To place an obituary, please include the information from the obituary checklist below in an email to obits@pioneerpress. com. There is no option to place them through our website at this time. Feel free to contact our obituary desk at 651-228-5263 with any questions. General Information: Your full name, Address (City, State, Zip Code), Phone number, And an alternate phone number (if any) Obituary Specification: Name of Deceased, Obituary Text, A photo in a JPEG or PDF file is preferable, TIF and other files are accepted, we will contact you if there are any issues with the photo. Ad Run dates There is a discount for running more than one day, but this must be scheduled on the first run date to apply. If a photo is used, it must be used for both days for the discount to apply, contact us for more information. Policies: Verification of Death: In order to publish obituaries a name and phone number of funeral home/cremation society is required. We must contact the funeral home/cremation society handling the arrangements during their business hours to verify the death. If the body of the deceased has been donated to the University of Minnesota Anatomy Bequest Program, or a similar program, their phone number is required for verification. Please allow enough time to contact them especially during their limited weekend hours. A death certificate is also acceptable for this purpose but only one of these two options are necessary. Guestbook and Outside Websites: We are not allowed to reference other media sources with a guestbook or an obituary placed elsewhere when placing an obituary in print and online. We may place a website for a funeral home or a family email for contact instead; contact us with any questions regarding this matter. Obituary Process: Once your submission is completed, we will fax or email a proof for review prior to publication in the newspaper. This proof includes price and days the notice is scheduled to appear. Please review the proof carefully. We must be notified of errors or changes before the notice appears in the Pioneer Press based on each day’s deadlines. After publication, we will not be responsible for errors that may occur after final proofing. Online: Changes to an online obituary can be handled through the obituary desk. Call us with further questions. Payment Procedure: Pre-payment is required for all obituary notices prior to publication by the deadline specified below in our deadline schedule. Please call 651-228-5263 with your payment information after you have received the proof and approved its contents. Credit Card: Payment accepted by phone only due to PCI (Payment Card Industry) regulations EFT: Check by phone. Please provide your routing number and account number. Rates: The minimum charge is $162 for the first 12 lines. Every line after the first 12 is $12. If the ad is under 12 lines it will be charged the minimum rate of $162. Obituaries including more than 40 lines will receive a 7. 5% discount per line. On a second run date, receive a 20% discount off both the first and second placement. Place three obituaries and the third placement will be free of charge. Each photo published is $125 per day. For example: 2 photos in the paper on 2 days would be 4 photo charges at $500. Deadlines: Please follow deadline times to ensure your obituary is published on the day requested. Hours Deadline (no exceptions) Ad Photos MEMORIAM (NON-OBITUARY) REQUEST Unlike an obituary, Memoriam submissions are remembrances of a loved one who has passed. The rates for a memoriam differ from obituaries. Please call or email us for more memoriam information Please call 651-228-5280 for more information. HOURS: Monday Friday 8: 00AM 5: 00PM (CLOSED WEEKENDS and HOLIDAYS) Please submit your memoriam ad to memoriams@pioneerpress. com or call 651-228-5280. Officials building Minnesota’s paid family and medical leave program set to launch Jan. 1 say they’re confident that built-in fraud prevention measures will prevent widespread abuse of the new benefit. More than 130, 000 people are expected to use the new benefit in its first year at a cost of around $1. 6 billion. Around 400 state employees will administer the program. After several high-profile schemes cost the state hundreds of millions of dollars, some state lawmakers want more scrutiny of fraud controls. Federal prosecutors have said fraud in Minnesota government programs in recent years could exceed $1 billion, and new cases continue to emerge. Fraud prevention measures Minnesota’s Department of Employment and Economic Development outlined some of its fraud prevention measures for House members on Wednesday at the Fraud Prevention and State Agency Oversight Policy. “There is no one silver bullet for program integrity. You’ve got to have a combination of people, process and technology,” said DEED Deputy Commissioner Evan Rowe. “We have a variety of overlapping controls.” DEED will use existing data from Minnesota’s unemployment insurance program, which has a strong reputation for fraud prevention, to identify and lock accounts suspected of being compromised by hackers or impostors. A 2022 report from the nonpartisan Office of the Legislative Auditor found unemployment insurance, which DEED administers, was effective in preventing fraud. To access benefits, applicants must submit identification and take a photo of themselves to sign up through an online platform called LoginMN, a centralized sign-in site for state services. All claims must be certified by a health care provider or other appropriate professional. “The selfie is to prevent fraudsters who may try to use AI to scam identities,” said Minnesota Information Technology Services Deputy Commissioner Jon Eichten. A team with access to data analytics to spot overall trends in the paid leave system will review claims. Minnesota will be the first state to integrate electronic health records into its paid leave system. The state will also conduct random audits of claims. Cybercrime, identity theft Rowe said his agency expects cybercrime and identity theft to be among the main forms of fraud they’ll face. But they’ll also need to ensure applicants are telling the truth on claims. Multiple points of validation will help combat dishonest applicants, he said. Republicans on the committee zeroed in on several areas of potential fraud in the program, including verification of eligibility, monitoring intermittent leave, and the number of caregivers who can be qualified to help one person with medical needs. “When I look at how people are going to misuse and abuse this program, it is when they say they are the caregiver . and they take off 2 weeks, 3 weeks, 4 weeks, 5 weeks, 6 weeks, 10 weeks, whatever it is, and they don’t actually provide care,” said Rep. Marion Rarick, R-Maple Lake. Republican members pressed state officials for information about the upper limit for the number of people who can care for a single person. There’s technically no limit set in statute, though Rowe said there’s a review process for “complex” family situations and that there will be data to track connections between claims. “Our program integrity unit exists to ensure that we have checks in place when there are multiple caregivers in place,” he told the committee. “We are going to be extremely careful about thinking about how those pieces can be put in place to ensure that the system is being respected . that individuals are only getting the benefits that they’re entitled to.” ‘We’ll be auditing’ Legislative Auditor Judy Randall, who heads the independent watchdog office that reviews state government programs, said she was impressed by the built-in controls in the soon-to-launch paid leave system. “Putting the controls in place up front is by far the most effective. It’s much better than pay and chase, which is what we have found ourselves doing in some of the programs,” she said, later adding: “I’m encouraged, I’m hopeful, but we’ll be auditing.” Minnesota paid leave will be the 13th state-run program of its kind, and is one of many new policies Democratic-Farmer-Labor leaders enacted when they controlled state government during the 2023 legislative session. It will be funded by a new 0. 88% payroll tax on most employers. It can be split between employers and employees. Employers can choose to cover the entire cost of the benefit, but most can charge employees up to about half the amount: 0. 44% Initial costs are covered by $668 million from the historic $18 billion surplus during the 2023 legislative session. How it works Starting next year, most employers will be required to offer employees 12 weeks of family leave and 12 weeks of medical leave. Annual time off will be capped at 20 weeks. Events like having a child, a serious illness, or caring for a sick family member are eligible for coverage. Supporting a family member called to active duty in the military, responding to personal safety issues and bonding with a child also qualify. The amount of money workers will qualify for under paid leave will depend on their wages.
https://www.twincities.com/2025/11/19/mn-paid-family-medical-leave-will-leverage-data-selfies-to-fight-fraud/
MN paid family medical leave will leverage data, selfies to fight fraud
