Minnesota’s Democratic Attorney General Keith Ellison is asking the Republican-controlled Minnesota Senate to reconsider and provide 1.8 million dollars for seven more prosecutors in his office’s Criminal Division. Hennepin County Attorney Mike Freeman backs Ellison’s request, saying prosecution of some crimes is not being handled as well as it could be, due to insufficient resources. “I am not blaming my sisters and brothers in Greater Minnesota. If you got a county and you have two lawyers [prosecutors] and they have to do all the civil work… and then they have a first-degree homicide they have to do. We need the Attorney General’s Office to help them,” Freeman says.
Republicans respond the A-G’s Office already got a multi-million-dollar increase for fiscal 2022-23. G-O-P Senator Mary Kiffmeyer from Big Lake says Ellison had plenty of resources to shut down businesses last year and “has enough time and resources to prosecute crime now.”