Minnesota lawmakers can access state funding to secure homes after June shootings
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Minnesota lawmakers will have access to additional state funding to secure their homes following a pair of shootings targeting elected officials.
Members of the state Senate and House will be able to draw up to $4,500 to cover the cost of home security systems, deadbolts and other safety features. The money will come from each chamber’s operation fund, according to the Secretary of the Senate Tom Bottern and a House official who spoke without being identified by name.
The move was first reported by WCCO.
Lawmakers have increasingly spoken of the need to safeguard their houses in the wake of a June fatal attack on House DFL Caucus Leader Melissa Hortman and her husband, Mark. They were shot in their Brooklyn Park home by a man impersonating a police officer. Sen. Mark Hoffman and his wife, Yvette, were shot in their home as well in a similar attack that also put their daughter, Hope, at risk.
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The suspect in both shootings faces state and federal charges. Authorities say he went to the homes of at least two other Democratic lawmakers and had a list of others in the car he abandoned when he fled the Hortman home.
State Sen. Julia Coleman, R-Waconia, used the new funding, along with money from her campaign account to bolster her home security system days after the shootings.
“The shooting and the assassination on June 14 was a huge awakening for me and my family,” Coleman said. “I’ve been able to secure my home enough that I can sleep at night again, and I really wasn’t able to until that was all set up.”
Others had safeguards put in place earlier but said they support the additional funding to ensure lawmakers feel safe when they’re back at home.
State Sen. Aric Putnam, DFL-St. Cloud, said he installed additional security measures at his home a couple years ago after he was threatened.
“I was experiencing some threats, so I used some campaign resources to install a security system in our house,” he said Thursday to MPR News. “With me being out, down at the Capitol four months out of the year, we thought it was a prudent and important and necessary investment.”
Putnam used campaign funds for those security measures. State law permits candidates to use up to $3,000 from their campaign accounts toward security costs.
A Minnesota House official who spoke only on the condition of anonymity said there would be an effort to continue the funding automatically into the future. The goal is to ensure that lawmakers elected later could also access security enhancements.
Putnam said he thinks adding more allowances for security for public officials is a good idea.
“I think it's important that legislators feel safe, and that people who get involved in public safe public service have some degree of safety,” he said, adding that he thinks that should extend to Supreme Court justices and others.
“There's lots of folks who get involved in public service and in becoming public you kind of lose control over some of those boundaries,” Putnam continued. “So whatever we can do to kind of help maintain those boundaries so that people can maintain as normal life as they can, I think is a good thing.”
Congress has also taken similar action recently to increase funding for lawmakers’ safety when they’re away from the Capitol.
Additional conversations about Capitol area security ongoing and a panel tasked with managing safety on the Capitol complex is scheduled to meet Aug. 20.
