BACKGROUND
Marion Greene is the incumbent County Commissioner in District 3, and has served on the board since 2014, first winning a special election and then re-election the same year.
Greene is a former Minnesota State House Representative for District 60A. In this role, she authored legislation to fund all-day kindergarten, and co-authored legislation to establish the Minnesota Health Exchange, now known as MNSure. She has 10 years of experience as a healthcare policy analyst, focusing on Medicare and payment systems. As commissioner, she served as Chair of the Health Committee.
Greene holds a bachelor’s degree from Swarthmore College, and a master’s degree of business administration from the University of Texas at Austin. She lives in the Uptown neighborhood with her husband and stepdaughter.
ISSUES
With Linda Higgins, proposed moving management of the county crime lab from the sheriff’s office to the administrator’s office, a major change that has received pushback from Hennepin County Sheriff Rich Stanek.
Source: KSTP News, 12/3/17
“So one thing I have really tried to shift toward is collaborating with our county attorney to push him, to encourage him to see that there’s a path forward to taking a more progressive point of view in a number of different ways. I push him to lead in ways that don’t reinforce racial and gender inequities in our community. Do I wish that he would take a harder line? Yes. And probably once every two weeks I ask him about what charging decisions he’s making, specifically to do with marijuana possession, just because I view that as kind of an indicator of what else, of all the other decisions that his office is making on what to charge or what not to charge. But I think that another way that we can hold him accountable is collectively, to be talking about all these issues at the same time. That was the power of achieving the immigration legal defense fund, that collaboration. The more that we can be in conversation about how to work together and the issues that we want to push and the direction we would like to push the county attorney in, the stronger our point of view will be.”
Source: ISAIAH Hennepin County District 3 Candidates Forum, 5/8/18
“The priorities that I have for the years ahead: for starters, I would like to end money bail. Money bail criminalizes being poor. I’d also like to advance the impartiality of our justice system by providing civilian oversight of our crime lab instead of public safety oversight, instead of the sheriff overseeing our crime lab.”
Source: ISAIAH Hennepin County District 3 Candidates Forum, 5/8/18
Spearheaded and authored budget amendments for 2018 to provide $250,000 for immigration legal defense and $25,000 to require the sheriff’s office to provide people being booked with printed materials in English, Spanish, Somali, Hmong, and Russia informing them of their right not to speak with Immigration Customs Enforcement.
Source: MPR News, 12/6/17
“At Hennepin County Commissioner Marion Greene’s request, U.S. Rep. Keith Ellison is writing Stanek to demand more information about how his office helps ICE.”
Source: Star Tribune, 7/9/17
“The single biggest barrier that I see in Hennepin County to safety and welcome for immigrants and refugees is our sheriff, in a word. And unfortunately he is elected in his own right, and so our power, collectively, is at the ballot box. But I see his coordination with ICE as the single biggest scary thing, the big evil for the immigrant community. And I’ll say that from my conversations with local police forces, Minneapolis, Bloomington, and the city jurisdictions, to a person, the chiefs from those departments see the coordination with ICE as a definite negative to community safety. So there’s a big push to try to, I would say, rehabilitate the reputation of the police in the community. And the local chiefs see the coordination with ICE as very much eroding that rebuilding of that trust. So anything that we can do to elect a different sheriff I think would be time well spent. We need to elect somebody who reflects our values.”
Source: ISAIAH Hennepin County District 3 Candidates Forum, 5/8/18
Voted for $3 million in seed money toward the preservation of naturally occurring unsubsidized affordable housing, helping to purchase and fix up 530 affordable housing units most at risk for being converted to high-end housing.
Source: Hennepin County Board minutes, 6/14/16
“I have been working to keep people in housing and end wrongful evictions so that we can have family stability.”
Source: ISAIAH Hennepin County District 3 Candidates Forum, 5/8/18
As a state legislator, sat on a key committee that considered public funding of the Vikings stadium. The Vikings encouraged calls to her to vote in the affirmative. She voted no.
Source: Minnesota House of Representatives, 5/9/12
“A central platform of my campaign is early childhood. That’s the ideal entry point for really addressing equity issues. There are all sorts of studies that show that an investment in early childhood pays off, a dollar now pays off in up to $16 later for children who are the most at risk.”
Source: MinnPost, 4/24/14
“I would like to ensure broad access to quality health care by establishing single payer in Hennepin County, and I see the path towards that by establishing a public option.”
Source: ISAIAH Hennepin County District 3 Candidates Forum, 5/8/18
“I’d like to reduce the county’s carbon footprint by shifting the county’s car fleet from gas cars to electric cars.”
Source: ISAIAH Hennepin County District 3 Candidates Forum, 5/8/18
Greene was the only Commissioner to vote no on an ash recycling contract at the Hennepin Energy Recovery Center (HERC) garbage burner through 2025, saying she wanted a larger discussion about extending the contract at the HERC.
Source: Southside Pride, 11/3/14
As a Minnesota legislator, Greene voted against increasing requirements for abortion providers and requiring physicians to administer abortion drugs in person.
Source: Minnesota House of Representatives, 4/20/12
Also voted against prohibiting same-sex marriage and against a photo ID requirement.
Source: Minnesota House of Representatives, 5/21/11 and 4/3/12
Championed bipartisan bill in the legislature to restrict gun access for repeat domestic violence offenders.
Source: Twin Cities Daily Planet, 2/3/14
Voted to replace the name Lake Calhoun with Bde Maka Ska, condemning Calhoun for his advocacy for slavery and forced relocation of tribes.
Source: MPR News, 11/28/17
