For the second time, Senator Eric Pratt (R-Prior Lake) and the Minnesota Senate voted to end Governor Tim Walz’s peacetime emergency powers relative to the COVID pandemic. If the House agrees, it would end the state’s longest peacetime emergency in history. Gov. Walz first put the state under emergency powers on March 13, 2020.

“Our present COVID situation is much, much different than it was four months ago,” said Sen. Pratt. “At the beginning, the governor argued that he needed emergency powers to respond rapidly to a brand-new crisis. Now we have enough PPE, enough beds, and enough resources to manage the pandemic. The state is prepared to handle a COVID crisis and ready to handle another possible spike in the fall. It is well past time to restore a fair balance of power between the governor and the legislative branch.”

 The vote to end the governor’s peacetime emergency powers was 36-31, with one Democrat joining all 35 Republicans supporting the resolution.