Dear Neighbors,
I hope you’ve had a wonderful first half of your summer! After a brief post-session recovery period I’ve been out and about in our community enjoying everything Minnesota has to offer.
But there is still so much more to look forward to, including the State Fair which is just around the corner. The mad scientist new food concoctions look as wild as ever!
This will be my last legislative update until after the election. Mid-July marks our 60-day deadline since the end of the legislative session, when Minnesota law requires unsolicited official communications to stop until after the 2026 election. This is so that an unfair advantage is not given to incumbents. There are two big issues that I want to focus on in this update, fraud prevention and gun violence prevention.
Fraud Prevention Update
One of the legislature’s signature accomplishments this year was the bipartisan agreement to finally provide the resources needed to modernize the state’s software used to administer health and human services programs. The core systems date back to the 1980s and they cannot be properly maintained because they require skills that are no longer taught. They impose severe inefficiencies on the state and county workers who use them and they lack the necessary program integrity controls to prevent the large scale frauds that we have seen starting with the federal COVID-era programs.
I am pleased to report that this work has already begun. The Department of Children Youth and Families (DCYF), which was spun off from the Department of Human Services (DHS), has inherited some of the key systems at the heart of the fraud and inefficiency. The new IT team there is already working on the key components that will be at the heart of the new architecture.
The capabilities of the software package that is the leading candidate to provide the basis of the “data hub” that will broadly enable state departments to share the information needed to properly validate a program applicant’s personal identity and program eligibility are being tested. DCYF is conducting a “proof of concept” exercise to connect the ancient Maxis system, which is used to process program enrollment and eligibility for many benefit programs, with the state’s MNBenefits portal, through which program applicants enter their personal information and provide supporting documentation. This proof of concept will test the ability to electronically transfer the data the applicant enters into MNBenefits directly into Maxis. Believe it or not, the current process requires a county worker to print out the data that the applicant enters into MNBenefits and manually rekey that data into Maxis which is a huge waste of manpower!
At the same time, DCYF is also piloting the use of LoginMN to create verifiable identity credentials for providers, clients and employees. (The Department of Employment and Economic Development (DEED) is already successfully using LoginMN to prevent fraudulent applications in the new Paid Family and Medical Leave program.)
A third thread of work is improving the accuracy of the calculation of the appropriate level of SNAP (Food Stamp) benefits to reduce the state’s “SNAP Error Rate” and head off massive losses in federal revenue under the Trump administration’s One Big Bad Bill.
The legislature has created two oversight committees to supervise this work. One will consist of representatives appointed by the counties and tribes whose employees use these systems to administer these programs and the second will be composed of legislators (and I expect to be appointed to this committee). I am actively nagging the appointing bodies to make their appointments promptly so that we can begin our work.
Impacts on Providers and Beneficiaries
What sometimes gets lost in the fraud discussion is the negative impact that the fraud crackdown has had on legitimate service providers and their clients, the recipients of these badly needed services. I recently visited with one such service provider in Bloomington, Minnesota Behavioral Specialists. Camille Heyman and Paige Berland and their team help children with autism develop the skills they will need to succeed in the world at their facilities in Bloomington and Eagan. Like everyone I have ever met who works to improve the lives of people with disabilities, these ladies are dedicated to the work that they do and their enthusiasm is reflected in the attitudes of their employees as well as in the evident joy of the children that they work with in their facilities.
So, it’s not fair that they have had to endure lapses in state and federal payments forcing them to dig into their own retirement savings accounts to keep their employees paid and the children they serve cared for because of the backlash against fraud committed by professional fraudsters in the Early Intensive Development and Behavioral Intervention (EIDBI) program. A relatively small number of professional fraudsters have stolen a large amount of money from this program and a large number of legitimate small independent providers like MBS and their charges are now suffering the consequences. MBS recently received its mandatory in-person inspection from a state auditor: an employee of MnDOT who was unfamiliar with the program and was pressed into service because DHS/DCYF does not have enough inspectors of their own. When the MnDOT auditor checked the wrong box on a form, the result was another two-week delay in payments to MBS from the state.
This scenario is playing out across our human services programs to the profound detriment to the vulnerable Minnesotans who need these services because of punitive, pointless and unrealistic requirements imposed by the Trump administration.
Thoughts on Gun Violence Prevention
I recently had an opportunity to speak of my experiences growing up in a gun-owning family on the House floor as we were debating the measure to bring up the Senate’s gun safety bill. My office clipped my 20 seconds of commentary and posted it to my House Facebook account. That post was picked up by the Minnesota Gun Owners Caucus and other news organizations catering to gun enthusiasts and shared to their followers, and that post now has over 1,000 responses, many of them beginning with the salutation of “Idiot”, “Moron”, “Traitor”, “Incel”, … you get the idea.
