Monday, June 4

Jay Benanav has the endorsement of St. Paul's DFL party in his quest for the mayor's office. But the number of candidates in the race is only slightly smaller than it was before the party's city convention over the weekend. At least three, possibly four, DFLers will continue campaigning through this fall's primary in the race to succeed outgoing Mayor Norm Coleman. Minnesota Public Radio's William Wilcoxen reports.

Nurses at the Fairview University Medical Center's Riverside Campus in Minneapolis and Fairview Southdale Hospital in Edina are preparing for their second day of picketing Monday. The 1,500 registered nurses broke ranks with union members at 11other hospitals by rejecting a contract proposal that included a 19.8% salary increase over three years. Nurses at 11 hospitals ratified contracts in the past three weeks. The striking nurses say the financial portions of the contract are similar to their counterparts, but they say Fairview did little to address staffing and scheduling issues. Minnesota Public Radio's Tom Scheck reports

The 840 nurses at Methodist Hospital in St. Louis Park ratified their contract Sunday night. The agreement includes a 20.1 percent pay increase over three years, and some improvements in staffing and health insurance coverage. Minnesota Public Radio's Marisa Helms reports.

Is the Legislature any closer to a special session? MPR's Laura McCallum has this update.

Today is the second day of picketing outside Fairview hospitals in Minneapolis and Edina after nurses voted to a reject a contract over the weekend. Nurses at 11 other hospitals voted to ratify their contracts, but the nurses at three of those hospitals are calling for a recount because the votes were so close. Everyone agrees there is a shortage of nurses. Sandra Edwardson is the dean of the University of Minnesota School of Nursing and she says her students are watching this situation very closely.

A market update with MPR's Chris Farrell.

Recent national studies show many poor and minority students still lag behind when it comes to access to computers and the Internet. Officials in the Minneapolis school district say they moved closer to bridging the technology gap this year at three schools, with help from a federally funded development project. Minnesota Public Radio's Tim Pugmire reports.

Officials with the Minnesota Nurses Association and Allina Health Systems say they'll meet again today to "explore options" regarding the recount of votes by nurses at Abbott Northwestern Hospital and the Phillips Eye Institute in Minneapolis. The union says it conducted three recounts of the ratification of the vote on Sunday and would only say the tally "was in doubt." The union did recounts at two other hospitals as well and say they turned up no discrepancies. Meanwhile, 1,500 nurses from two Fairview Hospitals continue to walk picket lines. Minnesota Public Radio's Tom Scheck reports.

State legislative leaders will return to Governor Jesse Ventura's office later Tuesday to make another attempt at jump-starting budget talks. Despite an agreement reached late last month on tax and spending targets, House and Senate negotiators are again stuck on the details of property tax reforms and funding levels for K-12 education. A meeting yesterday afternoon between Ventura and top lawmakers prompted little progress. Minnesota Public Radio's Michael Khoo reports.

Twenty years ago today, the Centers for Disease Control first reported a strange outbreak in Los Angeles. Five otherwise healthy men in their 20s and 30s had come down with a rare kind of pneumonia. They were eventually diagnosed with what became known as Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome, or AIDS. Since then, AIDS has gone on to kill more than 22 million people around the world, over 2,000 of them in Minnesota. Victor Campbell is from Minneapolis and has been living with HIV since 1984.

An oak tree in Eagan that's about as old as the state of Minnesota is taking a little trip to make way for a road. The Grandfather Tree as it's known is about a 150 years old. The city of Eagan is building a new community center nearby and debated whether to cut down the tree, or move it. They decided to move it about 500 yards to a spot right in front of the soon-to-be-built community center. Workers will move the tree, along with the soil around its roots, a total of 250 tons. I visited the site and met the people who are preparing for the move which is scheduled to begin tomorrow. Greg Hove is the city forester and David Cox is the president of the company that will actually move the tree. Hove says the city debated whether to move the road, instead of the tree.

A resort owner from Pollock, South Dakota says he may have found three stone idols described in the journals of Lewis and Clark. Denny Jensen found the rocks, which are shaped like two humans and a dog, above a creek feeding into the Missouri River. In lore of the Arikara tribe, the idols are a pair of lovers forbidden to marry and a faithful dog all turned to stone. Historians have long been interested in the rocks because Clark wrote about them as the explorers first entered what is now North Dakota in 1804. We asked Jensen how he found them.

Meetings are scheduled today between registered nurses at two Allina Health System hospitals, attorneys, and representatives of the Minnesota Nurses Association. At issue is the miscount of a contract ratification vote. Nurses learned yesterday that they actually had rejected the contract by one vote, instead of approving it, as the MNA had reported. While those meetings get underway, nurses at two Fairview Hospitals enter a fourth day of picketing. Nursing unions across the country are watching the Fairview walkout, and the contracts that other Twin Cities hospitals have signed recently with nurses. Susan Bianchi-Sand is the director of the United American Nurses based in Washington, D.C. The Minnesota Nurses Association is affiliated with that group. Bianchi-Sand says many eyes are on the Twin Cities.

