Minnesota
Minnesota may open some of the first government-run cannabis dispensaries in the U.S.
Minnesota could become the first state in nine years to open cannabis dispensaries that are run by cities and counties.
That’s because of one line in the state’s new cannabis laws that allow for cities and counties to “establish, own and operate a municipal cannabis store.” The law appears to be the first of its kind in the country and has prompted cities to research whether they want to open their own dispensaries.
But there’s only one city that’s been successful with running a cannabis store. The City of North Bonneville in Washington was the first city in the country to open a municipal cannabis dispensary back in 2015, but was no longer operating it as of 2021.
Municipal cannabis stores are of particular interest to local governments in Minnesota that don’t already operate their own liquor stores. In cities like Edina and Isanti, liquor stores serve as a revenue stream that helps reduce taxes for residents and businesses.
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Because of conflicts with federal law, other states have shied away from adopting the state-owned liquor store model for cannabis retailers.
“The idea has been floated and rejected in various states, such as New Mexico and New Hampshire. Lawmakers have done so because cannabis remains illegal (Schedule I) under federal law and they do not wish to enact policies that place state-employees in a position where they are engaging in activity that is in positive conflict with federal law,” said Paul Armentano, deputy director of NORML, a national cannabis advocacy group.
According to state Rep. Zack Stephenson, DFL-Coon Rapids, who helped author the legislation that legalized recreational cannabis last year, the idea of municipal cannabis stores came directly from cities and counties in Minnesota.
“When we were putting the bill together, we weren’t copy-pasting from other states. We were trying to come up with a Minnesota-specific model. And one of the things that works well for many communities across Minnesota is municipal liquor stores. They are important to a lot of cities all across the state. And building from that successful model, there were cities that had some potential interest in taking the same approach with cannabis that they take with liquor. And we wanted to enable them to do that, if they chose to do it and if it was workable,” said Stephenson.
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Government officials in the City of Osseo, the City of St. Joseph and Cook County have been weighing the pros and cons of operating a cannabis retail store, despite the fact that Minnesota’s Office of Cannabis Management won’t come out with official cannabis regulations until early 2025.
The Office’s rules will dictate what municipal cannabis dispensaries could look like. But the Office is still in the process of drafting those rules, and most municipalities are still in the early stages of discussion on cannabis dispensaries.
Country’s first government-run dispensary struggled to break even
North Bonneville Mayor Brian Sabo said when the idea of a government-run marijuana store came forward, before he was mayor, marijuana stores were still an uncharted concept in Washington after the state legalized recreational cannabis use and sales in 2012.
Soon after, the city formed a public development authority for the purpose of opening a cannabis retail store. The plan was to use the profits to pour back into North Bonneville, like upgrading street lights and rebuilding a central park playground.
An “aggressive business plan” was put forward outlining the customer base needed to support the store would come from other areas throughout the Northwest, according to Sabo.
“On paper, the plan appeared to be a good one but critics were warning it was far too aggressive given how far out and secluded North Bonneville is within the Gorge, and the number of retail stores that were planned to be opened throughout Washington State,” Sabo said.
The store, known as the Cannabis Corner, opened in 2015 and was widely reported as the first municipal marijuana store in the U.S. Sabo said it did fairly well the first couple years, but as more retail stores opened in the state and in Oregon, business drastically fell off.
By 2018, the dispensary was struggling to break even.
“A request by the PDA was granted to move the store and license to a larger market of Stevenson, Washington, the next city 10 miles east of North Bonneville. Although the store did better in the larger market, sales never exceeded break-even status, negating the promise of a financial windfall for the city,” said Sabo.
In 2021, their city council decided the business was more of a liability than an asset. They dissolved the public development authority and sold the store.
Government officials and cannabis experts from multiple states were not aware of any other government-run dispensaries in the U.S., meaning Minnesota appears to be poised to be the second try after North Bonneville failed.
Minnesota cities say revenue from a cannabis dispensary could help reduce property taxes, offset budget increases
The Minnesota cities of Osseo and St. Joseph, along with Cook County, are a few municipalities that don’t operate a liquor store and are exploring the idea of a cannabis store.
The biggest draw for them is the potential revenue a dispensary would bring in.
“It really comes down to dollars and cents. In the time when the costs of providing the high-quality city services to our residents and business owners only continues to go up each and every year, we are looking for any potential revenue stream that can help offset our budget increases,” said Riley Grams, Osseo city administrator.
The sales tax on cannabis product sales in Minnesota is 10 percent, in addition to state and local taxes. Local governments are barred from imposing their own tax on cannabis.
In Cook County, commissioners are divided on the idea. County administrator James Joerke said Cook County currently doesn’t have any enterprise funds or operate any utilities.
