Minnesota lawmakers on both sides of the aisle have introduced bills to give K-12 teachers a larger pension and earlier access to it with retirement.

To receive their full pension in Minnesota currently, teachers must teach for 30 years and be 65 years old, or retire a few years prior with a smaller pension. Three bills in the state Legislature target early teacher retirees and make early retirement more financially feasible, the bill authors said.

A bipartisan House bill, HF2318, would make teachers eligible for early retirement benefits at 60 years old instead of 62. A Republican-sponsored House bill, HF2329, would allow retirees who are at least 62 to receive their pension without any reductions.

Another bipartisan bill, House File 1582 and Senate File 2000, would make K-12 teachers eligible for an early retirement pension at 60 years old without any reductions to their pensions and require employers to contribute more to all teacher pension plans.

SF2000, which is supported by Minnesota’s teachers union Education Minnesota, is nearly identical to the two other bills but proposes higher employer pension contributions.

SF2000 chief author Sen. Heather Gustafson, DFL-Vadnais Heights, who used to be a high school teacher, said teachers who put decades of work into supporting Minnesota’s children deserve a fair retirement.

“Being a teacher is one of the hardest jobs in our state. It is more than just teaching the curriculum. It is supporting students,” she said. “These teachers who have been doing this for 30 or 40 years are frustrated, and rightfully so, that after all these years of taking care of our communities’ children, that they can’t have a retirement that supports what they need to just be able to live.”

Some education advocates argue Minnesota is falling behind other states for teacher retirements. In a 2024 national ranking, Forbes ranked Minnesota as the third-best state in the nation for teachers behind Washington and Utah. However, the North Star State was 17th in Forbes’ teacher retirement score ratings.

Education Minnesota President Denise Specht said Minnesota needs to invest more in teacher pensions to ensure educators do not switch career paths halfway through.

“There used to be this idea that ‘We can’t pay you what you’re worth, but we could make sure that you have a secure and dignified pension that you can count on,’” she said. “Unfortunately, over time, the value of that retirement has eroded. We need more investment from our states to make sure that our pensions are the promises that were made back then.”

Improving teacher pensions in the state means passing the pension changes in SF2000, Specht said. Changes include increasing the cost-of-living adjustments in the pension and ending the delay for those adjustments to take effect, she added.

With state budget forecasters projecting Minnesota to have a $6 billion budget deficit by the 2028-29 budget cycle, lawmakers say any bill that comes with a high price tag will face scrutiny.

Rep. Mary Frances Clardy, DFL-Inver Grove Heights, said the projected budget deficit and federal government budget cuts are forcing Minnesota legislators to rethink funding priorities even for bipartisan legislation.

HF1582 is expected to cost around $285 million annually and HF2329 around $75 million, according to chief author of HF2318 and HF2329 Rep. Danny Nadeau, R-Rogers.

Money from the general fund would pay for the employer contribution increases, and Nadeau said he hopes to pass HF2201 , which would free up around $85 million through changes to the universal school meals program to help pay for the pensions.

Nadeau said that while there is cost associated with improving teacher pensions, keeping pensions unchanged also has fiscal impact on local school districts.

“Our education system is going to pay for this one way or the other. They’re going to pay for it by teachers staying longer at the higher salaries,” he said. “There’s going to be a cost in class sizes. There’s going to be a cost in athletic fees.”

Gustafson said improving teacher retirement pensions will bring other benefits like saving school districts money by replacing longtime teachers with newer ones at lower salaries.

“Bringing in new teachers means all sorts of good things,” she said. “It’s developing the teachers of our future and the workforce that our schools are looking for and, quite frankly, a lot of those costs for earlier salaries are lower than those who have been working for 30, 40 years.”

All of the bills are awaiting a hearing in their respective committees.

Specht said that if the proposed pension legislation doesn’t pass, Minnesota’s public education system will be weaker.

