Despite a US Supreme Court ruling from last week saying that members aren't required to pay dues, Minnesota home health care workers have provided the state with enough signatures to start a union election here.

Dennis Flaherty, Mark Froemke, LaVonne Froemke and Jason George.

State Rep. Karen Clark, who was the lead sponsor of legislation legalizing same-sex marriage, will receive the lifetime achievement award as part of the fourth annual Leaders in Public Policy awards, sponsored by Capitol Report and Politics in Minnesota. Clark and the other honorees will be recognized at a ceremony at the Saint Paul Hotel on July 11.

If DFL majorities in the Minnesota House and Senate are to act on the brewing issue of frac sand extraction, they will first have to overcome internal differences that yawn as large as an open-pit mine.

The scene at the first public debate between candidates in Minnesota’s northeast 8th Congressional District this year was far tamer than the same event just two years ago.