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Minneapolis Public School employees are using district credit cards for unauthorized purchases — including personal use — and have routinely failed to follow expense policies, a Star Tribune review of school expense records found. Several school district leaders — including the outgoing superintendent and the current CEO — repaid the district for expenses only after the Star Tribune inquired about them. The Star Tribune reviewed $1.5 million in credit card expenses submitted by 262 employees over the past six months. School officials spent thousands of dollars at grocery stores, Target, Wal-Mart and restaurants in Minneapolis and around the country. The...

Democratic members of the state’s congressional delegation face a difficult balancing act. Their supporters who are advocates of renewable energy anticipate them to vote against the pipeline. President Obama has threatened to veto the present pipeline bill due to the fact it quick-circuits his administration’s assessment course of action. But Minnesota politicians who oppose the pipeline flirt with a attainable lengthy-term raise in oil train traffic on tracks that quite a few constituents say are already overloaded with railcars carrying flammable fuel. “It is a precarious position to be against oil train transport and to be against the Keystone pipeline,”...

A man convicted in 27 drunken driving-related cases in Minnesota has been released to residential placement in Clay County. Danny Lee Bettcher, 61, was released Dec. 29 after serving about five years in prison for his latest drunken driving-related conviction, said Minnesota Department of Corrections spokeswoman Sarah Latuseck. Prosecutors said he blew through a stop sign on his motorcycle in Otter Tail County while his blood-alcohol level was twice the legal limit. Bettcher reportedly holds the state record for the most drunken driving-related convictions at 27. His criminal drunken driving-related record goes back to the 1980s. Bettcher was released under...

Gov. Mark Dayton walked into unfriendly territory Wednesday to pitch his plan for a gas tax increase to fund transportation needs. Surrounded by business leaders at a Minnesota Chamber of Commerce dinner, Dayton reiterated his call to raise $6 billion over 10 years by applying the sales tax to gasoline and imposing a series of fee increases. But minutes before Dayton took the stage, a chamber leader repeated the position of the business group: Road work should be paid for without raising taxes and fees. "I know there are things about state government and my administration's policies that you don't...

MNsure says it will use the money to upgrade its website and address other ongoing issues. MNsure will receive an additional $34 million in federal funds to continue work on the state’s health insurance enrollment system.With the new money, total federal grant funding in support of Minnesota’s health insurance exchange is now about $189.3 million, according to an announcement Wednesday by MNsure.The money will fund improvements to the MNsure website, said Scott Leitz, the MNsure chief executive, during a board meeting Wednesday in St. Paul. It also will let MNsure address ongoing issues, Leitz said, such as invoices for people...

Storied Minnesota medical-device company Medtronic will move its headquarters to Ireland after shareholders approved a merger Tuesday with Dublin-based health care supplier Covidien. The controversial $43 billion "inversion" deal will allow the new company, to be called Medtronic PLC, to reduce its corporate tax liability as it repatriates cash stored overseas. But the deal has irked longtime Twin Cities shareholders, who will face significant capital gains taxes on their Medtronic holdings. In preliminary vote totals, shareholders representing about 75 percent of Medtronic's outstanding shares approved the deal, general counsel Brad Lerman announced to a special shareholder meeting in Minneapolis. And...

Colin Chisholm, who lived the life of a Lake Minnetonka millionaire with his wife while collecting welfare benefits, was sentenced Monday to nearly two years. Chisholm, 63, and his wife, Andrea, collected more than $167,000 in fraudulent medical and food-stamp claims over seven years. In November, Chisholm agreed to a 21-month prison sentence and admitted committing a major economic crime. “This is a fitting end to a crime that never should have occurred,” Hennepin County Attorney Mike Freeman said after the sentencing. “We are pleased with the sentence and believe it is one of the longest ever given in the...

Supporters of a large demonstration at the Mall of America last month are urging the City of Bloomington not to pursue charges for disrupting retailers and shoppers. Several people at the Bloomington City Council meeting Monday night asked prosecutors to reconsider. More than two dozen people were arrested after the Dec. 20 demonstration organized by the group "Black Lives Matter." It was part of a nationwide wave of protests following incidents in Missouri and New York in which unarmed black men were killed by police. City Attorney Sandra Johnson says she plans to file charges against protest organizers for unlawful...

The repeal of ObamaCare is the priority of the Republican party, Sen. John Barrasso (R-Wyo.) said on Sunday. “There will be a vote on repeal. The president, in the White House, will veto that,” he said of the symbolic gesture offered by GOP lawmakers still unsatisfied with the healthcare legislation. However, Barrasso told NBC’s Chuck Todd on “Meet the Press” that there would also be other bills that strike at other parts of the Affordable Care Act – some of which have gained bipartisan support – including a repeal of the medical device tax and the employer mandate. There is...

WATERTOWN, N.Y.— Elise Stefanik, the youngest woman ever elected to Congress, has never held elected office, but her résumé looks more like that of a Beltway insider than a political newcomer. By the time she won her seat representing a swath of upstate New York in the November election, she had served as a domestic policy aide for former President George W. Bush , a policy director for former Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty ’s 2012 presidential campaign and head of debate preparation for vice-presidential nominee Rep. Paul Ryan .