“If we don’t invest in our educators from our pay, our pensions and better benefits, we’re going to see people choosing other professions and leaving the profession. We can’t have that,” she said. “We have a great public education in the state of Minnesota, but we need to continue to invest in our public school educators so that they continue to stay in our public schools.”

Two commercial corners of downtown St. Paul folded Thursday, casting grim shadows on once-promising business corridors hard hit by the pandemic, online shopping and the advent of remote work.

Workers at the downtown St. Paul Lunds & Byerlys store said their final goodbyes to customers on Thursday as a 50% off sale ushered in the grocery’s permanent closure after more than a decade of operation on 10th Street. The store, which opened in 2014, employed at least 30 workers; those with at least five years of employment history with the company were offered placement in other Lunds & Byerlys locations.

News of its closure came as a surprise to Gareth Horvath, a former laboratory director with the Minnesota Department of Agriculture, who had driven downtown from River Falls, Wis. to conduct genealogical research nearby. Before his retirement two years ago, he enjoyed lunch at the Lunds deli buffet about twice a week, he said.

“I just heard on the news that state employees are coming back (in person) half time,” said Horvath, recalling how his lab unit showed up downtown daily, even as other state employees went fully remote. “That might have helped. It might have.”

On Thursday afternoon, after serving up his last slice of pizza at the Alliance Bank Center, Pino Lipari, Jr. promised to reopen Pino’s Pizzeria in a different corner of downtown St. Paul within a matter of weeks, continuing the skyway lunch counter tradition his father and namesake launched 37 years ago.

Signs explain the hours at the Lunds & Byerlys grocery store in downtown St. Paul on Thursday, March 27, 2025. A 50% off sale ushered in the grocery’s permanent closure Thursday after more than a decade of operation on 10th Street. (John Autey / Pioneer Press)

“A small hiatus,” said Lipari, Jr., pinching his thumb and pointer finger close together as he predicted better days ahead within the Town Square food court on Cedar Street. “In with the new.”

The few remaining skyway vendors at the Alliance Bank Center began closing shop forever on Thursday, days after receiving notice to vacate because property owner Madison Equities had stopped paying for utilities, security and maintenance.

Next steps, new stops?

Among the recent departures were Paul A. Hartquist Jewelers and B’s Barbershop, both of whom could measure their time downtown in decades. Both plan to reopen shortly within the Town Square complex. A sign in the Skyway Mart convenience store advertised a May 1 reopening within Town Square, which consists of three buildings around 445 Minnesota St. and 444 Cedar St.

Hartquist on Thursday predicted he would be back in business within a week, and said he was optimistic that a greater concentration of skyway vendors within fewer downtown locations would benefit customers and vendors alike.

“Hopefully the skyway revives a little bit,” Hartquist said.

Meeting as the St. Paul Housing and Redevelopment Authority on Wednesday, the St. Paul City Council authorized spending up to $70,000 on relocation assistance grants for the 14 Alliance Bank Center tenants who were still on site as of March 1. Each grant would measure no more than $5,000.

Officials with Southern Minnesota Regional Legal Services, which is relocating 60 attorneys, paralegals and office workers from two floors of the Alliance Bank Center, have estimated that the full cost of finding a new space could total $500,000 after storage, build-out, deposit and moving costs.

Construction barricades surround the downtown St. Paul Lunds-Byeryls on Friday, Mar. 7, 2025. The upscale grocer announced that its 10th and Robert St. store will close on Wednesday, March 26th. (John Autey / Pioneer Press)

Like the state, St. Paul Mayor Melvin Carter has also ordered city government office workers back to work in person on a hybrid schedule. They returned at least twice a week as of last fall and will be expected downtown three times per week as of April 1.

The St. Paul Downtown Alliance, a partnership between City Hall and major downtown employers, recently launched the Downtown Development Corporation, a nonprofit effort to connect developers and property owners to new capital and position old office buildings for their second life, possibly as residential towers.

