Star Tribune
Legislators want to hire experts to fix Minnesota’s ailing child protection system
A statewide child abuse hotline, new rules to reduce racial disparities among foster children and a wide-ranging review of how Minnesota spends its child protection money are among the proposals state legislators will begin considering when they convene next week.
Altogether, at least nine legislative proposals have emerged in recent weeks to address widespread failures in Minnesota’s child protection system that were identified in a 2023 Star Tribune investigation.
The bills received their first public airing at Friday’s meeting of the bipartisan Legislative Task Force on Child Protection, which met for the third time in three months to address problems identified in the recent Star Tribune investigation. Many task force members did not attend the session, including all of the Republicans.
The series revealed hundreds of children are harmed each year when county officials return them to parents who have not addressed problems that prompted the removal of their children to foster care.
Assistant Majority Leader Mary Kunesh, a Democratic senator from New Brighton, said she thinks the state should hire a consultant this summer with “national expertise in transforming child welfare systems” to help overhaul Minnesota’s system. The consultant would be required to submit a final report by March 25, 2025. The assessment would cost an estimated $250,000.
Kunesh said a preliminary review shows that Minnesota failed to spend more than $55 million in federal money on services aimed at preventing abuse and neglect since the funds become available in 2018. Kunesh said only three other states are sitting on more in unused funds.
“It’s really important that there be independent and external oversight to ensure our state agency is performing at its highest capacity,” Kunesh said.
Minnesota is one of just nine states in which counties control the delivery of child protection services. The state Department of Human Services (DHS) provides oversight.
Task force members reviewed a report from a national child welfare consulting firm that shows Minnesota’s spending on child protection services is out of step with the rest of the nation, with counties spending just 2% of available federal funds on programs and services aimed at curbing abuse and neglect.
On average, other states spend 40% of their funds on such services, according to the review by The Stephen Group of New Hampshire.
The review also showed that Minnesota spends far too much on administrative costs and caseworkers visits.
“It is really important you start asking questions about how to make sure you maximize all of the available federal dollars,” said John Stephen, CEO of The Stephen Group. “There is a lot of opportunity there for the state of Minnesota.”
Senate President Bobby Joe Champion, a Democrat from Minneapolis and a task force member, told legislators that Minnesota needs to pass the African American Family Preservation Act to address practices that result in the disproportionate removal of Black children from their parents.
Attorney Kelis Houston, who advocated on behalf of children as a guardian ad litem for several years, told legislators that “institutional racism” is responsible for the fact that 26% of children in foster care are Black, even though those kids make up just 10% of the child protection population.
“The worst thing Minnesota can do is keep doubling down on its failed approach,” said Houston, adding that tragedies continue to occur because caseworkers are overwhelmed by “trivial cases.”
The Star Tribune’s investigation found that since 2012, at least 86 children died from maltreatment after Minnesota’s child protection system failed to protect them from caregivers with a history of abuse or neglect. Another 11 children died from suicide after a child protection case was filed on their behalf, including a 6-year-old girl.
Task force members also discussed weaknesses in the way counties investigate deaths linked to child abuse.
Counties are supposed to file a child mortality report every time a child dies from maltreatment or if the child dies from homicide, suicide, an accident or undetermined causes. The reports are supposed to help guide improvements to child protection.
But a Star Tribune survey of more than two dozen counties in 2023 showed that compliance is spotty. Some counties failed to conduct required reviews while others take years to complete them.
Rep. Dave Pinto, DFL-St. Paul and co-chair of the task force, said the current system is “pretty confusing” and too focused on whether social services complied with existing rules instead of whether changes in policy or practices might have led to a different outcome.
“It’s something we really want to get right,” Pinto said.
Mark Hudson, a Minnesota physician who has been involved in mortality reviews for more than a decade, told panel members that the reviews should more often include the perspective of medical workers, law enforcement members and people who are legally required to report suspected abuse or neglect.
“Transparency is lacking now,” said Hudson, medical director of the Midwest Children’s Resource Center in Minneapolis.
Anti-police brutality activists interrupted a Minneapolis City Council meeting Thursday to call for Police Chief Brian O’Hara’s firing, saying his department failed a Black man who begged police for help for months, to no avail, before he was finally shot in the neck by his white neighbor.
John Sawchak, 54, is charged with shooting Davis Moturi, 34, even though three warrants had been issued for his arrest in connection with threats to Moturi and other neighbors.
