Senator Ron Latz

“It’s not surprising that we did not finish our work before the end of the 2021 legislative session when the weeks leading up to it, the Senate majority refused to take the conference committee action seriously. For weeks, we saw conference committees like the Judiciary and Public Safety Committee or the Environment Committee not taking up any hearings or doing any work when the gavel was in the Senate chair’s hands.

Senator Ron Latz (DFL-St. Louis Park), the ranking DFL Lead on the Judiciary and Public Safety Committee and a conferee on the conference committee for the Judiciary and Public Safety Budget releases the following statement:

Senator Ron Latz (DFL-St. Louis Park), the DFL lead on the Judiciary and Public Safety Committee, was appointed to serve on the Judiciary and Public Safety Conference Committee.

It was announced Tuesday afternoon that a guilty verdict had been found by the jury in the case of State of Minnesota v. Derek Michael Chauvin on all three of the counts of second-degree murder, third-degree murder, and second-degree manslaughter.

The Minnesota Senate passed the Senate Judiciary and Public Safety Omnibus budget bill Thursday, which provides $70 million, after making some accounting changes and funding Disaster Assistance, in new funding for the courts and Guardian Ad Litem program as well as other programs in the committee’s jurisdiction for employee compensation and health insurance costs.