Star Tribune
Duplex bill, facing opposition from local leaders, likely doomed this session
A bill aiming to make it legal to build duplexes on any residential lot in Minnesota is out in the cold this session.
The bill, carried by Rep. Larry Kraft, DFL-St. Louis Park, would create statewide zoning rules requiring cities to allow duplexes, small apartment buildings with up to six units, and smaller single-family homes. In suburban cities especially, local zoning rules make it essentially illegal to build anything other than a large, single-family home.
Many city leaders balked at the bill and asked lawmakers not to support it, tanking its chances this session. It would have been a disruption to the status quo, said Rep. Mike Howard, DFL-Richfield, who chairs the Housing Finance and Policy Committee, adding that legislators “heard from cities the sky was going to fall.”
City leaders, for their part, said they worried about ceding power to the state and about how more duplexes would affect their communities, and wondered if the bill would really make housing more affordable.
South St. Paul Mayor Jimmy Francis said he worried the bill would make it more profitable for a landowner or corporation to knock down an existing single-family home and build a fourplex and even an accessory dwelling unit in its place. They could then rent it out for five times as much, he said.
“We’ve been fervently working on this issue for decades and to have that local control taken away is not in the best interest of any of our residents in our city or any other city,” Francis said. “I’m screaming for local control right now because we’re right there with boots on the ground.”
Prior Lake Mayor Kirt Briggs said mayors and city leaders came together quickly to oppose the bill, making sure their legislators knew about their concerns — such as infrastructure that wouldn’t be able to handle even a small apartment building because city sewer and water pipes couldn’t accommodate increased capacity. He also said the bill undermined the work that cities do to create comprehensive plans.
Briggs said those opposing the bill included some superintendents, real estate agents and local chambers of commerce. He said he worried that pieces of the bill could be resurrected next year or included in this year’s omnibus bill.
Though the bill appears to be dead this session, Kraft said he wants to keep trying.
“I think we’ve started a really important conversation, and raised the profile of the issue in cities around the state,” he said.
For the League of Minnesota Cities, a path forward would be more of an opt-in system, and not a statewide requirement. “That would be far more likely to result in meaningful changes to housing density, affordability and availability, and could be better tailored to individual community needs and sensitive to regional market differences,” said League lobbyist Daniel Lightfoot in an email.
Kraft said that after hearing cities’ concerns, the starting point would be much different. But ultimately, he said, it will be important to have a statewide standard so that smaller and more affordable homes can be built in any city, rather than in just a few islands of less-expensive places.
“We have to address this housing deficit we have,” Kraft said. “We are not doing right by the next generation.”
Howard said the Housing Committee will shift its focus to another bill that would create a statewide requirement to allow apartment buildings in commercial zones. Briggs said he thought that bill, carried by Rep. Liish Kozlowski, DFL-Duluth, could bring “significant harm” to a city like Prior Lake by taking a bite out of the potential commercial tax base. Howard said he wanted to see the bill altered to require mixed-use developments, maintaining a commercial space on the ground floor of a new apartment building.
Howard said he wants to see more statewide zoning rules to help ease the housing affordability crisis. “I think that it’s time for the state to have a more vested interest, when you look at the scope of the housing crisis and how zoning has been used to exclude,” he said.
Star Tribune
Trump wanted generals like Hitler’s and said Nazi leader ‘did some good things,’ John Kelly claims
WASHINGTON — Donald Trump’s longest-serving chief of staff is warning that the Republican presidential nominee meets the definition of a fascist and that while in office, Trump suggested that Nazi leader Adolf Hitler ”did some good things.”
The comments from John Kelly, the retired Marine general who worked for Trump in the White House from 2017 to 2019, came in interviews with both The New York Times and The Atlantic. They build on a a growing series of warnings from former top Trump officials as the election enters its final weeks.
Kelly has long been critical of Trump and previously accused him of calling veterans killed in combat ”suckers” and ”losers.” Still, his new warnings came just two weeks before Election Day, as Trump seeks a second term vowing to dramatically expand his use of the military at home and suggesting he would use force to go after Americans he considers ”enemies from within.”
”He commented more than once that, ‘You know, Hitler did some good things, too,”’ Kelly recalled to The Times. Kelly said he would usually quash the conversation by saying ”nothing (Hitler) did, you could argue, was good,” but that Trump would occasionally bring up the topic again.
In his interview with The Atlantic, Kelly recalled that when Trump raised the idea of needing ”German generals,” Kelly would ask if he meant ”Bismarck’s generals,” referring to Otto von Bismarck, the former chancellor of the German Reich who oversaw the unification of Germany. ”Surely you can’t mean Hitler’s generals,” Kelly recalled asking Trump. To which the former president responded, ”Yeah, yeah, Hitler’s generals.”
Trump’s campaign denied these stories on Tuesday, with Steven Cheung, a Trump campaign spokesman, arguing Kelly has ”beclowned himself with these debunked stories he has fabricated.”
Polls show the race is tight in a string of swing states, and both Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris are crisscrossing the country making their final pitches to the sliver of undecided voters.
Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, Harris’ running mate who served 24 years in various units and jobs in the Army National Guard, quickly used the interviews to assail Trump on Tuesday night.
Star Tribune
Officials await word on whose remains were found in camper that burned in Aitkin County
Officials are awaiting word on whose remains were found in a camper that burned overnight this week in northern Minnesota.
The Aitkin County Sheriff’s Office said it was alerted about 8:15 a.m. Monday by a caller about the camper having caught fire roughly 10 miles north of McGregor at a residence in Shamrock Township.
Law enforcement showed up and found the remains inside, the sheriff’s office said. They have since been sent to the Ramsey County Medical Examiner’s Office for identification.
The State Fire Marshal is heading the investigation into what led to the fire.
You hear a lot of women saying they’d rather be alone in the woods with a bear, not a man, because they considered the man to be more dangerous.
I always chose the man, because my interactions with men have generally been positive, and a man wandering through the woods seemed likely to be a hunter or a naturalist or just someone out enjoying nature. Someone reasonable. Someone more likely to harbor a save-the-maiden fantasy than a desire to harm. Bears, on the other hand, if they have it in their head to attack, there is little you could do but try to survive.
A recent visit to Ely’s North American Bear Center changed my mind. Not that I think less of men, but that I think more of bears. Black bears, at least.
The Bear Center provides refuge to three black bears, at least one of whom would have been otherwise euthanized. There’s Lucky, abandoned or orphaned as a cub, who was begging for food near Madison, Wis., and who came within an hour of being put down before a rescuer whisked him off to Ely. There’s Tasha, fat, sleek, and gorgeous, discovered in 2015 in Kentucky trying to nurse on her dead mother, who was believed to have been hit by a vehicle. And Holly, separated from her mother during an Arkansas fire, and who had slipped off to hibernate before our visit.
The bears were fascinating, delicately lipping up cranberries and shelling out nuts with their back teeth during our visit. We learned that their sense of smell is seven times stronger than that of a bloodhound, and that they can smell through an organ on the roof of their mouths.
In fact, sometimes they’ll stand erect and open their mouths – which looks threatening, but it’s really just to get a better sense of their surroundings, said Spencer Peter, assistant director and biologist at the center.
Hollywood trains them to stand like that for movies, he said. “But they’ll dub in the sound.”
