When Minnesota State Senator John Marty talked recently about Senator Barb Goodwin who is retiring, he said he’ll miss not only her political passion, but also her upbeat personality.
“I think Barb has done tremendous things in the mental health area,” Marty said. “It is also an interest of mine, and she has been very articulate about what is needed.” Plus, he added—as someone who sat near her on the Senate floor and got to know her well—he’s really going to miss her sense of humor.
“In politics, we need the humanization that humor can bring us. I wish she hadn’t left.”
Goodwin, a Columbia Heights resident since 1991, served three terms in the Minnesota House of Representatives from 2001 to 2007. She served briefly as an interim Columbia Heights School Board member in 2009-2010, until voters elected her to represent Senate District 41. The district includes Columbia Heights, Fridley, St. Anthony, Hilltop, New Brighton and a portion of Spring Lake Park. She is vice chair of the Senate Judiciary committee, vice chair of the Judiciary Budget division, and also serves on the Commerce committee.
After Goodwin announced her retirement, State Representative Carolyn Laine, also a Heights resident, ran for and won the District 41 Senate seat in November.
Goodwin said she’s retiring partly because of her age (she turns 68 in June), and also her desire to do other things, such as travel. “So far, I’ve tried not to make any commitments,” she added.
Her political years had their ups and downs, she said: “All six years I was in the House, the DFL was in the minority. In the Senate, we were in the minority my first two years. When we were in the majority, it was nice. I enjoyed it.” She served with a vastly different trio of governors from three different parties: Jesse Ventura, Independence Party of Minnesota; Tim Pawlenty, Republican; and DFLer Mark Dayton.
She said her interests lie in the areas of consumer protection, mental health services, and the environment. Her successes include her work on the Safe at Home program, which allows people who are being abused or stalked to obtain an anonymous address. “There are 1,300 to 1,400 people in the program,” Goodwin said. “It has saved lives. It prevents others from getting the addresses; schools, counties, and real estate companies cannot make the information public.”
She was instrumental in getting a consumer protection bill passed, after discovering that home insurance companies raised rates on clients who called to inquire about making a claim, even if they didn’t make one. “Now, if somebody calls and says, ‘Does my insurance cover that?’ the agent may say yes or no, but they can’t raise your home insurance rate.”
Another of Goodwin’s successful bills penalizes prostitution “johns” arrested for solicitation. “Any money they have on them is confiscated and donated to the Safe Harbor program.”
She worked on a bill that tackled the problem of people not getting money owed to them by estate sale agents after a sale. She and State Representative Connie Bernardy, District 41A, successfully sought $5 million from the Legislature to help fund Springbrook Nature Center in Fridley’s new interpretive center. Goodwin co-authored a bill with State Representative John Lesch, District 66B, that made it illegal for someone to post semi-nude and nude images of people on line without their consent.
“There are civil and criminal penalties for that,” Goodwin said.
She helped pass a women’s economic package. “My part was wage disclosure; it is now illegal for an employer to fire or retaliate against someone who talks about their salary.” Goodwin and Laine successfully worked on a child support and visitation bill (HR 451, which modified basic support under certain conditions and established consumer reporting agency requirements for non-payment of child support). “It was Carolyn’s bill in the House and I carried it in the Senate. We came up with a good compromise for this perennial issue.”
Goodwin worked on a bill providing that pregnant incarcerated women’s needs be met while they are in jail; they must receive medical advice as well as information regarding the affects of drugs on babies. And, they can’t be shackled.
“That came out of the case of one pregnant woman who was shackled. She fell forward and landed on her stomach,” Goodwin said.
Her most recent effort, which did not pass, proposes creating three or four pilot mental health crisis centers. “Minnesota has the lowest number of mental health beds in the country. We talked to social service agencies, sheriffs and police chiefs throughout the state. What they want is a safe place that is neither a jail nor a hospital, for police to drop these people off. Right now, the options are for the police to take them to a hospital emergency room. I talked to one chief in a rural area who said he had to sit with a person for 24 hours before the hospital found the patient a place to go. I’ve visited crisis centers like I’m proposing that are already operating in Orlando, Florida, San Antonio, Texas, King County in Washington, and in New York City. They are very successful and have saved counties and cities millions of dollars.”
Goodman said she has a personal interest in mental health. “My mother was schizophrenic. I think, ‘What if she would have ended up in jail?’ We definitely have a mental health crisis in this state; we need more beds and we need more crisis intervention training for police. We need more money for programs.”
She did have one success from that recent effort, she added: “We took co-pays off mental health services at prisons.”
When asked what advice she’d offer somebody considering running for office, she said, “If somebody asks, ‘Should I do this?’ I would say, ‘Absolutely!’ It’s the best education you can get from any job I can think of. You have a chance to have input into public policy. Running for office, for any elected position, even if you don’t win, enriches your life. But always remember, it’s the people’s seat. It doesn’t belong to you. For me, the highlights were getting to know our community better. There are so many wonderful people. I made a lot of lifelong friends.”
“The downside to being in office, though, is the time it takes away from family, and the effect on them when you’re gone,” Goodwin said. “There is so much you can’t plan. It’s not a part time job. You’ve always got meetings and constituents with problems. There are city and school district meetings as well, in fact there are six cities in this district.”
State Representative Alice Hausman of District 66B said, “I admire Barb for the amazing spirit she brings to her work. She has passion for the cause of mental health, and we need to carry on with that dream. We have been talking about the fact that she had the right idea. I knew Barb before she was in the Legislature, when she was a staffer who headed up the research department. There too, I can speak to her hard work and the personality she brought to that. She has a wonderful sense of humor. She will be missed. We need to celebrate people like her, and her time in office.”