Nurses at two Minneapolis hospitals will remain on the job even though they may have rejected a contract proposal last weekend by a single vote. Officials with the Minnesota Nurses Association say they discovered a voting mixup only after telling Allina Health System that nurses at Abbott Northwestern Hospital and the Phillips Eye Institute had ratified the contract. By then, from a legal standpoint, it was too late to correct the mistake. Minnesota Public Radio's Tom Scheck reports.

Marina Peterson was one of the 25 nurses who originally asked for a recount at Abbott-Northwestern. She joins us now for more on the situation at Abbott.

Budget talks have broken down at the State Capitol, but the rhetoric is only heating up. Yesterday Senate Democrats canceled a scheduled meeting with House Republicans and Governor Jesse Ventura, saying there was nothing new to discuss. Negotiators remain divided on the appropriate levels of business property tax relief and education spending. As Minnesota Public Radio's Michael Khoo reports, the new impasse has once again raised the possibility of a government shutdown.

In the U.S. Senate, Democrats are in control today for the first time in seven years. The switch means Minnesota Senators Paul Wellstone and Mark Dayton move from working in the minority to the majority. The switch is a result of Vermont Senator Jim Jefford's decision to leave the Republicans, and declare himself an Independent. Joining us on the line to talk about the switch and what it means for Minnesota is Senator Mark Dayton.

The Minnesota Twins may have a hometown kid coming to the ball club. The Twins took Cretin-Durham Hall catcher Joe Mauer as the first overall pick in the baseball draft yesterday. The team passed on pitcher Mark Prior from Southern California, who was also highly rated. The Twins hope Mauer will someday be hitting homers and throwing out base runners in the Metrodome. But first, Mauer would have to pay his dues in the minor leagues. Joining us on the line is Twins General Manager Terry Ryan.

Thirty years ago Congress authorized creation of Voyageurs National Park in northern Minnesota. In the decades since, local residents and the National Park Service have often been at odds, resulting in a series of lawsuits and protests over various park policies. Local government officials say the park is overregulated, and the tourism boom they'd hoped it would bring never arrived. Minnesota Public Radio's Tom Robertson has the story.

Next week, people in Duluth will commemorate something most people tried for years to forget: a lynching. Activities will include a concert, film showings, and a march. Officials will unveil a plaque marking the spot where in 1920 a crowd of perhaps 10,000 people watched three black men hanged from a downtown lamppost. Later today, on Midday and All Things Considered, Minnesota Public Radio will air Postcard from a Lynching, a documentary about what happened that night and its effect on Duluth down the years. As a preview to that program Minnesota Public Radio's Stephanie Hemphill explores why people in Duluth are now talking about the lynching.

Several DFL legislators and representatives of several communities of color are calling for the withdrawal of a racial profiling proposal which they say won't do anything to detect and prevent racial profiling by law enforcement officers. Members of Twin Cities' black communities are particularly angry. They say the legislation ignores recommendations developed after hours of input from the people most negatively affected by racial profiling. However, the author of the bill maintains that the proposal is the best way to prevent traffic stops based on race. Minnesota Public Radio's Brandt Williams reports.

Minnesota's tri-partisan state government is still in gridlock, more than two weeks after the legislative session was to end in May. Senate DFLers want to put more money into education and limit tax cuts for businesses. The House Republicans and Governor Ventura, want to cut business and industrial property taxes by double-digit percentages. Without an agreement, Senate DFLers have proposed a lights-on bill to keep the government from shutting down in July. The House Republicans have not embraced the idea. The governor and his department heads are getting contingency plans ready for a possible shutdown. Former Governor Arne Carlson says what is happening at the Capitol is unusual, and the impasse can in part be blamed on the property tax bill, which wasn't introduced until late in the session.

Metro Transit busses will follow modified routes in the North Eastern suburbs of the Twin Cities starting this weekend. The changes are designed to better serve people who want to travel from suburb to suburb without having to go to either downtown first. The changes are also designed to simplify the system for new riders, and to add service to the most productive routes. Joining us on the line is Adam Harrington, one of the architects of Metro Transit's routing system.

It's been a cold start to the farming and gardening season; Mark Seeley joins us for a look ahead to warmer temperatures.

State lawmakers are expected to meet later today to trade budget offers in advance of a special legislative session scheduled for Monday. Yesterday, Governor Jesse Ventura summoned legislators back to St. Paul in order to increase the pressure for a speedy resolution to the budget impasse. But lawmakers say the governor may have acted prematurely and may have lost much of his bargaining leverage. Minnesota Public Radio's Michael Khoo reports.

John Wodele, Governor Ventura's Communications Director, joins us with more on the special session.

Local governments need to know by Monday how much revenue they'll be getting from property taxes. Hennepin County Administrator Sandy Vargas says that information is a significant part of the county's budgeting process.