has chosen this path and I am confident about the information we have provided the state.”

MDE: Federally indicted Feeding Our Future leader Aimee Bock is alleging that the Minnesota Department of Education purposely misspelled words, mislabeled and deleted documents to prevent computer searches from revealing them in a 2020 civil lawsuit that her organization filed against the agency over stopped payments.

The Education Department said in a statement that the claims “are simply the latest example of her abusing the court system to deflect attention from her own misconduct.”

A tax watchdog group called the allegations “jaw dropping” because it raises red flags about government transparency.

The Legislative Auditor’s Office is also conducting a special review of the Education Department’s oversight of Feeding Our Future, which was initially slated to be released last summer and is now scheduled to be released in March. Mark Haveman, executive director of the nonpartisan Minnesota Center for Fiscal Excellence, said the OLA’s special review report is “likely to be one of the most attention-getting and potentially politically consequential in that organization’s history.”

DEED: Walz and the Minnesota Department of Employment and Economic Development (DEED) announced Wednesday that more than $7.8 million will go toward seven business expansion projects statewide. The grants were awarded to: George Modular Innovation Solutions LLC in Minneapolis; L&M Supply, Inc., in Grand Rapids; Northstar Lime LLC in Crookston; nVent in Anoka; Rion Inc., in Rochester; SOMIC Packaging Inc., in Inver Grove Heights; and USG Interiors, LLC in Cloquet.

EVENTS WATCH: On Thursday morning, Sen. Omar Fateh and Rep. Sandra Feist are holding a news conference to introduce the North STAR Act, which would make Minnesota a sanctuary state for unauthorized immigrants in the U.S. Leaders from Hennepin County, Minneapolis and other local governments are backing the efforts.

“This bill recognizes and upholds existing precedent, which says that states should not have a direct role in enforcing immigration policy,” Fateh, the Senate bill’s primary sponsor, said last week.

WHERE’S WALZ: On Thursday at 10:30 a.m., Walz is visiting a site in Alexandria offering free tax preparation assistance to encourage Minnesotans to file for the new Child Tax Credit. Lt. Gov. Peggy Flanagan is visiting a site in Duluth to do the same. Walz will also be meeting with leadership at Alexandria Technical and Community College and visit Massman Automation.

Keep us posted at hotdish@startribune.com.