 Hello Friends, It’s been a hot July. Between the heat wave and the wildfire smoke, it’s pretty rough out there. A reminder that the Scott County Public Library is a great place to cool down for a bit should you need to, with AC, free wi-fi, and of course plenty of books to pass the time. July also brought about several new laws, which we passed at the state legislature this year. Highlights include anonymous threat reporting systems for our schools so students and families can safely report concerning behavior, implementing a mandatory social media mental health warning, the $4 million I secured for the Shakopee Innovation Center, and more. You can find a full list of the new laws and summaries here. MPR also dived into some of our new laws, which you can read about here. I’m proud of what we were able to accomplish in a tied Minnesota House, but as these new laws and investments take effect, I can’t help but be reminded of what else we should have passed this year. If we had just one more DFL vote in the Minnesota House, we could’ve met the moment and done what Minnesotans wanted us to do - passed new laws that would’ve made life more affordable for everyday Minnesotans, enacted gun violence prevention measures to make our schools safer, and enshrined protections to support our neighbors when the federal government violently invades our communities. Republicans decided those weren’t important priorities this year, but I’ll never stop fighting for these issues. Oversight of Flock Cameras & License Plate Data Another bill that should’ve passed this year was my legislation to implement guidelines on the use of private data like your license plates. Concerns became hard to ignore during Operation Metro Surge, when we saw Minnesotans’ private data being used by federal agents to track them - something that shouldn’t have been able to happen according to state law. This is also an issue because these Flock license plate readers, which have very little oversight, aren’t always accurate - leading to potentially disastrous situations like what we saw in Plymouth, when law enforcement mistakenly pulled over a man due to the inaccurate data given to them by these plate readers. |