“There are some who see this as an opportunity to generate revenue that can be used to offset property taxes. There are others who I think have concerns about playing a role even selling a product that could have harmful effects to residents. And there’s also some sentiment that this is really something that the private sector should handle,” said Joerke.
Similar discussions are happening in the City of St. Joseph. Mayor Rick Schultz said 30 percent of the city’s land is exempt from property taxes and the income from a dispensary could help relieve some of the tax burden for residents and businesses.
Both Osseo and Cook County have formed committees to look more closely into what it would take to run a cannabis store. Cook County is partnering with the City of Grand Marais for the committee, while St. Joseph has had only a few conversations about the topic.
Now, all that’s left to do is to wait for the state’s Cannabis Office to come up with official rulemaking. The Office has until this summer to draft rules and plans to adopt them by early 2025, when licensing applications are also planned to open.
While St. Joseph and Cook County are still in the early stages of exploring a cannabis store, Osseo wants to be ready to submit as soon as the application window for licensing opens.
“We didn’t want to be reactionary. We wanted to get out ahead of the game and be ready as or as ready as we possibly could be once the final rules and regulations were implemented and approved by the state legislature,” said Gram.
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Between the summer and early 2025, the rules are subject to change. Depending on those changes, it could elongate the timeline the Office has in mind for opening cannabis sales.
“Realistically, even if we were able to offer full licenses in early 2025, the process of obtaining a license and actually opening your doors is a lengthy one. And so I think that 2025 is always the goal, but OCM is very focused on making those license applications available,” said Charlene Briner, Minnesota’s interim cannabis director.
The former sportscaster is expected to struggle to win the endorsement over her GOP rivals.
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A dream candidate for the national Republican Party, former sportscaster Michele Tafoya is finding support from Washington to be a double-edged sword as she seeks to win retiring Sen. Tina Smith’s seat.
Tafoya, 61, is a skilled and media-savvy communicator whose name recognition and political smarts prompted the National Republican Senatorial Committee (NRSC) to call her “the only candidate with the common-sense leadership Minnesotans are desperately craving.”
Tafoya gets endorsement from Sen. Tim Scott
The endorsement by NRSC Chairman Sen. Tim Scott, R-S.C., made just after Tafoya announced her candidacy in January, has rankled some Minnesota Republicans.
Why? Because there were other Republicans vying for Smith’s seat, including Navy SEAL Adam Schwarze, former NBA player Royce White and Navy veteran Tom Weiler.
Another GOP candidate, former Minnesota Republican Party candidate David Hann, was also in the race at that time but dropped out last month. And Mark York, a seven-generation farmer from Lake Wilson is also running.
Yet the national Republican Party, which is battling to prevent a Democratic takeover of the U.S. Senate in November’s midterm election, placed its bet on Tafoya.
That has disgruntled some of the 2,500 Republican delegates who will vote to endorse the GOP Senate candidates in Duluth at the end of the month.
“You have people who would see (support from the national party) as a plus, and there also are people who would see it as meddling from Washington,” said Frank Long, a delegate and longtime party activist from Watertown Township who supports Schwarze.
Long said the state’s Republicans “are not a monolithic organization.” He said some delegates are concerned about Tafoya’s support for abortion – which she says now is limited to procedures in the first 12 weeks of pregnancy.
Tafoya has also expressed support for “red flag” laws — which allow law enforcement to temporarily remove weapons to individuals a court has assessed might be a danger to themselves or others — that are opposed by many gun-rights delegates.
Remarks Tafoya made about President Donald Trump in 2022 are another turnoff for some GOP delegates. She wrote an open letter to Trump in a now deleted post on Substack that said she hoped he would not run again, and even as she praised his accomplishments, she called his politics “messy.”
While Tafoya may not be the first choice of some delegates, “she has the right to run,” Long said.
Tafoya has since aligned herself closely with Trump’s platform and embroiled herself in the culture wars with her fierce opposition to transgender women in female sports.
But if she makes it to the general election, running against either Rep. Angie Craig, D-2nd District, or Lt. Gov. Peggy Flanagan, who are locked in battle for the Democratic nomination, Tafoya will likely revert to the more moderate candidate she once considered herself to be.
“I think Minnesota is starving for a moderate Republican who doesn’t tell them that they’re going to ban abortion who is the antithesis of the Tim Walz regime,” Tafoya told WDAY Radio when Smith announced her retirement early last year.
After the February 2022 Super Bowl, Tafoya quit her broadcasting career, launched a political podcast and spent several years weighing whether to run for political office. She met with the NRSC in December and declared her candidacy about a month later.
Weiler, who ran unsuccessfully for the 3rd Congressional District seat in 2022, said he contacted the NRSC last fall seeking support. But he said the people he spoke with seemed uninterested in him because he was “not rich or famous.”
He said he was surprised and disappointed that the NRSC backed Tafoya.
“It was clearly a decision made in Washington, D.C., without any input from Minnesotans,” Weiler said.