Activists showed up at the council meeting and asked for time to talk about the case. Instead, the council recessed and activists took the podium and castigated the city for failing Black people, even as state and federal officials are forcing the police department into court-sanctioned monitoring because of past civil rights violations.
Nekima Levy Armstrong, founder of the Racial Justice Network, said O’Hara needs to be held accountable.
“This is not the first time instance where the community has raised concerns about his poor judgment, poor leadership, blaming the community and excuses. It’s completely unacceptable for him to get away with it,” she said. “How many Black people’s doors have they kicked in for less?”
On Thursday the council voted to request the city auditor review the city’s involvement in and response to the matters between Moturi and Sawchak.
Mayor Jacob Frey released a statement in response saying he supports the council’s call for an independent review of the case, but O’Hara “will continue to be the Minneapolis police chief.”
Protesters also questioned why the public hadn’t heard from Community Safety Commissioner Toddrick Barnette, who called a news conference within hours to say he’s not going to fire O’Hara and the city leadership supports him.
A Girl Scout from Troop 58068 told the Woodbury City Council recently that they should allow backyard chickens in the city: They cheer people up, she said.
It turned out that chickens were on an upcoming agenda and, perhaps pushed a bit by the scout’s lobbying, the Woodbury City Council at their next meeting passed a new ordinance allowing for backyard hens.
The new ordinance went into effect on Oct. 23, the night of the council meeting, and will allow people who live on property zoned R-2, a “rural estate” district, to have backyard chickens. A typical city lot is zoned R-4 and those areas still cannot have chickens, the council said.
The city has received requests “here and there” for the last several years about backyard chickens, City Council Member Andrea Date said.
Backyard chickens come have home to roost — and never leave — in a host of other Minnesota cities that allow them, from Hopkins to Thief River Falls. It’s long been allowed in both St. Paul and Minneapolis, and new cities started approving backyard coops during the pandemic, when interest spiked.
In Woodbury, it wasn’t until the question was included on the city’s biannual survey that city staff knew how people felt. The survey found less support for chickens on a typical city lot — just 13% of respondents said they strongly approve of the idea while 43% percent strongly disapproved — but a majority approved of backyard chickens on lots of 1 acre or more.
The city’s rules until recently only allowed chickens on “rural estate” properties of five or more acres.
The new ordinance allows up to six hens, but no roosters, on property less than four acres that meets the zoning requirements. Larger properties can have an additional two chickens per acre above four acres. The ordinance also sets a height limit for chicken coops of 7 feet. No license or permit is required in Woodbury for backyard chickens.
Star Tribune
Anonymous donor pays overdue bill for Fergus Falls home where town’s first Black resident lived
A $10,000 overdue special assessment bill threatening tax forfeiture of a historic Fergus Falls home was paid off this week thanks to an anonymous donor.
Prince Albert Honeycutt lived at 612 Summit Avenue East, renamed Honeycutt Memorial Drive in 2021. Not only was Honeycutt the town’s first Black resident — settling there in 1872 from Tennessee — he was the state’s first Black professional baseball player, first Black firefighter and first Black mayoral candidate.
He was an early pioneer and prominent businessman who owned a barbershop in town. Missy Hermes, with the Otter Tail County Historical Society, said Honeycutt and his wife were likely the first Black people in Minnesota to testify in a capital murder trial of a man who was convicted and hanged in Fergus Falls.
“In other places, you would never have a Black person testifying against a white person, especially a woman, too, before women could vote even,” Hermes said. “Obviously he was respected enough.”
Nancy Ann and Prince Albert Honeycutt with their children inside the now-historic Honeycutt house in 1914. Photo from the collections of the Otter Tail County Historical Society.
When dozens of people from Kentucky moved to Fergus Falls in April 1898, known as “the first 85,” Honeycutt helped integrate them into the community.
He died in 1924 at age 71 and is buried in Oak Grove Cemetery in Fergus Falls.
Up until 2016, several owners lived in the Honeycutt home. But the city bought and sold the house to nonprofit Flowingbrook Ministry for $1 to take over the tax-exempt property and operate the ministry.
Ministry founder Lynette Higgins-Orr, who previously lived in Fergus Falls, moved to Florida several years ago and little activity has been going on in the historic home since. But she said there are plans to make it into a museum.
