Residents in the Northland met with their local legislators virtually talking about issues focused on in the upcoming legislative session. This year’s main focus is supplemental year with maintaining current policies and programs currently going on in Minnesota.

Minnesota Representative Liz Olson wants to finish her last term with continuing access to reproductive healthcare.

“I’ve been working on some work around reproductive freedom. Specifically making sure medically accurate information is given. We know in Duluth we have various places you can go to get reproductive health care. Not all of them are regulated in the same way,” Rep Olson said. “I want to continue to work on that, to make sure that everybody, can get the care they deserve.”

Minnesota Representative Liish Kozlowski said their plans are looking at housing for residents.

“In Minnesota, we know that there’s about 100,000 units, 550,000 Minnesotans who are paying over 30% of their monthly income on housing costs, and that includes steep utility burdens,” Rep. Kozlowski said. “We’ll be looking at different things like zoning policy. How can we really get at that missing middle, so we can make sure that folks have an opportunity to own a home for the first time and build a generational wealth. But also to build up more multi family unit housing, to really expand on the work that we did with the Bring It Home coalition.”

While the main goal of the legislative session is continue programs in place, one big policy will be renewable energy. Minnesota Senator Jen McEwen said one of her main goals is to continue the transition of clean energy.

“We passed the clean energy by 2040 bill to move all of our energy to renewable energy sources by 2040. That’s being implemented right now,” Sen McEwen said. “There’s a lot of work ahead for us to really make sure that’s implemented in an effective way and transition in a way that benefits everybody and brings everybody along.”

Anyone who has questions for their local representative or senator they can send them an email. Although keep in mind they might not get to it right away the closer we get to the legislative session.

For more information on contacting your local legislators you can read more here. Also for other stories with the Minnesota Legislature you can read more here.