DULUTH, Minn. -- The Minnesota Public Utilities Commission will take public testimony next week at five hearings across the state on the all-new Enbridge Energy Sandpiper pipeline set to run from Beaver Lodge, N.D., to Superior, Wis. This round of hearings is intended to focus primarily on the "need" for the new pipeline -- both Enbridge's need to serve their customers -- oil companies -- and whether Minnesota really needs another pipeline to carry oil that will mostly go to other states. Usually the commission and an administrative law judge also would hear testimony on possible routes for the proposed...

RED WING, Minn. -- A Minnesota state trooper appeared in court Tuesday for the first time since being indicted on manslaughter charges in a Fourth of July crash that killed two people in Cannon Falls. A Goodhue County grand jury indicted Scott Reps, 48, on two felony counts of second-degree manslaughter. Reps was released on his own recognizance, the Post-Bulletin reported, and is due back in court Feb. 20. He was indicted on Dec. 16, but the indictment was sealed until his court appearance. In addition to the two felony counts, he also faces one count of failure to drive...

Minnesota's highway needs can't be met without more tax revenue, Gov. Mark Dayton said Tuesday -- setting him up for a possible clash with the new Republican majority in the House. Dayton is finalizing his 2016-17 budget proposal, which aims to raise what he says is the $6 billion Minnesota's roads need over the next 10 years. The plan calls for a 6.5 percent wholesale surtax on gasoline -- separate from the existing 28.5 cents-per-gallon tax already levied. That means the tax would bring in more money when gas prices increase. "Our transportation systems are getting worse," Dayton said. "Anybody...

MINNEAPOLIS (WCCO) — Gas prices are finally falling, but those savings might not last long.At least 18 states, including Minnesota, are considering taxing drivers based on distance. Gas prices aren’t the only reason for the idea, since newer cars get better gas mileage. Oregon has a pilot project that will start next year to test the idea. They’re having 5,000 volunteers pay 1.5 cents per mile instead of the 30-cents-per-gallon tax.An electronic device attached to their vehicle will report how far they drive in state.

Rep. Steve King has summoned the potential field of 2016 Republican presidential candidates to Iowa next month for his Freedom Summit, and they are jumping at the opportunity — underscoring the conservative firebrand’s political pull and marking the event as the first major gathering of the next campaign for the White House. Mr. King told The Washington Times that the Jan. 24 gathering in Des Moines will give the kinds of activists who turn out for Iowa’s first-in-the-nation caucuses a look at their options and will give the candidates an early reality check. (SNIP) Though Mr. Santorum achieved victory without...

Formed in 2005, the Minnesota Voters Alliance (MVA) is the only conservative organization in Minnesota, and one of a few in the nation, dedicated solely to expanding liberty through legal action, determined to strike at the liberal forces which degrade and reduce our freedoms. A critical component of that dedication is the ability to pursue an objective for as long as it takes to win. So, while we have achieved several recent victories in other cases, our commitment to changing Minnesota’s defective Election-Day Registration (EDR) laws continues in full force. Today, I am requesting your support for our impending lawsuits...

Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MN) has been an outspoken voice against the infiltration of the Muslim Brotherhood into the halls of the United States federal government, and she has taken the shots against her, even by those who claim they are on her side. Recently, the Minnesota congresswoman was interviewed by Tony Perkins of the Family Research Council (FRC) and told him that Barack Obama has embraced “the agenda of Islamic jihad,” and that agenda includes both the destruction of Israel and converting the “United States into an Islamic Caliphate.” “While the president continues to say that this is not about...

Minnesota Congresswomen and presidential candidate Michele Bachmann has become the latest politician to call for an impenetrable fence along the entire length of the border with Mexico. "President Obama has failed the American people by failing to secure the southern border," said Bachmann. "I will secure that border and that will be Job One." Statements like that may get some attention, but they are not practical. Don't take our word for it; take Rick Perry's. The Texas governor has been called a lot of things, but he's hardly a mushy liberal. Yet even this tough Texan sneers at calls for...

Outgoing Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.) says President Obama has embraced the “agenda of Islamic jihad” at every turn. “I have been very surprised, to answer your question, to see the president of the United States, at every turn, cut the legs off of our ally Israel, and in fact embrace and lift up the agenda of Islamic jihad,” she said in an interview released Wednesday with "Washington Watch," a radio show produced by the socially conservative Family Research Council. Bachmann criticized the president for writing to Iran's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, to encourage a deal on Tehran's nuclear program....

The Bloomington city attorney is pursuing criminal charges against the organizers of a protest inside the Mall of America after police shut down stores for about two hours during the demonstration. City Attorney Sandra Johnson tells WCCO-TV (http://cbsloc.al/1JNVUll) that mall officials are figuring out how much money stores lost on Saturday. Johnson is also figuring out the cost of overtime for police, and she expects to file criminal charges soon. Johnson said she wants organizers of the police brutality protest to pay restitution. She's focusing on those who kept promoting the rally after they were told it was prohibited on...