Ramsey County has established an Economic Development Authority, allowing the county to assist small businesses in areas such as technical, advisory services and expansion.

The county’s Housing Redevelopment Authority previously was only able to fund specifically housing-related projects. With the addition of the EDA, the HRA’s levy funding now can be used more broadly, according to District 6 Commissioner Mai Chong Xiong. Small business programming, for example, would be allowed.

The creation of the EDA is allowed due an omnibus bill signed last month by Gov. Tim Walz.

“This legislation allows Ramsey County to use the HRA levy more flexibly by expanding what it can fund without adding another tax,” Xiong said in a May 27 statement. “That means deeper investments in small business support, commercial corridors, workforce infrastructure, and the stability of the neighborhoods we serve. Notably, the passage of the EDA comes at a critical time as counties brace for significant cuts to federal funding to housing, creating high-stakes urgency to stretch every local dollar further and smarter.”

City councils in the county who are members of the HRA must opt-in or opt-out of business programming through the passage of resolutions by June.

Expanding the HRA’s authority supports the county in taking a more modern approach to an affordable housing plan, said Rep. Liz Lee, DFL-St. Paul, who authored the legislation in the Minnesota House. It will allow the county to focus on needs beyond just housing.

It could mean affordable housing units above a nonprofit laundromat, Lee said. It will help officials create a community people want to live in, rather than just concentrating those living in poverty into public housing.

Mixed-use projects can be challenging to develop across the entire county, said Josh Olson, Ramsey County’s director of Community and Economic Development.

“I think the two things that I would say is, this is about flexibility more than anything else. It’s about our opportunity to kind of support the community in a proactive but also holistic way.” Olson said. “The other is, the county is going to remain focused on affordable housing. That is, and has been the lion’s share of how we’ve spent the HRA, and I expect that to not change substantially even with this change in legislation.”

The flexibility ties into the county’s Economic Competitiveness and Inclusion Plan, with the county focusing on adding affordable housing, redevelopment, businesses and workforce, Olson said.

“We’ve been in a housing crisis here, nationally, regionally, and we have felt that we still can intend to invest heavily through our multiple uses, but that investing solely in housing or narrowly in housing doesn’t get the county out of a housing crisis,” Olson said. “And so one aspect of that is in that intersection where it supports businesses, and that, in turn, supports job opportunities and job growth as well as wage growth. And so that’s really kind of the nexus that links all these things.”

The county directed $11.1 million to affordable housing and redevelopment projects as part of the 2022-2023 budget.

Related Articles

Air quality alert extended to noon Wednesday throughout Minnesota

‘An absolute privilege’: Darts President Ann Bailey offers advice, reflects on 10 years in Dakota County aging services

Charges to be dismissed in St. Paul sexual assault case

Maplewood shooting: St. Paul man fired on car while kids cowered nearby, charges say

Police looking for hit-and-run driver who injured 2 pedestrians in Falcon Heights

WASHINGTON (AP) — A Romanian citizen pleaded guilty on Monday to engaging in a plot to use “swatting” calls and bomb threats to intimidate and threaten dozens of people with bogus police emergencies, including a former U.S. president and several members of Congress.

Related Articles

Sean ‘Diddy’ Combs’ ex-aide says she was ‘brainwashed’ when she sent loving texts years after rape

One Tech Tip: How to use your smartphone to photograph the Northern Lights

All international travelers should get measles vaccinations, CDC says

Husband of slain ‘King of the Hill’ actor Jonathan Joss says neighbor was homophobic

Renée Victor, the voice of no-nonsense Abuelita in ‘Coco,’ dies at 86

Thomasz Szabo, 26, is scheduled to be sentenced on Oct. 23 by U.S. District Judge Amy Berman Jackson in Washington, D.C.

Szabo was extradited from Romania in November 2024. He was charged with Nemanja Radovanovic, 21, of Serbia.

Szabo pleaded guilty to one count of conspiracy and one count of making bomb threats.

The two men targeted roughly 100 people with “swatting” calls to instigate an aggressive response by police officers at the victims’ homes, a federal indictment alleges.

A U.S. Secret Service agent’s affidavit doesn’t name the former U.S. president or any other officials identified as victims of the hoax calls.

The two defendants are not explicitly charged in the indictment with threatening a former president, but one of the alleged victims is identified as a “former elected official from the executive branch” who was swatted on Jan. 9. 2024. Radovanovic falsely reported a killing and threatened to set off an explosion at that person’s home, the indictment says.

Szabo told Radovanovic that they should pick targets from both the Republican and Democratic parties because “we are not on any side,” the indictment says.

“This defendant led a dangerous swatting criminal conspiracy, deliberately threatening dozens of government officials with violent hoaxes and targeting our nation’s security infrastructure from behind a screen overseas,” Attorney General Pam Bondi said in a statement.

Charges against Radovanovic are still pending. Online court records indicate that he hasn’t made any court appearances in Washington yet.

Already behind schedule, Minnesota lawmakers aim to complete a new state budget this week and head off the possibility of a government shutdown a month from now.

The final pieces of budget legislation are coming into focus. Once the last details are locked in, Gov. Tim Walz intends to call a special session. He told MPR News last week that he was aiming for Wednesday, but that could easily slip until later in the week.

The Legislature failed to complete much of the $66 billion two-year budget by a May 19 session adjournment deadline. Since then, small sets of negotiators have met mostly behind closed doors. That’s meant stakeholders and the public in general have had to scrape for details.

And for some lawmakers on the inside, they add that the process has been difficult for them as well.

“It was very difficult,” said Rep. Erin Koegel, a DFLer who helped fashion a final transportation plan. “There’s lots of egos, and it was a very hard process. It was uncomfortable and it was tense. And I’m hoping that maybe some lessons were learned this year, and we can go forward in a little bit more of a civil manner.”

