ST. PAUL – State Rep. Steve Green, R-Fosston, is calling for a transparent and concrete process for ending Minnesota’s peacetime emergency that has been in place for more than one year.
Gov. Tim Walz is expected to soon announce a loosening of Minnesota’s COVID-19 restrictions. This comes after Florida lifted all remaining COVID restrictions, and governors of Democrat states such as New York and California have established target dates for the lifting of capacity limits and other COVID restrictions. Other deep-blue states such as Connecticut lifted capacity limits starting as early as March.
“The plain fact is our state is not facing and emergency and the governor’s emergency powers should have been long gone by now,” Green said. “Yet the governor still has not laid out a clear plan for how we put his executive orders to rest and altogether bring an end to his emergency powers. People are really wondering what is going on, why he is clinging to his emergency powers even though there’s no emergency. The best thing the governor could do is to put his cards on the table and work with the Legislature to develop a clear blueprint for our return to normal. The only thing his delays will serve to do is create more distrust in the governor and become an even bigger reckless abuse of power.”
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.
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