A task force, a detailed audit and a federal judge have all told the Minnesota Legislature its sex offender program needs an overhaul.

Yet, with a ruling from a federal trial just months away, lawmakers have been unable to agree on any major program fixes.

Minnesota’s sex offender program is designed to civilly commit the worst offenders to state security hospitals, where they are to receive treatment for their illnesses. Critics have long complained that the program is unconstitutional.

Advocates on both sides made their cases in U.S. District Court in St. Paul in a trial challenging the constitutionality of the program. Testimony ended in mid-March, and a judge expected to rule on the case this summer has already warned the program cannot remain the same.

If lawmakers cannot agree on changes before then — and it is likely they will not — former Minnesota Supreme Court Chief Justice Eric Magnuson said, “then they are basically ceding to the federal government, to the federal courts, control over the sex offender program.”

“If the judge tells them to do something that is expensive, and they don’t like it, (it’s) kind of ‘too bad, you had your chance.'”

FINAL WINDOW

Theoretically, the Legislature has a final window to modify the program — which opponents say denies participants a realistic chance of release — before it adjourns in mid-May.

Senate leaders say they would be willing to address the issue in the next six weeks. But House leaders say there is time to deal with it after the ruling is announced.

“I don’t believe the court is just going to turn everybody loose. I think we will have time to act,” said House Speaker Kurt Daudt, R-Crown.

He said he believes the program is constitutional and that public safety must be paramount.

Several Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party legislators say they must act now; otherwise, they might have to scramble in a special session this summer to figure out how to house offenders now locked away in hospitals.

“They’ve been giving us every warning ahead of time,” said Rep. Dan Schoen, DFL-St. Paul Park, “and I think that we should at least be discussing what options could come out, what could we end up having to do.

“And I’d be really afraid that we could end up needing to call a special session to deal with it, because I think it could end up being that expensive.”

Schoen and Sen. Kathy Sheran, DFL-Mankato, have co-sponsored legislation that would alter the program; however, it has not progressed through the Capitol process.

In the face of critical reports on the sex offender program in recent years, the Senate has promoted overhaul measures. Those have not been well received by the House, under both Democratic and Republican control.

“There’s really no point in us spending our time on it this year. The House isn’t going to take it up at all,” said Sen. Ron Latz, DFL-St. Louis Park, who chairs the judiciary committee in the Senate.

Potentially, Latz said, if the Legislature passed a bill with an effective date of this summer before U.S. District Judge Donovan Frank rules, “it might affect what remedy he orders.”

“Now, he won’t even have any guidance from the Legislature in terms of what remedies to order,” Latz said.

‘CLEARLY BROKEN’

Frank already has indicated that major changes are on tap. In February 2014, he issued a sharply worded opinion saying Minnesota’s program is regarded as “one of the most draconian sex offender programs in existence.”

The system is “clearly broken,” Frank said. “The time for legislative action is now.”

Frank issued his opinion after a 2011 Legislative Auditors’ report and the work of a 2013 task force. All recommended overhauling the system that keeps hundreds of sex offenders away from the public.

Sheran, who has been working on changing the program for years, said the Legislature has abandoned its duty by ignoring the calls for reform.

“It’s our job,” Sheran said. “The court’s job is to decide the constitutional questions, not to design a treatment program that both treats the patients and meets their constitutional rights and protects the public safety.”

The reason the Legislature hasn’t done its job? Politics, said Sen. Warren Limmer, R-Maple Grove, a member of the task force that issued recommendations on sex offender civil commitment in 2013.

If the Legislature agreed to stop making the issue political, Limmer said, there would be a way to sort out the constitutional and public safety issues and to actually rehabilitate the participants in the program who can be.

“Other states — namely all 49 other states — have a system that seems to work, and Minnesota just hasn’t come to that point,” Limmer said.

Gov. Mark Dayton’s administration has proposed some program changes. This year, the governor said the state should add $7 million to its budget for the next two years to fund biannual evaluations of each participant in the sex offender program, open some secure but less restrictive treatment facilities and add more money for judges to speed up the review of provisional discharge petitions.

Human Services Commissioner Lucinda Jesson said it’s not clear whether lawmakers will support the governor’s request. “We need the legislative approval, and we need the dollars,” she said.

Rachel E. Stassen-Berger contributed to this report. Doug Belden can be reached at 651-228-5136. Follow him at twitter.com/ dbeldenpipress.

MINNESOTA’S SEX OFFENDER PROGRAM

What: Includes more than 700 people who are confined under court-ordered treatment plans at facilities in Moose Lake and St. Peter. Courts civilly commit people into the program for an unspecified time after prison sentences are complete.

Lawsuit: Participants in the program are suing the state in federal court in a class-action suit, arguing the program — from which nobody has been fully discharged in two decades — unconstitutionally deprives them of their liberty and is providing inadequate treatment.

Timeline: Trial’s early phase ended mid-March. Court says final submissions due from attorneys by April 15, after which federal judge Donovan Frank is expected to rule within 60 days. That could mean the ruling comes after the Legislature’s scheduled adjournment May 18.