Legislative leaders are set to meet later today as they try to hammer out a compromise on state aid to restaurants, bars and other businesses temporarily closed by the governor’s COVID emergency order. House Speaker Melissa Hortman says 100-thousand Minnesotans are also coming close to exhausting unemployment benefits — but indicates the state can only provide a bridge. “The level of need that our businesses have, the level of need that workers have, can only be met in any significant way with the resources of the federal government,” she says.
Hortman says it’s her “sincere hope” that a state aid package will be ready to pass when the governor calls lawmakers back into special session next Monday (12/14). State law requires he give the legislature a chance to weigh-in after extending his COVID emergency orders.