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Pulling back the curtains on wage-theft enforcement in MN; Trump's latest attack is on RFK, Jr; NM LGBTQ+ equality group endorses 2024 'Rock Star' candidates; Michigan's youth justice reforms: Expanded diversion, no fees.

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Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg says rebuilding Baltimore's Key Bridge will be challenging and expensive. An Alabama Democrat flips a state legislature seat and former Connecticut senator Joe Lieberman dies at 82.

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Historic wildfires could create housing and health issues for rural Texans, a Kentucky program helps prison parolees start a new life, and descendants of Nicodemus, Kansas celebrate the Black settlers who journeyed across the 1870s plains seeking self-governance.

2012 Legislative Session Will Include Push for Minimum Wage Hike

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Monday, January 23, 2012   

ST. PAUL, Minn. - Advocates for kids in Minnesota will be watching closely as the 2012 Legislature opens for business Tuesday.

Alex Fitzsimmons, legislative affairs and advocacy director for Children's Defense Fund Minnesota, says there are working parents in three-fourths of all families in poverty in Minnesota, so one way to offer more support for children would be to increase the wages of those earners.

"Raising the minimum wage; fully funding child care and expanding eligibility for child care; and then also creating a state version of the child tax credit. And we know that those three things together will have a significant impact on the economic security of families."

Fitzsimmons says they'd like to see the minimum wage raised to $9.15 an hour. It's currently $6.15 per hour for large employers in Minnesota, although that's overridden by the federal minimum wage of $7.25.

Fitzsimmons says another of their legislative priorities is making sure the state is making the critical investment in early intervention services for children, especially those age three and under, as 90 percent of a child's brain is developed in those early years.

"Experiences that are stressful such as homelessness, child abuse, child neglect or being separated from your family, can cause toxic stress in a child's developing brain, meaning that that child's brain isn't able to develop the way that it needs to in order for a child to be successful later in life."

Those children who are or have been homeless, says Fitzsimmons, are another focus of the Children's Defense Fund in the upcoming session.

"The largest growing population of homeless in Minnesota are children and their families; on any given night in Minnesota about 4500 children are homeless, and half of those children are under the age of five."

There are now an estimated 192,000 children in poverty in Minnesota, up 62 percent over the last decade.

More information is at www.cdf-mn.org





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