Office-to-residential tax credits

Meanwhile, on Thursday morning state Sen. Zaynab Mohamed, DFL-Minneapolis, presented a bill to the Senate Taxes Committee to create the Catalyzing Underutilized Buildings tax credit, which will offer financial incentive for developers to pursue office-to-residential conversions.

While some former tenants have expressed their doubts, a Gensler real estate report commissioned by the Downtown Alliance found that the Alliance Bank Center — as well as nine other commercial structures out of 20 downtown St. Paul buildings surveyed — would be a strong candidate for residential conversion.

Still, members of the city council and other downtown stakeholders have made no secret that some outdated office buildings will not easily lend themselves to preservation and redevelopment, and may have to be torn down.

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Minnesota lost a net 700 jobs in February, effectively flat over the month, and the state’s unemployment rate stayed at 3.0% for the fifth month in a row, the state’s Department of Employment and Economic Development said in a news release Thursday.

This compares with January, when the state added 9,600 jobs, according to a DEED release last week.

“Overall Minnesota continues to have a strong labor market with jobs numbers remaining stable in February,” said DEED Commissioner Matt Varilek in the release. “And over the year job growth is solid at 1.4% in Minnesota, outpacing the national rate of 1.3%. This is good news both for employers and our labor force.”

The state’s unemployment rate compares with a national unemployment rate of 4.1%. Minnesota’s labor force participation rate also stayed steady at 68.1% in February, compared with 62.4% nationally. This measures the percentage of working age people in the state either employed or actively seeking a job and is used to calculate the headline unemployment rate.

Over the past 12 months, Minnesota employers added 40,600 jobs — job growth that was faster than the nation in terms of total non-farm employment as well as private sector employment.

Five of the 11 supersectors in the state gained jobs in February, led by strong months for Education & Health Services (up 2,100 jobs), Professional & Business Services (1,900 jobs) and Manufacturing (600 jobs). Five supersectors lost jobs, with Leisure and Hospitality (2,900), and Trade, Transportation & Utilities (1,600) posting the highest decreases. Government lost 400 jobs over the month.

Wages in Minnesota continued to be strong in February, rising more than double the rate of inflation, according to DEED.

Of alternative measures of unemployment, the broadest, called the U-6, increased to 6.6% in February, flat with January. This measure factors in people who have voluntarily left the labor force, such as stay-at-home parents, discouraged workers who have stopped seeking jobs, and part-time or otherwise marginally employed workers.

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By DAVID KLEPPER, Associated Press

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Trump administration’s use of a popular messaging app to discuss sensitive military plans — with a journalist on the text chain — is raising questions about security and the importance of safeguarding the nation’s secrets.

It’s also highlighting the differences between classified and public information, and demonstrating that even encrypted apps like Signal can lead to embarrassing leaks if the humans doing the texting don’t follow basic security tips.

What’s the difference between ‘classified’ and ‘top secret’?

President Donald Trump’s administration says no classified material was leaked when senior officials used Signal to discuss upcoming attack plans against the Houthi rebels in Yemen — even though a journalist was on the chat.

But even if the information had been declassified by the Pentagon, it contained details that would have been highly valuable to the Houthis or other adversaries, showing how sometimes the decision of what to classify is a judgment call.

Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard, center, is flanked by FBI Director Kash Patel, left, and CIA Director John Ratcliffe, as the Senate Intelligence Committee holds its worldwide threats hearing, on Capitol Hill in Washington, Tuesday, March 25, 2025. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite)

The federal government routinely classifies vast amounts of information pertaining to military and intelligence operations. The material ranges from top secret nuclear programs or the identities of undercover agents all the way to mundane records that would be of little interest to anyone, let alone America’s adversaries. In 2011, for example, the CIA finally declassified its recipe for invisible ink — from 1917.

