Bill would give $1 million to nonprofit run by violence interrupter whose Minneapolis contract was pulled after shootout, threats

McAfee said the Salem contract has been tabled until the city finishes an investigation. Regarding the shootout, he said his violence interruption worker had just gotten off work when 30 shots were fired so he got his gun from his car and shot back. He noted the worker, Kashmir Khaliffa McReynolds, was struck in his neck, back and shoulder. He says that shows the danger of the job, since violence interrupters aren’t allowed to carry weapons.

The bill was laid over for possible inclusion in a larger bill later this session.

Champion has sponsored numerous bills directing funds to nonprofits in his north Minneapolis district, including many that were part of a $1.1 billion package that lawmakers sent to hundreds of nonprofits in 2023. As chair of the jobs committee in 2023, when the Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party controlled the Legislature and governor’s office, Champion oversaw more than $300 million in direct allocations to nonprofits.

Rather than go through the typical process of competing for state grants, nonprofits were directly named in budget bills in what are called legislatively named grants.

It won’t be easy to get the bill passed this year, with the House evenly split between Democrats and Republicans and Democrats in control of the Senate by just two seats. Some Republican lawmakers recently called for an end to such earmarks, saying they don’t have enough oversight.

Both competitive and legislatively named grants are supposed to get the same state oversight, but the Office of the Legislative Auditor has found that agencies are more lax in their oversight of legislatively named grants.