Tafoya raised more than $2 million in the two months after she announced her candidacy, with the help of the national GOP. That’s more money than all of her GOP rivals combined.
According to filings with the Federal Election Commission, the NRSC gave Tafoya’s campaign $62,000 and Senate Republican Leader John Thune’s leadership political action committee has held joint fundraisers with Tafoya’s campaign.
The national party’s endorsement also brings help in recruiting campaign staff and campaign consulting, a must-have for a candidate who has never before run for political office.
Minnesota is ‘a grass-roots state’
Tim Lindberg, a political science professor at the University of Minnesota-Morris, said the national Republican Party had to step into the race for Smith’s seat “to some extent because the state party has been in disarray.”
Shut out of holding a statewide seat for 20 years, the state party is low on cash and divided between the establishment Republicans, like Tafoya, and more conservative MAGA activists.
So, while Tafoya’s campaign has had a boost from the NRSC and other GOP national organizations it is not guaranteed that she will win the votes of 60% of the GOP delegates needed to win an endorsement.
Tafoya’s campaign did not respond to requests for an interview and information. But the former sportscaster has said she will continue to run for the U.S. Senate and participate in the Aug. 11 primary even without an endorsement.
Historically, not all of Minnesota’s GOP candidates have abided by the endorsement. But the state’s political history also shows that Republican voters don’t reward non-endorsed candidates very often, especially in statewide elections, when the primary comes around.
Schwarze, another rival for the GOP endorsement, said Republicans “don’t reward people who take shortcuts.”
He called Tafoya a “D.C. out-of -the -box candidate” and is confident he will earn the endorsement, even if it takes several rounds of balloting.
“Minnesotans are not for sale,” Schwarze said. “This is a grass-roots state.”
The former Navy SEAL speaks in military terms about the U.S. Senate race.
“I’ve been preparing for this campaign run as if it were a ‘no-fail’ mission,” he said. After Tafoya, Schwarze, who reported raising more than $1 million as of March 31, has amassed the largest campaign chest among the GOP Senate candidates. Yet Democrats Craig and Flanagan have much larger war chests than Tafoya and Schwarze.
Both Schwarze and White — who won the GOP endorsement to run against Sen. Amy Klobuchar in 2024 — have vowed to abide by the endorsement and support the delegates’ candidate of choice.
“The mission is going to get a Republican U.S. Senator,” Schwarze said.
But Weiler has a different attitude. He said he would continue his campaign unless he’s convinced the delegates have chosen a candidate “who can win and be an effective senator for Minnesota.”
Tafoya is a high profile Minnesota senate candidate
Lindberg said Tafoya is well liked for her high profile in the world of sports.
She spent three decades covering the NBA, NFL, Olympics and college football. A Californian by birth, many Minnesotans got to know Tafoya when she worked as a sportscaster and reporter for sports radio KFAN in Minneapolis — covering the Vikings — the Midwest Sports Channel and WCCO-TV.
Lindberg said the NRSC is “banking” on her popularity and name recognition. But he said that strategy could “backfire” in an endorsement process that is dominated by party activists in both the Democratic and Republican state conventions.
“It’s not clear that the people at these conventions really care about electability,” he said.
Northern lights spotted across the globe
A severe geomagnetic storm made a stronger aurora than usual.
Minnesotans could see northern lights on May 14 and 15 as the natural spectacle will be visible through several northern states.
The best time to look for the aurora borealis is between 11 p.m. and 2 a.m. local time, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Space Weather Prediction Center.
Showers and thunderstorms are predicted in the early evening in St. Cloud, but skies should clear somewhat before the northern lights show would begin, according to the NOAA forecast.
There could be more auroras to come this weekend as well, as the geomagnetic activity that makes the lights viewable is predicted to continue through May 16.
Here’s what to know about catching the northern lights.
When will the northern lights be viewable?
People in several U.S. states may get chances to see the aurora display on May 14 and 15. The best times to view the lights are generally between 10 p.m. and 2 a.m. local time, according to NOAA, though this can vary significantly by location and as weather and visibility forecasts are updated.
This time around, geomagnetic activity is expected to peak between 11 p.m. and 2 a.m. local time, according to the forecast, which could trigger moderate geomagnetic storms that make the auroras viewable farther south.
More up-to-date forecasts can be found on NOAA’S Aurora Dashboard.
Which states can see the northern lights?
How far and wide the auroras can clearly be seen will depend on whether the geomagnetic storm reaches a G1 to G2 (mild to moderate) or G3 (strong) level and the weather in your location.
Though Canada is getting the best, most intense viewing this time around, the states listed below will have at least a chance of catching a glimpse, according to NOAA’S forecast map.
- Washington
- Idaho
- Montana
- North Dakota
- Minnesota
- Michigan
- Wisconsin
What are the northern lights, aka aurora borealis?
