Welcome to The Topline, a weekly roundup of the big numbers driving the Minnesota news cycle, as well as the smaller ones that you might have missed. This week: Asset forfeiture; overdose deaths; tax receipts; and Minnesota’s most closely divided city.
Asset forfeitures continue to fall following reforms
The total value of assets seized by Minnesota police agencies fell to $5.3 million in 2023, a decline of 27% from the prior year, according to the latest forfeiture report from the Office of State Auditor Julie Blaha.
Forfeiture laws allow police to take and keep cash, vehicles and other property from suspected criminals. They can do so without obtaining a conviction or an arrest, and in many cases are able to keep the property after the person has been cleared of wrongdoing.
The potential for abuse in forfeiture cases led the Minnesota Legislature to limit the circumstances in which property can be seized in 2021. The auditor credits that reform with the declines seen last year.
“These changes are a result of civil liberty advocates, law enforcement, and legislators coming together to find common ground,” said Senate Minority Leader Mark Johnson, R.-East Grand Forks, a sponsor of the bill. “While these changes won’t impact most Minnesotans, those who are impacted can trust the process to be fairer and more balanced.”
Another promising sign for reformers is that the share of forfeitures valued at less than $1,000 continues to fall, indicating that police are using it more as a tool to target major suspected criminals, rather than possible street-level offenders.
DUI and drug offenses account for the vast majority of forfeitures in Minnesota.
Minnesota drug overdoses fall for first time since 2018
Preliminary data from the Department of Health shows that the number of fatal drug overdoses fell from 1,384 in 2022 to 1,274 in 2023, a decline of about 8%.
Greater Minnesota saw a 21% decrease in overdose deaths, while in the Twin Cities the decline was a far more modest 1%. The figures mirror national trends.
“We have seen a decline in opioid deaths, alongside an increase in nonfatal overdoses, in part due to greater naloxone availability,” said Commissioner of Health Dr. Brooke Cunningham. “We know the work is not done, and we cannot rest. Every overdose is one too many.”
Opioids account for the entirety of the 2023 decline, as they make up about three quarters of all overdose deaths. Nonfatal opioid overdoses, on the other hand, remained flat, suggesting that the decline in deaths owes less to changes in use patterns and more to the availability of naloxone.
Fatal overdoses from methamphetamine and cocaine, on the other hand, continued to rise in 2023, underscoring an area of concern for regulators and policymakers.
Deaths involving benzodiazepines, a category of depressant drugs, fell sharply but only make up about one-tenth of overdoses.
The report also notes a sharp increase in hospitalizations for cannabis poisoning, due in large part to the legalization of marijuana for personal use. But unlike the other drugs mentioned, cannabis virtually never causes fatal overdoses on its own.
Tax revenues were half a billion higher than expected last fiscal year
The latest from Minnesota Management and Budget continues to show stronger-than-expected tax receipts, with total fiscal year 2024 revenues coming in at $494 million, or 1.7%, more than expected.
So far, fiscal year 2025’s numbers are coming in even higher than that, beating expectations by more than 3%.
It’s enough to make you wonder whether all the dire talk about “structural imbalances” earlier this year was overblown. Maybe MMB needs to change how it does its forecasts?
Minnesota’s most politically-divided city
It’s Mountain Iron in the northeast, according to the Star Tribune. In 2020 Joe Biden got 881 votes while Donald Trump got 876, for a margin of just two-tenths of 1% .
Some sparsely-populated hamlets and townships were even closer, the Star Tribune explains, but among cities with at least 250 people, none were closer than Mountain Iron. While it used to be a DFL stronghold, the city has followed the rest of the Iron Range in a shift toward the GOP in recent years.
As recently as 2012, Barack Obama won the city by a nearly 2-to-1 margin.
Forfeiture laws allow police to take and keep cash, vehicles and other property from suspected criminals. They can do so without obtaining a conviction or an arrest, and in many cases are able to keep the property after the person has been cleared of wrongdoing.
The potential for abuse in forfeiture cases led the Minnesota Legislature to limit the circumstances in which property can be seized in 2021. The auditor credits that reform with the declines seen last year.
That's a big "no duh" moment right there. Hopefully we can keep going on this