Public safety policy package bill sent to House Floor

A public safety policy package bill is headed to the House Floor.

The final policy package bill, HF3990, contains the language of public safety bills that were previously heard by the committee and laid over for consideration to be included in the policy package bill.

A dozen of those bills making the cut were unveiled at Tuesday’s House Public Safety Finance and Policy Committee meeting.

Seven more bills were incorporated via amendment when the committee got back together less than 24 hours later.

“This session especially, it’s extremely impressive to have a bill like this passing through a committee at this point in session,” said Rep. Dave Pinto (DFL-St. Paul).

What’s in the bill

Statutory changes regarding public safety, civil law, and the Department of Corrections include:

• a crime victim would have the right to object to a plea agreement at the plea hearing and a victim would have a right to be present at both a plea hearing and a sentencing hearing;
• law enforcement agencies deploying a chemical irritant in a building must provide a notice specifying the irritants and whether specialized cleanup or treatment is needed;
• the legal age to purchase and possess kratom would increase from 18 to 21;
• all inmates would need to be screened for tuberculosis within 14 days of intake and annually thereafter;
• making it a felony to threaten the non-consensual dissemination of private sexual images, punishable up to 15 years in prison;
• inmates could not be considered for supervised release until they complete court-ordered restitution payments; and
• theft involving gift cards would fall under the organized retail theft statute.

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The following bills have been incorporated in part or in whole into the public safety policy package bill:

• HF2169 (Schwartz)
• HF2358 (Van Binsbergen)
• HF3155 (Tabke)
• HF3453 (Hanson)
• HF3496 (Harder)
• HF3768 (Curran)
• HF3769 (Curran)
• HF3771 (Johnson, P.)
• HF3782 (Moller)
• HF3825 (Repinski)
• HF3826 (Witte)
• HF3827 (Duran)
• HF3868 (Curran)
• HF3870 (Curran)
• HF3946 (Moller)
• HF3990 (Novotny)
• HF4151 (Witte)