Video: Golden Valley Senator Honored for Work to Assist Hearing Impaired

Sen. Ann Rest (DFL – Golden Valley) was honored this past week by the Commission of Deaf, DeafBlind and Hard of Hearing Minnesotans for her chief authorship of a 2008 bill signed into law requiring candidates for office who receive public funding to post closed captioning on all television add and videos as well as to post scripts of line from radio adds.

This is to enable the approximately 10 percent of Minnesotans with hearing issues to have complete access to all information issued by candidates.

In receiving the award at ceremonies March 4th at the Capitol, Rest praised the Minnesota Senate and Senate Services for having provided captioning on all of its broadcasts throughout the state.

Here’s what’s happened this past week with other bills authored or co-authored by Rest and your other legislators:

Sen. Ann Rest (DFL -45):

• Chief author of SF 536 which would appropriate $2 million in FY 2012 and another $2 million in FY 2013 to be provided from the Arts and Cultural Heritage Fund to the Department of Administration for maintenance and historical renovation to the state capitol building which has faced serious deterioration problems over the past several years.
• Referred to Environmental and Natural Resources Committee on March 3.

Sen. Ron Latz (DFL -44):

• Chief author of SF552 which would approve a valuation exclusion for certain improvements to homestead properties which would be fully partially excluded from the value of the property for assessment purposes and if the house is at least 45 years old and the assessor’s estimated market value Is equal to or less than $400,000.
• Referred to the Taxes Committee March 3.

Rep Ryan Winkler (DFL -44B):

• Co-authored HF 834 requiring the public employee insurance program providers pay certain taxes and assessments, as do private health care insurers.
• Referred to the Commerce and Regulatory Reform Committee March 3.

• Co-authored HF 824 requesting $3.2 million in FY 2012 and FY 2013 for the Metropolitan Council to operate and maintain regional area parks.
• Referred to the Environment, Energy and Natural Resources Policy and Finance Committee March 3.

Rep. Lyndon Carlson (DFL - 45B)

• Did not introduce any legislation this week.  Carlson is the lead Democrat on the House Ways and Means Committee and spent much of last week looking at the released Feb. 28.