Ellison's latest bid to rebuild his office's criminal division stalled in Legislature

Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison, whose office is increasingly being asked to lead police prosecutions, is again meeting legislative resistance in his bid to build up the state's criminal division.

Ellison inherited an office with just one full-time criminal attorney a decade after it had about a dozen prosecutors. Keeping with an early priority of his first term, he sought this year to swell his office's ranks with 11 new prosecutors in a request to the Legislature.

Yet that request went unanswered despite a late push from House Democrats to include the funding in the compromise state government finance bill that's on the verge of passage.

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