As Governor Tim Walz looks to start his second term leading the state, there are just nine days and counting for those who want to apply for cabinet positions in the next Walz Administration.
After the departure of a number of commissioners, Governor Walz says the positions are available to anyone interested and qualified.
"We will do a national search on some of these. Department of public safety is one. Education. I think some of these folks who are involved with this, while it does seem like a short fuse it's a pretty small community of folks looking at that so we'll wait and see. I'm going to make the public service announcement again, get your packets in folks."
He says he hopes to have the cabinet selected by mid-December so that they can hit the ground running in January when the session starts.
While many people may assume that Walz's choices for commissioners are from his circle, that isn't always the case.
"Many of my commissioners I had never met until I interviewed them for the job. I had never met them. So this idea that there's a broad pool out there that maybe doesn't know if they can be involved in this. I would encourage people to put their names in. We need you."
Walz says he is open to the idea of changing some of the departments, even breaking some apart, like human services because it's so big.