Senator Kiffmeyer, Chair of the Senate Committee on State Government, on Tuesday heard SF 1836, which would require the sale of state-owned real property in St. Paul. In 2020, property on L’Orient Avenue in St. Paul was purchased using appropriated money from the COVID-19 Minnesota Fund to be used as overflow for the morgues during the pandemic.
“This property was preemptively purchased with federal funds, only to sit for a year with no benefit to the state,” Senator Mary Kiffmeyer (R-Big Lake) said Tuesday. “It is time to designate this property as surplus and sell it. It is unfortunate that money from the federal government was used on something that provided no good or services to Minnesotans instead of investing in our state and people.”
Over the course of the pandemic, hospitals were not overrun with COVID patients, nor were the morgues in Minnesota. The federally funded, state-owned property at 1415 L’Orient Avenue in St. Paul would be designated as surplus and disposed of following final enactment of this bill.