Hello Friends,?

We?re in the final stretch of the 2024 legislative session, with our work constitutionally required to be completed by Monday. It?ll be a busy week (and weekend) but we?re already passing some great legislation on to Governor Walz - including the Transportation Policy bill I authored!?

Right now, work is focused on two areas: Legislators are either spending long hours debating and voting on bills in the House and Senate, or we?re in conference committees where members of the House and Senate come together to ensure the bills we pass to Governor Walz are identical.?

Whether in conference committees or on the House Floor, much of our work is focused on building on our efforts from last year. You can read these nonpartisan summaries of our supplemental budgets for K-12 Education, Children & Families, Transportation, Labor, and Housing, Higher Education, Judiciary and Public Safety, State and Local Government and Veterans, Elections, Human Services, Workforce and Economic Development, Agriculture, Commerce, and Energy, Health, and Taxes.

These are all good bills that have passed the House, but as a member of the Transportation, Agriculture, Commerce, and Public Safety committees, I?m especially proud of our work there. We?ll now work with the Senate to hammer out the differences in our individual proposals.??

Shout out to Connie, a Shakopee resident, who made a recent trip to the Capitol with a group of therapy dogs!

A much-appreciated break as we head into crunch time in St. Paul!

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Supporting Public Safety

I especially want to highlight our efforts in the House?s Public Safety supplemental budget, where our committee work this year focused on supporting public safety officers and victims of crime.

We?re proposing a $9.5 million investment for the Office of Justice Programs to distribute grants for crime victim services. The grants would be used for direct services and advocacy for victims of sexual assault, general crime, domestic violence, and child abuse.?

We also included funding for a Task Force on Domestic Violence and Firearms, which will research laws that require the surrender of firearms and identify best practices to protect law enforcement, victims, and others in the process of recovering surrendered firearms.

For those that work at the Shakopee Correctional Facility, our bill recognizes the important role corrections staff play in our public safety system by including a $7.9 million operations adjustment to help fund compensation increases for corrections staff. With this funding to fulfill negotiated contracts, a career in corrections is now competitive with comparable jobs and can ensure that our correctional facilities are safely staffed.

This is a good bill for Shakopee and Minnesota. We?re currently in negotiations with the Senate, and I?ll continue to push for legislation that makes our community safer.

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Rumble Strips in Transportation

Our Transportation supplemental budget was wrapped up in a larger proposal that contained the House?s provisions on Housing and Labor. I?m happy to share that the legislation I worked on with Shakopee resident Todd Croy is included in this bill.?

For those of you not familiar with Todd?s story, this past summer Todd reached out to talk about the tragic death of his son in a car accident in Greater Minnesota. He had put together reams of information and data that could have helped to prevent his son?s death when he missed a stop sign and was hit by a semi-truck.

Todd came to testify on the bill we worked on together to add rumble strips at stop signs throughout the state. Thank you to Todd and his family for working to turn tragedy into action.

This proposal was not included in the Senate version, but I?ll be pushing for it to be in the final bill that we send to Governor Walz.?

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Expunging Cannabis Records

When we passed our legislation last year to legalize adult-use cannabis, a big part of that work focused on ensuring the Minnesotans who had been charged with non-violent cannabis crimes would have the chance to expunge their criminal records.

This week, we learned that 57,780 records will be expunged, removing a barrier far too many Minnesotans faced as a result of outdated policy that disproportionately impacted communities of color. This is a great step in the right direction.?

The Star Tribune covered this issue, which you can read here.

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Stay Connected

With only a few days left, there's a limited amount of time to make your voice heard - but I always appreciate hearing from you! You can contact my office at either 651-296-8872 or [email protected]. You?ll either hear from me or Jared, our legislative assistant.?

Here?s to a productive end to session!?

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Brad Tabke, State Representative | [email protected]

Jared Margolis, Legislative Assistant | [email protected]