Bill to Reimburse Sheriffs for Ice Rescues Introduced at MN Capitol

The federal government reimburses local sheriffs for open-water rescues, but ice rescues have no reimbursement mechanism in place. After the mild winter in Minnesota this year, community leaders want to change that.

“This all started with a request we had for mutual aid from another county, explained Cass County Sheriff Bryan Welk. “A request was sent to the state … asking for the reimbursement after we went up there. I had asked the DNR about reimbursement for ice recovery and I learned that it was only for open water, not for ice rescues.”

Sheriff Welk went to his local representative, District 6A’s Ben Davis (R-Merrifield), who took the issue to District 6 Senator Justin Eichorn (R-Grand Rapids), who couldn’t believe what he was hearing.

“Oddly enough, you know, being here seven years and having grown up in Grand Rapids and in Minnesota, people always just kind of assumed that they were kind of covered,” said Sen. Eichorn. “Until this year, when Sheriff Welk came to us and said, ‘Can you fix this problem?’ He said, ‘When we do water rescues, we’re reimbursed. But when we do a rescue on ice, we are not reimbursed. Can we make that change?’ And I was shocked and surprised to hear that. So we put a bill together with Rep. Ben Davis and we were able to have a pretty good committee hearing here in the Senate recently.

Performing rescues out on a frozen waters isn’t exactly cheap, either.

“I’ve seen them up to 18 to 20-some-thousand dollars,” said Sheriff Welk. “You know, as the ice conditions have deteriorated and been a challenge this year, we’ve had three or four that we’ve been called out on.”

“And most of our northern Minnesota sheriffs don’t have a lot of extra budgets for this,” Sen. Eichorn stated. “And it’s not something they can really plan for, because you don’t know if you’re going to have zero rescues or ten rescues in a year.”

Performing these rescues out on frozen waters can be quite dangerous, especially during this warm winter season in Minnesota.

“The thing with ice rescue is obviously, the ice isn’t safe, so that’s the challenge there,” said Sheriff Welk. “You have to get sometimes specialty equipment out there. You have to get specialty divers that are certified in ice stuff versus open waters, and certainly recovering the vehicle or the person may take specialized equipment.”

Luckily for local sheriff’s offices, it looks like the bill won’t be much of a challenge to pass.

“So the only stop it needs to go through on the Senate side is the Environment [Climate, and Legacy] Committee. I think we’re in good shape – the chair was excited about it, the vice chair was excited about it,” said Sen. Eichorn. “On the House side, Representative Davis is working hard over there. He has spoken with the chair in the [House Environment Committee], very interested in doing the bill and actually putting even more money towards it than we were initially thinking. The DNR was asking for to make sure we’ve got that pot of money filled for a longer period of time.”

If the legislation is passed, reimbursements may be made by the DNR commissioner with available appropriations, or with other available federal, state, and local funds. The text of the Senate bill, SF 3882, and updates on the bill’s status can be found here.