Conditions of Gov. Tim Walz’s order for state employees to return to the office at least half-time are loosening as the state continues negotiating a new contract with thousands of employees.

Under a recent revision to the remote work rule, workers will now be exempt if they live more than 50 miles from their main work site. When Walz first issued the order in late March, the distance was 75 miles.

Around 60% of state employees currently work in person and did so throughout the pandemic, according to the governor’s office. The state has about 50,000 employees.

Employees working remotely will have to report to the office at least 50% of the time starting June 1, if Walz doesn’t change his order.

The change to the distance part of the rule comes as the state negotiates a new contract with the Minnesota Association of Professional Employees, which represents about 18,000 state workers.

In a statement, Megan Dayton, the union’s president, said they were aware of the threshold change but that they still oppose the return to office order.

“We view this as a cosmetic adjustment to an inherently flawed policy that continues to disrupt state operations, require unnecessary costs and destabilize the workforce without addressing any clear operational need,” she wrote.

Dayton didn’t offer further comment as contract negotiations with the state are ongoing, though she added MAPE will continue to advocate for a “telework policy that reflects modern workforce realities and respects the expertise and needs of public employees.”

State employee unions said Walz’s return-to-office order in late March took them by “total surprise.” They argued it meant significant disruptions to the lives of families, who may have to find new day care arrangements or ways to balance in-office work with taking kids to and from school.

The governor at the time said bringing employees back to the office would help state agencies boost collaboration and “build strong organizational cultures more easily.”

“We think this is reasonable, it’s certainly within the realm of where most other states go,” Walz said, while speaking with reporters outside the Capitol on Wednesday.

St. Paul Mayor Melvin Carter said he had been discussing the change with the governor for weeks before the announcement.

In August, Carter announced that St. Paul would require city employees to return to work in person three days a week starting on April 1.

Many have argued bringing more state workers back to the office will bring a much-needed boost to an ailing downtown St. Paul, which is home to many state government agencies.

The district has struggled recently with high office vacancies following the rise of remote work during the pandemic, something business owners say has hurt their bottom lines.

Business leaders welcomed Walz’s change, with the St. Paul Area Chamber calling it a much needed “shot in the arm.”

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A man has been charged in a high-speed crash that killed a nun last year.

Damien John Brown, 24, of Duluth, is accused of criminal vehicular homicide and operation in the May 2024 collision that led to the death of Sister Arlene Kleemann more than six weeks later.

A criminal complaint alleges that Brown was fleeing from the scene of another collision when he blew through a stop sign in the Central Hillside neighborhood, striking the car Kleemann was riding in at a speed of at least 73 mph.

Kleemann, 80, a longtime educator residing at the St. Scholastica Monastery, suffered several serious injuries and her condition deteriorated until her death in June.

Brown has an extensive history of traffic offenses and reportedly was driving with a revoked license at the time of the crash. He is separately facing a wrongful death lawsuit.

According to court documents:

Brown was speeding east on Fourth Street when his Ford Fusion crashed into a Subaru Forester driven by Elizabeth Strickland at the intersection of Lake Avenue around 6 p.m. May 9.

Witnesses said Strickland had stopped as she headed north, but Brown made no attempt to slow for the four-way stop.

Kleemann, who was in the front passenger seat, was hospitalized for injuries that included a broken leg, multiple broken ribs, a fractured sternum, a fractured vertebrae, a kidney injury and a collapsed lung. She underwent emergency surgery, but “did not respond positively and continued in acute trauma condition.”

Brown, who was bleeding slightly but “seemed OK physically other than being shaken up,” admitted to an officer that he was at fault for the crash.

He stated he was on Interstate 35 when he “brake checked” a truck, which then rear-ended his Fusion, causing him to lose control and swipe a Chevrolet Suburban. He said he pulled over at first, but then panicked because he realized his driving privileges were revoked.

Brown told the officer he exited I-35 at Mesaba Avenue, with the Suburban following him. He turned onto Fourth Street, estimating he reached speeds of 50-55 mph and admitting he drove through the stop sign.

Kleemann was eventually moved to a skilled nursing facility but never made a complete recovery as her condition “gradually retrograded” until her death June 24. A medical examiner cited the cause as “complications of multiple blunt trauma force injuries due to a motor vehicle collision.”

Duluth police investigator Adam Gonnerman later completed an accident reconstruction, determining Brown was traveling approximately 85 mph moments before the crash and that the car was going at least 73 mph when the collision occurred.

Authorities noted the speed limit there is 30 mph and that it is a high-density residential area with significant foot traffic.

