Minnesota Lawyer
Indigenous women: Rep. Mary Kunesh-Podein, DFL-New Brighton, is optimistic that her Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women task force will come to pass.
Kunesh-Podein’s bill to form that task force, House File 3375, is included in the House Public Safety omnibus bill. That bill was expected get a committee vote Wednesday, after this story’s deadline.
That task force would consist of at least 25 people from law enforcement, the court system and the health care system along with tribal members and advocates. It would also include a county coroner.
It would examine what Kunesh-Podein and other proponents call an epidemic of domestic and sexual violence, sex trafficking and kidnapping against Native American women.
The panel would work to fill huge data gaps that shroud the true extent of the problem, Kunesh-Podein said. “There is no system to record accurately the number of missing and murdered women in Indian country,” she said.
“We need this data so that, along with our native colleagues, we can work to end this epidemic of violence,” said Angelica Perez, the Minnesota Coalition for Battered Women’s public policy program manager. “We believe this is a human rights issue and we need to act now.”
The task force would develop and recommend policies around policing, child welfare and coroner practices while searching for ways to reduce violence. It would act as liaison to the Public Safety Department commissioner and other government and non-governmental organizations, Kunesh-Podein said.
It would issue annual reports on the social, economic and cultural factors that make Native American women 2.5 times more likely to become victims of sexual violence than women of all other races, according to the U.S. Department of Justice. The task force would disband in June 2024.
Perez testified before the House Public Safety and Security Policy and Finance Committee on April 11, along with several Native American women who shared harrowing stories.
Mysti Babineau, a Red Lake Nation tribal member from St. Paul, told legislators stories she said she had never before shared. Fighting back sobs, she spoke of her mother’s disappearance when she was a child and of her own rape at age 9. As a middle schooler, she watched her grandmother’s murder and says her hands bear defensive scars as she tried to deflect knife blows from the same attacker.
Babineau said that several years later she was again raped, beaten and kidnapped in Isanti. She was driven to St. Paul where she fought off her abductors and escaped.
“My story is not rare,” Babineau said. “Many of my sisters, many of my relations go through this.” Indigenous women, she said, are “dehumanized and we are devalued.”
In an interview, Kunesh-Podein said she began working on the issue last summer after hearing a radio broadcast about a Canadian task force. “I was like, ‘OK, I’ve got to do this,’” she said. She began by soliciting help from scores of advocates, each of whom contacted lawmakers. Eventually, the freshman legislator reeled in numerous DFL and several Republican bill co-sponsors.
“I worked really hard,” she said. “I am not going to lie.”
Kunesh-Podein said her fondest hope, if the task force is formed, would be that it helps sort out the thorny jurisdictional problems that make prosecutions against Native America women difficult, particularly when the perpetrator is not a member of the tribe.
“My hope is that we find ways for all of our different law enforcement agencies to really work together to collect and share data so that our indigenous women in Minnesota don’t have to fear for their lives,” she said. “And so that they don’t have to teach their daughters how to fight.”
Guardians ad litem: The Senate committee responsible for financing courts has declined Gov. Mark Dayton’s request to shore up Minnesota’s struggling guardian ad litem system.
Guardian ad Litem Board Administrator Kristen Trebil-Halbersma (foreground) urges the Senate Judiciary and Public Safety Finance and Policy Committee Tuesday to adopt Gov. Mark Dayton’s $3.7 million request to hire 45 new staff for her program. Sen. Warren Limmer, who did not include that request in his 2019 supplemental judiciary budget, sits to her right. (Staff photo: Kevin Featherly)
The Judiciary and Public Safety supplemental omnibus finance bill passed by the Senate Judiciary committee late Tuesday does not finance the governor’s $3.7 million request to hire 45 guardian ad litem (GAL) program staff.
The House Public Safety omnibus bill, scheduled for a vote Wednesday after this story’s deadline, does include the governor’s full request. It would allow the GAL Board to hire 32.5 full-time equivalent guardians and 13 supervisors.
The board says the new hires are needed to comply with state and federal mandates in the face of a 71 percent statewide spike in juvenile court case filings since 2011.
Kristin Trebil-Halbersma, the GAL Board’s program administrator, said Monday that there were 3,470 juvenile case filings in 2011; in 2017, there were 5,923. Currently, she said, her guardians are working 7,766 cases—which equates to 16,771 kids statewide.
As demands have grown, she said, the GAL Board has cut back operating expenses and dedicated more money to staff. In 2014, she said, about 30 percent of the program’s budget went toward administrative costs. By 2017, only 13 percent of the budget was spent on operations.
“This impacts our ability to provide enhancements to our case management system, provide for board development or provide additional training in other operating needs for the organization,” Trebil-Halbersma said.
With juvenile court case filings mounting, the program has assigned fewer guardians assigned to family court cases, Trebil-Halbersma said—even though those cases can involve child safety. Meanwhile, supervisors have begun to assume caseloads just to keep pace with the onslaught of mandatory child protection assignments, she said.
The board’s budgetary woes are resurfacing just weeks after a Legislative Auditor’s report criticizing its performance. The report, for example, faults the GAL Board for failing to assign guardians in 494 juvenile cases where they were required. All 10 state judicial districts report they have waiting lists for assigned guardians, the report states.
Sen. Warren Limmer, R-Maple Grove, is the Judiciary committee’s chair. He said Tuesday he is reluctant to grant the program’s funding request before the Legislative Auditor’s nearly 100-page March 27 report has been fully vetted by lawmakers.
“I think it would be appropriate for us to study this over the interim and then come back with more complete knowledge of what is going on in the GAL,” Limmer said.
He also said that he is under tight spending constraints. Senate leadership has granted him only a $7.025 million budget target to fulfill all judiciary and public safety supplemental funding requests for 2019. “We were given a small target and we have to handle our deficiencies first,” he said.
The biggest deficiency is at the Department of Corrections. Last year, the Legislature only approved prison health care funding for fiscal year 2018. In the meantime, DOC renegotiated its health care vendor contract, reducing its projected 2019 costs by $3 million.
Dayton’s supplemental budget calls for $7.8 million to cover unfunded 2019 prison medical costs; the Senate Judiciary omnibus bills honors $6.6 million of that—taking up the lion’s share of Limmer’s spending limit. The House omnibus bill rejects the governor’s request outright.
That could lead to conflict when the House and Senate judiciary bills get hammered out in conference committee later in the session. The state is constitutionally required to cover inmates’ health costs, Limmer noted.
“So we are going to have a lively discussion,” he said.
