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Panel backs expanding high-rise sprinkler grant program; committee lays Senate File 18‑95 over
Summary
Senate File 18‑95 would expand eligibility and add $10 million to a grant program to retrofit residential high‑rise buildings with automatic sprinklers. Fire safety experts, local officials and labor representatives urged expansion after the 2019 Cedar Avenue fire; the committee laid the bill over for possible omnibus inclusion.
Senate File 18‑95, carrying additional funding and modified eligibility for Minnesota’s residential high‑rise sprinkler grant program, drew bipartisan support from fire-safety experts, building trades and local officials. The Housing and Homelessness Prevention Committee laid the measure over for possible inclusion in an omnibus bill.
Senator Aisha Mohammed, sponsor of the bill, said the bill is meant to continue bipartisan life-safety work begun after the November 2019 Cedar Avenue apartment fire in Minneapolis that resulted in multiple deaths. She described the 2019 fire marshal report’s finding that the absence of automatic sprinklers contributed to the fatalities and noted the 2021 law that created the current retrofit incentive.
The bill proposes to expand program criteria and appropriate an additional $10,000,000 to the Minnesota…
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