5 things to know today: Condemning invasion, Building investments, Worker pay, Bakken oil, Recreational pot

State budget officials on Monday, Feb. 28, are set to offer an update on the state’s finances and look ahead to what Minnesotans might be able to expect in the coming months.

The news could force state lawmakers to pare back plans for a tentative $7.75 billion budget surplus or kickstart new discussions about additional tax relief or aid they can provide using the money.

In the first few weeks of the 2022 legislative session, leaders in the divided Statehouse have cued up their legislative wishlists and said their plans around that $7.75 billion figure. And they said Thursday that many of their plans could change depending on the news budget officials bring forward on Monday.

Read more from The Forum News Service’s Dana Ferguson

The city of Moorhead posted a banner year in 2021 in terms of real estate development, a recently-published report showed.

According to the 2021 Annual Development Report , the city added 284 new housing units, as well as $194 million in building investment across 750 permits. Moorhead’s Community Development Director Kristie Leshovsky said it was “another great year” for the city.

The report highlighted residential, commercial and public development projects both underway and planned in the city.

On the residential front, housing development has been a central focus for the city, Leshovsky said. Among the city’s 284 new housing units started in 2021, 108 were single-family homes and 176 were multi-family residences.

Read more from The Forum’s Thomas Evanella

The Minnesota House of Representatives on Thursday, Feb. 24, approved a plan to distribute $1 billion in checks to workers who continued reporting to their jobs in person during the worst of the COVID-19 pandemic.

The proposal introduced by Democratic-Farmer-Labor representatives would provide 667,000 workers a payment of up to $1,500. It applies to workers in fields including health care, day care, food service, retail and manufacturing who reported to their job for at least 120 hours from March 15, 2020 to June 30, 2021. Workers who collected more than 20 weeks of unemployment benefits would be ineligible.

However, the bill as it stands has little chance of success in the Senate, where it faces strong opposition from GOP lawmakers.

At $1 billion, the DFL-proposed legislation calls for four times the original $250 million front-line worker pay lawmakers agreed on last year. Negotiations between Democrats and Republicans on “hero pay” broke down after the sides could not agree on who would be eligible. Democrats wanted to give checks to a wider range of workers who faced exposure to the virus, while Republicans wanted a narrower set of front-line workers such as nurses and first responders.

Read more from Forum News Service’s Alex Derosier

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine drove already lofty global oil prices to their highest point in more than seven years Thursday morning, Feb. 24, but observers of the North Dakota oil industry aren’t holding their breath for the volatile situation in Europe to spur a drilling stampede here. 

Prices of Brent crude, the international benchmark, blew past $100 a barrel in the wake of Russia’s offensive, while West Texas Intermediate, the U.S. benchmark, briefly jumped over $100 a barrel before both settled back to previous levels later in the day. Those prices had been climbing through much of the last year, but they rose quickly over recent weeks as the world waited to see whether Russian President Vladimir Putin’s provocations would lead to deadly conflict. His decision to push troops into Ukraine Wednesday night spiked U.S. oil prices to a level not seen since 2014.

Some experts also predicted Thursday that the Russian advance could precipitate a rise in gasoline prices. The national average Thursday afternoon was $3.54 a gallon, according to AAA , up slightly from the day before, while North Dakota prices sat at $3.39 a gallon. Prices at the pump in North Dakota have inched up in recent months and are nearly 80 cents per gallon above their level a year ago.

Read more from The Forum’s Adam Willis

The morning after the South Dakota Senate passed historic legislation to legalize pot, the top lawmaker in the House GOP caucus pumped the brakes.

“I would assume that’s going to have a decently tough path going forward,” said House Majority Leader Kent Peterson, R-Salem, when asked by reporters at the weekly news conference on Thursday, Feb. 24, whether his caucus would support an adult-use marijuana bill.

The fact that the bill will reach a second chamber is evidence of a shifting sea of public opinion on legal marijuana use, first announced 15 months ago when 54% of the state’s voters approved legalizing marijuana.

The South Dakota Supreme Court upheld in November a lower court’s ruling blocking what was known as Amendment A, the recreational marijuana amendment to the state’s constitution, that justices said violated a “one-subject” rule.

But the campaign to legalize marijuana in the state has not gone away, with a likely sequel vote coming later this year for voters.

Read more from Forum News Service’s Christopher Vondracek