Advocates for open government have long complained that the push for secrecy goes too far, by protecting information that could shine a light on government activities or matters of public interest, including about UFO sightings and a 60-year-old presidential assassination.

While the public typically calls any information withheld by the government “classified,” that term only refers to the three broad categories used to “classify” information based on the need for secrecy: confidential, secret and top secret.

While files marked “confidential” contain information that’s not meant to be released, the need for security or access restrictions isn’t as great as for material considered “top secret,” which includes the nation’s nuclear secrets and other material that, if released, could pose a grave danger to national security.

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Bondi signals probe into Signal chat is unlikely, despite a long history of similar inquiries

While the Pentagon hasn’t offered classification details about the information in the Signal chats, information about upcoming military strikes is typically tightly guarded to ensure adversaries don’t have advance warning that could jeopardize the mission or put American service members at risk.

The Pentagon closely guards even some publicly available information. Material categorized as “controlled unclassified information,” while not secret, is still considered sensitive enough that military service members are prohibited from discussing it on unsecured devices like personal phones.

Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard and CIA Director John Ratcliffe were asked about that policy during a Senate hearing this week as they were grilled over the Signal chat. Democratic Sen. Mark Kelly of Arizona noted that Department of Defense policy “prohibits discussion of even what is called controlled unclassified information on unsecured devices,” and asked if Ratcliffe and Gabbard, who oversees the nation’s 18 intelligence agencies, were aware of that rule.

“I haven’t read that policy,” Gabbard said.

“I’m not familiar with the DOD policy,” Ratcliffe said.

Who decides to classify or declassify something?

The power to classify or declassify lies in the hands of top federal officials, including the president and Cabinet secretaries. For military information like the attack plans discussed over Signal, the power lies with Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, who has faced demands that he resign over the leak.

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth prepares to give a television interview outside the White House, Friday, March 21, 2025, in Washington. (AP Photo/Mark Schiefelbein)

The president’s ability to declassify information has been invoked when presidents have been accused of mishandling secrets. In 2022, Trump ally Kash Patel, now the FBI director, testified that he witnessed Trump declassify material before FBI officials found it at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort.

The Pentagon hasn’t said whether Hegseth declassified the attack plans before or after the Signal conversation, but Ratcliffe, Gabbard and the White House have all said the chats contained no classified information.

“I haven’t participated in any Signal group messaging that relates to any classified information at all,” Ratcliffe proclaimed at one point.

That explanation has failed to satisfy Democrats who say that plans for imminent military strikes are regularly classified. National security experts agree. They say it would be highly unusual for the Pentagon to publicize such information and that any lower-level officer caught leaking such material on Signal would face serious repercussions.

There’s secure, and then there’s secure enough forclassified secrets

For many consumers, encrypted apps like Signal can offer greater protections for everyday conversations. But that doesn’t mean they’re secure enough for government secrets, or immune to human error, as the inclusion of a reporter on the text chain shows.

Senior federal officials who handle classified data receive extensive training about the need to use approved devices and platforms to discuss government secrets. Intelligence and national security agencies have whole departments devoted to cybersecurity and the protection of state secrets.

The Signal app on a smartphone is seen on a mobile device screen Tuesday, March 25, 2025, in Chicago. (AP Photo/Kiichiro Sato)

Government cybersecurity officials have recommended that federal employees use encrypted apps like Signal, which can offer greater security for routine communication, and Ratcliffe said this week it was a “permissible” app for senior officials to use. But the app is only as secure as the device it’s downloaded onto.

The government’s most sensitive information is typically discussed in a facility known as a sensitive compartmented information facility, or SCIF, which is designed to allow officials to review or discuss secrets without fear of eavesdropping or cyber intrusion.

Any senior official using a personal device to discuss classified material could be at risk of cyberespionage, said Michael Williams, an expert on international relations and national security at Syracuse University.

“Signal may be encrypted, but it’s the devices that are really the issue,” Williams said. “All of these people are being targeted.”