Pubdate: 5 Apr 1999
Source: Minneapolis Star-Tribune (MN)
Copyright: 1999 Star Tribune
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Author: Bill McAuliffe / Star Tribune

HUMANITY SOMETIMES STEPS INTO LAWMAKING PROCESS

It was time for Marsha Tollefson to tell her story.

But when she sat down at a table facing a panel of state senators in a room
filled with cameras, reporters, state agency heads and individuals both
sympathetic and opposed to her, Tollefson just couldn't get the words out.

"It was terrifying," said the 47-year-old woman from St. Peter, Minn., who
went to the State Capitol on March 16 to try to persuade legislators to
allow the medical use of marijuana in Minnesota.

It's no small thing for an individual to tell a personal story in the
public arena of the Capitol, though dozens, perhaps hundreds, will do so
during the Legislature's five-month run. In Tollefson's case, telling how
smoking marijuana every day allows her to deal with a continual hardening
of her skin and organs also was to admit publicly that she's a criminal.

"I knew the ones who didn't want [the bill] to pass, and to see them
looking at you like you're not telling the truth, when it's coming from
your heart -- that was really hard," said Tollefson, who twice pushed her
written statement over to Sen. Pat Piper, DFL-Austin, to read for her.

Though a legislative session most commonly features long hours of droning,
expert testimony about tax formulas, commerce and other impersonal issues,
ordinary people on frequent occasions climb the Capitol steps, take deep
breaths and reveal very personal traumas in an attempt to create new laws.

This session, Tollefson and several cancer patients have told of the relief
they found in marijuana. Others have talked about having abortions, or
loved ones killed inadvertently in police pursuits, or children injured in
falls off bleachers.

The Koskinen case

Rep. Luanne Koskinen, DFL-Coon Rapids, has seen it from both sides. In
1994, she came to the Legislature as a citizen to call for criminal
background checks on housing managers and other employees who have keys to
residences. Her appearance came less than six weeks after her daughter,
Kari, disappeared from her New Brighton apartment. Kari later was found
murdered, and the only official suspect was the building's caretaker, a
convicted sex offender.

"It's really a character-building circumstance, particularly when you have
opponents," said Koskinen, who was elected to the House in 1996. "That's
got to be the most challenging thing anybody has to do.

"In my case, there wasn't anything worse than for someone to be critical.
That was almost unreasonable."

Tollefson and others noted that it hurts when their personal woes seem
simply to bounce off the political machinery.

"Looking at the senators, it seems they don't quite get it," said Keith
Draz, a police officer who testified March 10 before the Senate
Governmental Operations and Veterans Committee about head injuries that his
son, Ethan, 5, sustained in a fall from hockey arena bleachers. "It's very
hard when you don't think people feel the pain we feel. It's easy to hear
testimony, but when it's personal, it means everything in the world to you."

Driving forces

Indeed, grief or personal witness to injustice is what seems most commonly
to bring everyday citizens before legislative committees.

"I would not have rested had I not been able to do what I did. Part of it
was that there was no trial," Koskinen said, indicating that the police's
only suspect in her daughter's murder committed suicide while in jail on
another charge. "I was seeking justice for her. It was sort of a memorial
to her."

Sen. Allan Spear, DFL-Minneapolis, has heard many heart-wrenching stories
in his 27 years in the Legislature. The Judiciary and Crime Prevention
committees on which he serves tend to attract the particularly upsetting
testimony of crime victims.

"Sometimes these stories are very effective," Spear said. "But as
legislators, we should try to remain dispassionate. We shouldn't be passing
laws on the basis of emotional appeals."

For example, he said, he supported the background-check bill that Koskinen
advocated, but noted there was a consequence.

"One of the goals we've always had is rehabilitation [of criminals]," Spear
said. "We want them to find jobs when they get out of prison. Yet we passed
a law that could close opportunities to them."

Koskinen now sits on the House Health and Human Services Committee, where
members hear tough stories about child care, housing and health care. It's
now her job to translate personal tragedies and trauma into good law, and
she notes that it doesn't always happen.

"A law has got to be the right thing, and it has to be of merit to the
state as a whole," she said.

"I have to have questions," she said of her new role. "I don't think
anybody can be responsibly making policy decisions and decisions about how
tax money is spent and not ask questions.

"But we are human beings, and we make decisions based on our own
perceptions. Sometimes we collectively make mistakes, and sometimes we do
awfully good things." 
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