Capitol View®

Reporting on State Politics and Government

Republicans in the Minnesota House and Senate are accusing DFL Secretary of State Mark Ritchie of overstepping his authority with a new online voter registration system. Ritchie’s office launched the system last month. It allows Minnesotans to register to vote or update their existing registration online. But in a letter to Legislative Auditor Jim Nobles, Read more →
Pawlenty’s view of debt ceiling different from when he was a candidate
WASHINGTON – What a difference a new job can make. As a GOP presidential candidate in 2011, former Gov. Tim Pawlenty told Iowa voters, “I hope and pray and believe they [Congress] should not raise the debt ceiling.” On Friday, as head of a major financial trade association in Washington, Pawlenty wrote top congressional leaders Read more →
Day three with work but no pay for some federal workers
Hundreds of thousands of federal workers remain on the job with no pay on this third day of the federal government shutdown. That includes thousands of workers in Minnesota. Shea Larson processes veterans’ claims at the Whipple Federal Building near the airport in south Minneapolis. Her position there has been categorized as “essential” so she Read more →
Minnesota’s top budget official is warning that state government cannot fill any of the funding gaps caused by a prolonged federal government shutdown. Minnesota Management and Budget Commissioner Jim Schowalter said that means some of an estimated 3,000 state workers in jobs that are primarily federally-funded will soon receive furlough notices. Under state employee contracts, Read more →
State government officials in Minnesota are still reluctant to predict how the federal government shutdown might effect their local work, mostly because they don’t know how long it might last. State finance officials at Minnesota Management and Budget were scheduled to meet Tuesday afternoon to discuss the shutdown, according to John Pollard, the department’s legislative Read more →
Federal workers in Minnesota hit by shutdown
Jane Nygaard is at ground zero of the government shutdown. Nygaard is the national vice president of the American Federation of Government Employees 8th District, the largest union of federal employees in Minnesota.  She represents workers in Minnesota, Iowa, Nebraska and the Dakotas. On Tuesday morning she was still trying to figure out exactly how…
Minnesota’s Democratic members of Congress are blaming Republicans in the US House for the federal government shutdown that began last night. Republicans insist that a short-term spending measure should contain some sort of delay or repeal of the 2010 Affordable Care Act. Here’s how some members of Minnesota’s congressional delegation framed the stalemate. DFL Sen. Read more →