West Twin Cities

Rep. Jim Nash is one of several legislators questioning the governor's continued peacetime emergency powers after spending $7 million to convert a cold storage facility into an emergency morgue.

Nash and two other legislators toured the morgue. 

"They didn't have any bodies there," Nash said to KTLK. "They have lots and lots and lots of hospital gowns and test kits and they have some of those IV bags that you see hanging in all those cool TV shows. And that's about it."

The facility was initially purchased in preparation for a peak of COVID-19 deaths. The building would be available when hospitals and other morgues became overwhelmed. According to Nash, crematoriums, morgues and other facilities said there was no potential press on the system that warranted the purchase of a morgue. 

"This was a wasteful and unnecessary purchase made by Gov. Tim Walz without any oversight by the legislature — another example of the need to end the current situation and return the legislature to an equal branch of government," Nash said in a Facebook post.

Nash told KTLK that Walz doesn't want to relinquish his executive powers because he likes being a "dictator."

"The executive powers really are no longer needed by his own admission. Now this is all about what is the proper role of the legislature. The legislature, all 201 of us, are the voice of the people from around the state and we are sent to St. Paul to ask difficult questions, to look at how do you fund something, to look at whether or not you need something, perhaps like a morgue, and we ask the hard questions and that is what, in my opinion, the governor is trying to avoid is hard questions," he said.