Court records show Brown has been convicted at least 13 times for driving without a valid license or after suspension or revocation. He has three speeding offenses on his record in Minnesota and he has been convicted of impaired driving, careless driving, hit-and-run property damage, possession of marijuana in a motor vehicle and failing to use a seat belt.

Brown last week was issued a summons to make an initial appearance in St. Louis County District Court on June 2.

A lawsuit was filed in February by the nun’s sole surviving heir, her 85-year-old brother, George Kleemann, of Illinois. The suit alleges negligence and seeks in excess of $50,000 in damages, a boilerplate figure often used in civil complaints.

Brown has filed a standard answer formally denying the allegations; the suit remains in its preliminary stages.

Kleemann, according to an obituary, was born and raised in Chicago, entering the St. Scholastica Monastery in 1961 and making her first monastic profession two years later. She earned a bachelor’s degree in education and music from St. Scholastica in 1966 and was a teacher and principal at St. James Catholic School in West Duluth.

Kleemann returned to her home parish in Chicago and taught at several schools there for more than 40 years, also earning a master’s degree in pastoral ministry from Loyola University in 1983. Her ministry focused on “teaching children of recent immigrants from around the world and helping their families adjust to a new life.”

Kleemann had returned to Duluth in 2023, according to the obituary.

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Hundreds of seniors concerned about potential Medicare and Social Security cuts under President Donald Trump and a Republican-controlled Congress gathered outside the Minnesota Capitol Wednesday to protest and hear from Democratic-Farmer-Labor elected officials.

Minnesota DFL Senior Caucus members, including retirees and veterans chanted slogans ranging from “No one is going to save us, we must keep protesting,” to “Thoughts and prayers will not empty bedpans,” as they rallied on the 101st day of the Trump presidency.

“I am out here for the people that I love who are dependent on Social Security as their only source of income in their retirement,” said Nettie Monroe, 68, of Shoreview, a retired special education teacher who collects both a pension and Social Security, but has family members who only have government help in retirement.

Juanita and David Blandenburg from Lakeville, hold there picture frame protest sign during a Stop the Cuts protest at the State Capitol building on Wednesday, April 30, 2025. (John Autey / Pioneer Press)

Since taking office in January, the Trump administration has made major cuts in the federal workforce and spending without Congressional action. The administration has proposed cutting tens of thousands of jobs at the Department of Veterans Affairs, the Department of Health and Human Services.

It’s also possible the Republican-controlled Congress could approve legislation to cut hundreds of billions of dollars from Medicaid — the federal medical assistance program for people with lower incomes.

Speakers at the rally included Attorney General Keith Ellison, Secretary of State Steve Simon and DFL state lawmakers. And many at the rally were self-described Democratic voters who said they have participated in protests in the past.

Though retired air traffic controller Steve Long and Cecilia Riedman, who retired from a career in the soft drinks industry, said they only recently became involved in protesting against the Trump administration after moving to the Twin Cities from northern Minnesota.

Both described themselves as moderate, independent voters concerned about what they described as abuses of power under Trump, and said they decided to participate in DFL Senior Caucus action at the urging of their more partisan-leaning friends.

“I’m so tired of hearing them called entitlements. We paid into it pretty much all of our working careers,” said Long.

“It’s in general just the disrespect for the Constitution,” Riedman said, adding that beyond cuts to benefits, she was also concerned about potential damage to higher education and research.

Minnesota Attorney Keith Ellison rallies protestors during a “Stop the 100 Days of Destruction!” rally at the State Capitol building in St. Paul on Wednesday, April 30, 2025. (John Autey / Pioneer Press)

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Members of the public who listen to St. Paul police’s emergency radio dispatches will be met by radio silence beginning this fall.

The police department is moving to encrypt its communications with dispatchers and officers. They say it’s to meet privacy requirements and for the safety of officers. For scanner listeners, especially those who post in real-time on social media about what they’re hearing, they say it takes away transparency.

The move to encryption has been seen around the Twin Cities: Minneapolis’ main emergency-response communications channels will become fully encrypted Thursday. Dakota, Washington and Hennepin counties previously encrypted law enforcement dispatches, and Anoka County is making plans to do so.

Ramsey County Sheriff Bob Fletcher announced the St. Paul Police Department’s plans, before the department had publicized them, during his “Live on Patrol” livestream on Friday night.

“The only way you really have accountability is if you have transparency,” Fletcher said in his livestream, adding that he’d learned the day before about St. Paul’s plans and saying he’s opposed to encryption. “We think the public ought to be able to hear what’s going on. The argument for encryption … has been officer safety, but we’ve been at this for 45 years, and rarely, rarely are there issues of officer safety because of calls being transmitted.”

