Minnesota Governor Tim Walz didn't hold back Saturday afternoon in a meeting with the press nearly 10 hours after the Minnesota Legislature ended a special session in St. Paul. It was a special session fueled by expectations of police accountablity, COVID-19 legislation, and a bonding bill.
However, Republicans and Democrats failed to compromise on any of the key issues.
Gov. Walz called the special session, "An embarrassment for Minnesota."
"If you're negotiating in such good faith, why do you set an arbitrary deadline that you set aside ahead of time you're going?" Walz said. "Where did everybody go today? What's going on that's so important that everybody had to leave? We could be here right now, we didn't need to go until 4 a.m."
Walz's comments came after a late night of back-and-forth between the Republican Senate and Democratic House.
Related Nothing special: Senate, House adjourn with issues unsettled
The Senate offered a compromise on police reforms late Friday night after the House passed its own version of the bill on Thursday. The special session ended just 12 miles away from 38th and Chicago in Minneapolis where George Floyd was killed by Minneapolis Police on May 25.
"I'm really worried the message this sends to all those tens of thousands of protesters who were on the streets, all those people across Minnesota and across the country who expected that this time it was going to be different."
It's unclear when the next special session would be called, but it appears Minnesota lawmakers are headed for a July special session.