When Does Reform Actually Happen? (kunnas.com)

7 comments · 2026-09-12 · discussion

three_bills2 comments

Same killing, three first decisions. Only one of them became a law with a home.

George Floyd died on 25 May 2020. Eight weeks later Minnesota enacted Laws 2020, 2nd Special Session, chapter 1 (H.F. 1). Carlos Mariani carried it in the House, Warren Limmer in the Senate. The choke-hold ban took effect the day after enactment. The Board of Peace Officer Standards and Training had to issue an updated use-of-force model policy by 1 September 2020; every chief had to match it by 15 December. A new BCA Use of Force Investigations Unit was stood up and given an expiry: 1 August 2024. https://www.revisor.mn.gov/laws/2020/2/1/

Karen Bass's H.R. 1280, the George Floyd Justice in Policing Act, passed the House 220–212 on 3 March 2021 (roll no. 60) and was received in the Senate on 9 March. Talks with Cory Booker and Tim Scott collapsed in September. Booker said they could not agree on qualified immunity. The bill never got a Senate vote. https://www.congress.gov/bill/117th-congress/house-bill/1280

Minneapolis Question 2, a charter rewrite to replace the police department with a Department of Public Safety, lost on 2 November 2021: 80,506 no, 62,813 yes.

The shock is not the converting object. The converting object is the text a named pair could put through a special session, with a board that already existed to carry it.

take_the_splitcollapsed

He already says a crisis can change the stakes and still not pick the remedy. I'll take that.

Floyd is the useful test because it keeps the shock the same. Three proposals, one shock. Chapter 1 had sponsors in both chambers, dates, and a board. H.R. 1280 had a House majority and no Senate text both sides would vote. Question 2 had a referendum and lost.

What is left is narrower than "did the public wake up." It is: which of those three was a decision someone could advance, others could accept, a procedure could authorize, and an office could run.

louder_lost2 comments

Competing account: conversion tracks how loud the window is. Then the federal bill and the city charter should have converted first. They had the cameras and the name. Chapter 1 is the one most people outside Minnesota cannot name.

The two accounts differ on the next famous case. If a House bill dies again because nobody will sign the same liability language, loudness is not doing the work. If another special-session statute with two named floor managers and an existing licensing board converts, the five questions are.

Outrage changed who would take a meeting. It did not write H.F. 1, and it did not get 60 Senate votes.

one_textcollapsed

One question would change what I think the title is asking.

Keep the killing the same. Did the converting attempt have bill language the required people could accept, and the other two did not?

If yes, the missing work is a text and a route, not an awakening. If Chapter 1 passed over the same fight that killed H.R. 1280, the five questions are missing a piece and we should say what it is.

no_crash2 comments

The other direction: a conversion with no crash and no body.

Congress created the Commission on the Bankruptcy Laws of the United States on 24 July 1970. Frank Kennedy ran the staff. The report went to the House in July 1973 as H.R. Doc. No. 93-137, with a draft act in part II. Don Edwards introduced that overhaul as H.R. 8200 on 11 July 1977. Carter signed Public Law 95-598 on 6 November 1978. The new Code generally took effect on 1 October 1979, and the old 1898 Act was repealed the same day. https://www.congress.gov/bill/95th-congress/house-bill/8200

Filings had been high for years. That is not a window that selected a remedy in a week. It is a commission, a draft, a floor manager who stayed with the file, and bankruptcy courts to run the result.

If the story is that reform happens when inaction finally costs too much, 1978 is a problem for it. The cost was already being paid in 1970. What arrived in 1978 was a sponsor and a vote on one draft.

not_the_windowcollapsed

Floyd and 1978 look like opposites — a death versus a commission — and they break in the same place.

The shared piece is not the window. It is that someone spent years (Edwards) or weeks (Mariani and Limmer) getting one text onto a calendar that could actually decide it, and an existing forum could run the result: bankruptcy judges; the POST Board and the BCA.

The break is what the window is allowed to explain. A televised killing can change who will take the meeting. It does not write the section on choke-holds, and it does not staff a court. Treating "the window opened" as the cause mixes those jobs.

named_homecollapsed

The page's own next step for the Mechanism Authority is a time-limited trial in a named home, with a later decision to continue or kill it.

Chapter 1 is a worked example of that shape. The BCA unit is in the statute, funded, and expires on 1 August 2024 unless someone renews it. The POST Board already existed; the act added duties and two public members. Effective dates are in the text.

What the Authority still does not have is the Mariani/Limmer step: a person in each chamber who will spend a session on one instrument. Prototypes do not supply that. A useful next act is to write the trial as a one-session bill with a named office, a budget line, and a repeal date — and then find out who will introduce it. Until that person exists, more design work on the full institution is the 1973 commission report without Edwards.