Most of the comments from these “gun enthusiasts” followed a few common themes:
The first was that I was surely lying when I said that I came from a gun-owning family or had ever handled a gun. So, for the record, I really did grow up in a sporting household and I really did graduate from an NRA Junior Rifle Club Hunter Safety program where I learned responsible gun ownership and safe gun handling practices. I learned to shoot with a simple single-shot .22 rifle with a “peep sight”. My dad loved to hunt. We lived off a NATO logistics base in France during my grade school years, so he was able to collect and use European guns from the early 1960’s that are now considered classics. His hunting rifle was a Finnish Sako Forester .308. His shotgun was a Browning Superposed over-and-under 12-gauge. The family target practice gun was a Browning SA .22 semi-automatic that held up to ten 22-caliber long rifle bullets in the stock. These guns were all works of art. In high school, I had my own simple Sears 20-gauge pump-action shotgun which I used to hunt quail and pigeons in California. In our family, we were all responsible for cleaning and storing our own guns. These experiences taught me the importance of gun safety education and respect for the inherent dangers posed by any firearm. I am not opposed to guns. I am an unabashed advocate for gun safety.
The second major theme in these comments was to the effect that I don’t know WTF a “weapon of war” is because, if I did, I would know that the AR-15 rifle is not used in warfare. What I know is that the AR15 is the civilian version of the military M16 and that the M16 is actually a derivative of the original AR-15 invented by Eugene Stoner in 1960. The original AR15 was used by the Air Force in Vietnam in the early 1960s (so it really was a “weapon of war”) and was soon modified for use by the Army and Marines to create the M16 (which has, itself, been modified several times over the years).
The history of these two assault rifles is all explained, here.
There is a good comparison of the minor design differences between the current versions of the AR-15 and M16 at minute 5:43 of this video. The most important difference between the two is that the AR-15 is a semi-automatic rifle that can only fire one bullet each time the trigger is pulled (unless it is fitted with an illegal “bump stock” or proposed to be illegal “binary trigger” that fires twice with each pull/release of the trigger) while current M16 models can fire in either semi-automatic or “burst” mode, where each trigger pull fires three bullets in quick succession. As the video goes on to explain, today’s M16 is built for reliability while the AR15 stresses customizability so that gun enthusiasts can personalize their weapons with accessories. The AR15 can actually accept much larger capacity magazines – including a 100 round drum – than the M16 (explained at 11:40 in the video), an issue that is addressed in the Senate gun safety bill by a 17-bullet limit on magazine volume.
A key similarity is the .223-caliber ammunition that they both use, which has a smaller bullet than previous military rounds, but much more gunpowder to produce a very high “muzzle velocity” (bullet speed). The enhanced lethality of this bullet is explained at 4:15 of the video. This is a bullet that is specifically designed to kill people. It is inappropriate for hunting because the bullet tumbles and fragments on impact, which ruins game meat for human consumption. This is also the reason why the body of Harper Moyske, recovered from the Annunciation school shooting, had to be identified by DNA testing – the .223-caliber bullets that struck her had left her body unrecognizable.
If you really want to understand why so many of us have an issue with the AR-15 assault rifle, watch this 13-minute segment on the topic from 60 Minutes. At the 3-minute mark there is a simulation of the impact of a .223 Caliber AR15 round on the human body. You won’t forget the image.
What makes the AR15 the weapon of choice for mass murderers is its unique ability to fire large numbers of especially deadly bullets rapidly and accurately. It is truly a weapon designed for warfare.
Finally, I received a number of comments to the effect of “What part of ‘shall not be infringed’ don’t you understand?” I suppose that would be the part where Justice Scalia in his landmark opinion in the case of The United States vs Heller wrote: “Like most rights, the right secured by the Second Amendment is not unlimited. From Blackstone through the 19th-century cases, commentators and courts routinely explained that the right was not a right to keep and carry any weapon whatsoever in any manner whatsoever and for whatever purpose.”
Eleven other states already have assault weapon bans.
If you’ve written to me on this topic in a more respectful fashion, I thank you.
The bill in question (SF4067) had several key components in addition to the ban on the sale of assault weapons and high-capacity magazines.
- Trigger Modifications: Reinstates a ban on binary triggers and limits rapid-fire accessories.
- "Ghost Gun" Ban: Prohibits unserialized, untraceable, and homemade firearms.
- Storage & Safety: Expands secure storage laws and includes funding for Extreme Risk Protection Orders (ERPOs) to temporarily remove firearms from individuals in crisis.
- Research & Security: Creates a statewide violence prevention research center, expands gun-free zones to Minnesota High School League events, and funds courthouse safety improvements.
When the Minnesota Legislature returns in January, I hope to have the opportunity to vote for this bill as the new Minnesota House File 1.
Keep in Touch
Don’t hesitate to reach out if I can provide any assistance. Please follow me on my Facebook page for further updates and invite your friends and family to do so as well.
Thanks for the honor of representing you at the Capitol.
Sincerely,
Steve Elkins
Representative, District 50B
Minnesota House of Representatives
rep.steve.elkins@house.mn.gov