The northern lights are a luminous glow seen around the magnetic poles of the Northern and Southern hemispheres, according to the University of Alaska Fairbanks Geophysical Institute. Known for creating ribbons of colorful light in the night sky, the aurora borealis are polar lights, or aurora polaris, that appear in the Northern Hemisphere.
The Southern Hemisphere has its own polar lights known as the southern lights, or aurora australis, which create their own dazzling display.
Put simply, auroras are a result of the sun interacting with the Earth’s atmosphere. A collision between electrically charged particles from the sun and gases in Earth’s atmosphere produces a series of minuscule flashes that appear like moving lights in the sky. The charged particles are pulled toward the North and South poles due to Earth’s magnetic field.
While that magnetic field usually protects the Earth from solar winds, the winds can occasionally get strong enough to bypass the field, allowing particles and gases in the magnetosphere to interact and generate the colorful displays, according to the Geophysical Institute and the Canadian Space Agency.
Tips for viewing the northern lights
The top tip for getting the best view of the northern lights is finding a dark spot away from light pollution. Space.com recommends finding a location as far as possible from city lights and heading out there as soon as the sky gets dark. Then, it’s a waiting game.
Find a north-facing view with a clear horizon and exercise patience, as the lights often come in waves, said Space.com. You can also download apps to track aurora forecasts based on your location, such as “My Aurora Forecast & Alerts.”
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Caribou Coffee, a coffeehouse known for its handcrafted beverages made with real ingredients, is rolling out a new value menu at participating locations nationwide.
Beginning May 7, a company release stated, Caribou Coffee is serving Caribou Everyday Value Menu items, including to-go favorites and barista-made beverages.
The Everyday Value Menu features a curated lineup of Caribou classics now offered at prices starting at $2, the release stated. Guests will be able to enjoy signature items such as a small, specialty-grade brewed coffee, streusel-topped blueberry muffins and Caribou’s Cold Press, its version of cold-brewed coffee.
The value menu also introduces a new a bacon breakfast sandwich. It features crispy bacon, a cage-free scrambled egg patty and melted cheddar cheese layered on a toasted English muffin for $4. These prices are before tax.
“For many of our guests, their daily coffee ritual is a meaningful part of their day, and we know how much it matters that it delivers on quality, convenience and value,” Matt Reiter, chief commercial and strategy officer for Caribou said in a release. “At Caribou, we’re committed to creating a consistent, high-quality experience every time someone walks into one of our coffeehouses, with a range of options that fit into their day. The Everyday Value Menu expands the ways we do that and creates even more flexibility and value for guests.”
Caribou’s Everyday Value Menu includes:
- $2 small brewed coffee: A rotating selection of regular and seasonal coffees, brewed every hour to ensure maximum freshness
- $3 Blueberry Muffin: A blueberry muffin topped with streusel
- $3.50 small Cold Press coffee: Caribou’s cold brew coffee served over ice
- $4 Bacon Breakfast Sandwich: Crispy bacon, cage-free scrambled egg patty and melted cheddar cheese layered on a toasted English muffin
Caribou is also offering non-dairy customization at no extra charge, the release stated. Also, the Caribou Perks loyalty program allows guests to earn points with every Caribou purchase. These points are redeemable for free handcrafted beverages, bakery items and more.
Guests can order items from the Everyday Value Menu in-store, at the drive-thru and through the Caribou Coffee app for pickup or delivery.
Caribou Coffee serves handcrafted beverages and food items in more than 800 coffeehouses worldwide. It opened its first location in 1992. Focused on smart growth, the coffee shop operates and franchises coffeehouses across 11 countries.
Caribou Coffee locations in central Minnesota
- 2423 Division Street West, St. Cloud
- 4135 W. Division Street, St. Cloud
- 2510 W. Division St., St. Cloud
- 310 Lincoln Ave., St. Cloud
- 900 Cooper Ave. S, St. Cloud
- 201 Second Ave. S, Cold Spring
- 18157 Carson Court, Elk River
- 19425 Evans St. NW, Elk River
- 324 Lowell Ave. NW, Elk River
- 533 12th St. S, Sauk Centre
- 701 Third Ave. NE, Buffalo
- 800 Hwy 55 E, Buffalo
- 630 Ryans Way, Buffalo
- 110 First St. S, Sauk Rapids
- 880 18th St. NW, Sauk Rapids
- 2319 First St. S, Willmar
- 620 First St. S, Willmar
- 12495 Fifth Ave. N, Zimmerman
- 703 Northland Drive, Princeton
- 1500 Elm St. East, St. Joseph
- 520 Jefferson Blvd. NW, Big Lake
- 705 County Road 75 NW, Clearwater
- 1725 Pine Cone Road S, Sartell
- 113 S. Waite Ave., Waite Park
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