The Republican co-chair of the House Taxes Committee told MPR News on Monday that he doesn’t think the proposal structured by Walz advisers and legislative leaders can pass.

“We put five months of thought into something they put five minutes of thought into, and I know which one’s going to be better,” said Rep. Greg Davids, of Preston. “I’m just not sure why any Republican would even consider voting for this. I don’t think it would pass the House or the Senate.”

What’s unusual about the Capitol now is that the House is tied between Democrats and Republicans. The working groups are chaired by three lawmakers — a Democrat from the Senate and House and a Republican from the House.

The legislation they’re writing will be voted on in public during that yet-scheduled special session.

Legislative leaders are hoping for an in-and-out session that takes one day or close to that.

But this year has been full of surprises, and it wouldn’t be a shock if lawmakers unhappy with the agreements drag it out to make a point or try to send things back to the bargaining table.

Plans available online

Most budget spreadsheets and policy agreements are online, although a few bill drafts are still to come.

An education finance bill popped up Monday. A tax bill was posted over the weekend.

The tax bill is 12 pages in total, meaning most items in dispute were tossed overboard. It’s a sharp contrast to last year’s tax package, which ran more than 1,400 pages and has attracted lawsuits for the inclusion of so many items that only loosely connect to the tax code.

The transportation plan Koegel worked on reflects a $115 million cut in the next two years and a bit more than that two years beyond that. The Spring Lake Park DFLer said her goal was to minimize cuts to mass transit.

But there were other pinch points that kept the transportation bill open for weeks, from discussions about emissions to the structure of mass transit.

As part of the agreement, electric vehicle owners will foot more of the transportation bill. EV owners will pay a surcharge to basically kick in money they’re not paying in gas taxes. Initially, that had been a flat amount. The final plan determines the surcharge based on a formula that factors in vehicle value and age.

The minimum fee at first will be $150 for full-electric cars and $75 for plug-in hybrids. But that could shift later as lawmakers study a charging system fee.

Some higher taxes

The “skinny” tax bill tapers exemptions for data centers. They won’t be able to avoid taxes on electricity use as they have before.

The cannabis products tax goes up from 10% to 15%.

Davids said the fact that it raises taxes overall is a nonstarter for him.

“It’s massive tax increases, and that’s not what our caucus is supposed to be about,” he said.

In the education bill — at more than $25 billion, it’s one of the biggest expenses in the state budget — there are changes to calculations for various per-student allowances. The bill includes more money to implement literacy curriculum changes.

There’s also a new task force set up to examine special education costs and look for ways to lower the rapid growth in those.

Districts will be expected to develop and implement cardiac emergency response plans for sudden cardiac events on their properties; those would have to be in place by the 2026-27 school year, and there is grant money in the bill to aid with the anticipated costs.

Individual bill fates unknown

Aside from when this special session will happen, it’s difficult to assess if there will be enough votes to pass all these bills.

The 67-67 House creates an unusual dynamic, and a 34-33 Senate led by DFLers doesn’t leave much room for defections either.

Related Articles

Letters: St. Paul should take care of what it has before spending on new things

Derrick Thompson’s trial begins in deaths of 5 women

Letters: Stop with the antisemitism

With no final MN budget deal in sight special session now likely in June

What Minnesota laws and policies changed after George Floyd? Here are 9 topics

The risk of a partial government shutdown and state employee layoffs next month remains for areas without enacted budgets. Layoff notices have started to go out to meet legal requirements for workers who could be furloughed.

As some remote-work employees start shifting back to office assignments under a Walz directive, state employee union leaders say the one-two punch is a lot to handle.

Leaders of the Minnesota Association of Professional Employees wrote in a memo to rank-and-file members late last week under a bolded heading of “Facing next week might feel scary.”

“We know these coming days will be hard,” it reads. “The people running the state didn’t give you the respect of a plan, but we’ll make sure you’re not left in the dark. You keep Minnesota running.”

Minneapolis police are investigating a shooting at Boom Island Park that left one person dead and five injured by gunfire Sunday night.

At a news conference Monday morning, police Chief Brian O’Hara said calls reporting shots fired started coming in around 9:30 p.m. on Sunday. Officers responded and found about 100 people in what O’Hara called a “very chaotic scene.”

Investigators believe there had been a large gathering at the park and an altercation led to gunfire. O’Hara said there were likely multiple shooters.

Police found three people injured in the park and another injured person in a car near the park entrance. All were taken to nearby hospitals. Two other people injured by gunfire transported themselves to the hospital.

A woman who was shot died at a hospital from her injuries. One of the other victims suffered life-threatening injuries. The remaining victims sustained non-life-threatening injuries.

Police also said another person was injured in the melee surrounding the shooting, but was not shot.

All of the victims were adults. Police have not shared their ages or other identifying information.

O’Hara said officers remained at the park Monday morning, cataloging an extensive scene.

“There are literally hundreds of pieces of evidence that they are going through,” O’Hara said. “It’s obvious that a whole lot of rounds were fired here.”

Related Articles

Coon Rapids man charged in shooting at UMN after Wayzata graduation

Two shot outside Mariucci Arena Friday released from hospital

Here are five ways to celebrate Pride month, from Pee-wee Herman to F1rst Wrestling

Derrick Thompson’s trial begins in deaths of 5 women

Letters: Stop with the antisemitism

A large number of friends and family members of the victims went to Hennepin County Medical Center after the shooting to check on victims, and police provided crowd control at the hospital.

O’Hara said police are following up on multiple leads. He said victims are cooperating with the investigation and asked anyone with information about the incident to come forward.