After 16 months, Minnesota’s coronavirus peacetime emergency will officially be over Thursday.
State lawmakers in both the House and Senate overnight Wednesday voted to end Gov. Tim Walz’s emergency powers July 1. Those powers gave him sweeping legal authority to control commerce and personal liberties during the deadly COVID-19 pandemic that has killed more than 7,000 people in the state.
Walz had initially intended to hold onto the powers until Aug. 1, but late Tuesday a deal emerged with Walz and Republican and Democratic lawmakers — and the blessings of federal officials — that would allow him to relinquish his powers Thursday while still having access to tens of millions of dollars in federal funding under a less-expansive “health emergency.”
During chaotic late-night sessions of both the Republican-controlled Senate an the Democratic-controlled House, it became unclear whether Walz would officially give up his powers, or they would officially be stripped by lawmakers — a largely technical distinction that is certain to carry political bragging rights.
What was clear was that the swift end to the emergency was a piece of a delicate deal to gain bipartisan support for a two-year state budget and avoid a state government shutdown.
In the end, it appears the Legislature gets to claim those bragging rights. And Republicans, who have pushed for an end to the emergency declaration for months, did.
“Ending emergency powers is a legislative prerogative,” Senate Majority Leader Paul Gazelka, R-East Gull Lake, said in a statement shortly after his chamber’s vote — one of many the Senate has taken over the course of the pandemic. “The Governor has held onto these powers far too long and used them far too broadly. We’ve been clear that we were going to end these powers, so I’m not surprised Walz tried to outmaneuver us — but he does not get to say he let them go. The emergency is over because the Senate and the House said so.”
“The peacetime emergency has finally come to an end, and the legislature has once again taken back its place as a co-equal branch of government,” House Minority Leader Kurt Daudt, R-Crown, said after the House voted — unanimously — to end the peacetime emergency.
Wednesday evening, Walz said he was glad it’s over.
“I’m the happiest man in the state,” he told reporters. “I’m happy because we’ve finally reach (nearly) 70 percent (vaccinations of eligible Minnesotans). I’m happy because COVID has become a chronic management issue rather than an emergency. I’m happy because I think it takes some tension off. … It seemed almost unimaginable last summer.”
(The battle over bragging rights even contained subplots, as there remained some dispute Wednesday afternoon as to whether the state of emergency actually ended the moment the House voted in the early hours, as some Republicans contended.)
Walz declared the emergency in March 2020 as the COVID-19 pandemic was reaching Minnesota. Like governors across the nation with similar statutes, Minnesota’s laws afforded him unprecedented powers over commerce, education, travel and basic personal liberties.
They also gave the state access to certain parts of vast federal sums of money approved for coronavirus response, such as testing, vaccinations and relief programs for those affected.
But the powers also allowed him to effectively shut down entire sectors of the economy — a move that angered Republicans, some of whom opposed nearly all government COVID restrictions within the first few months of them being enacted. Seeing an end to Walz’s peacetime emergency has been a headline demand for Republicans as lawmakers attempt to finalize a two-year state budget while staring down a Wednesday night deadline.
Part of Walz’s plan to relinquish his powers involved agreement with the U.S. Department of Agriculture that would ensure $45 million in federal hunger-relief funds would not be jeopardized because they will be distributed under a “health emergency” instead, Walz said in a statement before the Legislature acted.
Cases in Minnesota have fallen rapidly recently, and an increasing number of governors are ending their emergency declarations as well.
