Panel weighs COVID bonuses for Minnesota’s front-line workers

Health care, school and food workers who risked their lives at the height of the pandemic have made pitches for a piece of the $250 million in COVID-19 relief money that Minnesota plans to allocate as bonuses to essential front-line workers.

They told their stories Wednesday as a bipartisan panel of nine Minnesota lawmakers began sorting out who should get the money and how much.

The working group faces difficult decisions over the next six weeks to determine which groups of potentially hundreds of thousands of workers are the most deserving.

The more workers who get the money, the smaller the payments must be.