St. Paul Deputy Police Chief Tim Flynn said in a Wednesday interview that officer safety “is always a concern of mine.”

When a major incident is quickly unfolding, information is currently publicly dispatched before officers have time to coordinate the switch to an encrypted channel, Flynn said. In a standoff, that could include where officers are located along a perimeter, which could put them at risk, information about negotiations and details about a “person who’s currently in crisis,” Flynn said. “And these are things that simply cannot be broadcast.”

State laws, regulations and FBI rules require law enforcement to protect sensitive information about investigations and crime victims, according to Leah Palmer, director of the Minnesota Department of Public Safety’s Emergency Communication Networks division.

‘Huge step backwards,’ says scanner listener group

News media outlets traditionally monitor police scanners, so they know about major incidents and can get to the scene to cover them. There has also been a large increase in people listening to scanners — public feeds are available for free online — and posting about what they’re hearing on social media.

Rick Abbott, founder and owner of MN Crime, has 337,000 followers on Facebook and 125,000 on X (formerly Twitter). He and volunteers listen to emergency radio dispatches and post about them on Facebook and X, updating as they get more information.

“It’s a huge step backwards in terms of public safety, accountability and transparency,” he said Wednesday of agencies deciding to encrypt. “… A lot of people rely not only on my group, but several others in the Twin Cities, to find out what’s happening.”

Having information in real time can help keep people safer in their neighborhoods or places they’re visiting, and could prompt witnesses to a crime to come forward if they’re aware of a description of a suspect or suspect vehicle, Abbott said.

MN Crime started in 2018. Abbott said he’s learned to wait to post, for example, until police respond to a shooting and he hears them dispatch that it’s safe for medics to come into the scene. He said he doesn’t want to jeopardize investigations or the safety of first responders.

In posts about the topic of encryption, Abbott said MN Crime’s social-media followers seem split down the middle between thinking it’s a good idea and disagreeing with the change.

Police radio dispatches also have “an oversight purpose,” said Matt Ehling, board member of Minnesotans for Open Government.

“For folks that are concerned about … tracking police activity and accountability, these are very useful channels to be able to know in real time what police agencies are up to,” he said. “It’s often the first indication that police are undertaking certain activities.”

St. Paul Fire Department also plans to encrypt

There won’t be an additional cost to St. Paul police to encrypt its radios, Deputy Chief Flynn said. The radios purchased by the department about four years ago all have encryption capabilities and they’ll be programmed by department staff, Flynn added. They plan to start encryption in October and be finished programming in January.

Flynn said he’s heard of a success story of an agency that encrypted its dispatches — law enforcement responded to a report of people trying to use stolen credit cards and surprised the suspects when they arrived because they’d had a scanner with them, and expected to hear when law enforcement was dispatched.

The St. Paul Fire Department currently has a limited number of encrypted radios. When the department purchases new radios in batches, as funding is available, they intend to buy ones that will be encrypted, said Deputy Fire Chief Jamie Smith.

For the rest of Ramsey County, there are plans to encrypt the data channel that airs information that now needs to be encrypted, but not the county’s main channels used by other agencies, said Casper Hill, a county spokesman.

The FBI requires that certain information it maintains only be transmitted on encrypted channels, including about people who are convicted and on supervised release, sex offender registry information, missing people and various other types of information that was specified in a January memo from Minnesota’s Statewide Emergency Communications Board.

The “encryption requirement applies only if” information maintained by the FBI “is being communicated,” the memo said. “It does not require that a law enforcement main or county main be encrypted. It may require that agencies use an alternate talkgroup or other means of transmitting” such information.

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The city of Minneapolis announced April 14 that it was testing encryption to comply with data privacy regulations, and provide additional safety and privacy for first responders and residents; encryption takes effect on Thursday morning. The city rolled out a 911 emergency incidents dashboard, saying it would be updated every 30 minutes with incidents categorized by date, street and block number, and nature of the incident.

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Other local agencies that are encrypted for law enforcement dispatches include: Washington County since June, Dakota County since September 2023 and Hennepin County since 2019.

The Hennepin County Sheriff’s Office dispatches for 38 communities. Megan Larson, sheriff’s office spokeswoman, said the biggest reason for encryption today is to be in compliance with the FBI requirements.

Additionally, the information dispatched is preliminary information, “so the facts often can change when a deputy/officer arrives on scene,” Larson said. “People should be able to call 911 without fear that their personal information and incident details could be made public on social media, on the news.”

The Anoka County Emergency Communications Center – 911, which provides dispatch services for the entire county, will encrypt its main law enforcement channels; a date hasn’t yet been set, according to Erik Thorson, county spokesman.