Thanks to the recent November economic forecast, which revealed that a $1.3 billion budget surplus is headed to Minnesota’s schools to pay down the state’s $2 billion-plus K-12 aid shift, lawmakers could simply tout the good news and pass a budget for the next two years that leaves the state’s school funding structure in the same shape it’s been in for more than a decade.

One notable exception: Cravaack/Nolan CD 8 race

On Friday it was announced that longtime DFL attorney and former U.S. Senate candidate David Lillehaug and three judges are in consideration for the post, which is being vacated by retiring Associate Justice Helen Meyer. Meyer's last day is Aug. 10.

The new district maps coming in 2012 promise to alter Minnesota’s political landscape for at least the next decade. But one key decision made last week could have an outsized effect — and portend GOP gains — for districts in one very important part of the state: the metro area.

The lawsuit argued that body searches at airports -- a particularly common event for Ventura since he got a titanium hip implant several years ago -- violated his right against unreasonable and unwarranted searches.

Like all Minnesota counties and cities, Kandiyohi has to put together its initial property tax levy by Sept. 15. The central Minnesota county’s board of commissioners will be voting soon on a 2.6 percent levy increase for next year.

Mark Jenkins knows how hard it is to win a legislative election as an Independence Party candidate: He ran last fall in Senate District 55 against DFL incumbent Sen. Chuck Wiger, earning just a little over 7 percent of the total votes in the North St. Paul and Maplewood district.

Gov. Mark Dayton and the GOP-led Legislature are still a long way from solving the $5 billion budget deficit, despite taking several days off after negotiations collapsed last week and the state headed into a historic government shutdown.

Gov. Mark Dayton has suggested a novel approach to ending the protracted impasse over the state’s $5 billion budget deficit and averting a government shutdown. Under the Dayton administration’s shutdown blueprint, filed in Ramsey County District Court earlier this month, an outside mediator would be appointed to help drive the parties toward a resolution. The two possible budget referees suggested by the DFL governor: former Minnesota Supreme Court Chief Justice Kathleen Blatz and former Minnesota Supreme Court Associate Justice James Gilbert.

Of the five judges selected by Minnesota Supreme Court Chief Justice Lorie Gildea to oversee the state’s redistricting process, one is considered a “rising star” in the judicial world, another has ruled on a case that started a courtroom brawl, and yet another parlayed a tour guide job into a more than 20-year career as a corporate attorney. Together, the judges are widely considered a fair, well-equipped group to handle the contentious process of drawing the state’s political maps.