House Passes Frontline Worker Bonus Bill

February 24, 2022

The bill, authored by Rep. Cedrick Frazier, (DFL-New Hope), establishes payments of $1,500 to qualifying workers in fields such as healthcare, long-term care, EMS, public health, child care, schools, food service, retail, maintenance and security, public transit, and corrections.   

The employees must have been employed for at least 120 hours between March 2020 and June 2021.  They must also meet income requirements—for healthcare workers, incomes below $175,000 for a single person or $350,000 for a couple, and for non-healthcare workers, incomes below $85,000 for a single person or $185,000 for a couple. 

In an earlier version of the bill the healthcare workers excluded physicians. While many physicians wouldn’t qualify because of the income limits, the exclusion also applied to residents and fellows in training. Frazier amended the bill to remove this exclusion. All healthcare workers are now included. 

The Senate version of the bill, SF 2650, authored by Sen. Erin Murphy (DFL-St. Paul), is still awaiting a hearing in committee. While there is a commitment from both bodies to provide funding for the frontline worker payments, there is not yet agreement on how broad the definition of frontline worker should be or how much total money should be allocated to the payment pool.