OERTWIG THE NIGHT OWL

What's the deal with DFLers' living arrangements?

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St. Paul school board member's night owl hours ruffle feathers

Al Oertwig might be the only elected public official in Minnesota to work the graveyard shift.

In fact, most nights for the past several years, the longest-serving member of the St. Paul school board has been the lone nocturnal occupant of the fifth-floor offices at school district headquarters.

The school board lists Oertwig's address as 360 Colborne, the district headquarters, but he says he's not homeless and isn't living there. He says he lives at one of two duplexes he owns on the city's East Side.

But night after night -- even on weekends -- Oertwig's odd schedule mystifies colleagues and longtime friends and neighbors.

Now it is raising questions about unlimited access to school district offices.

Oertwig, who has no other job outside his $10,000-a-year seat on the school board, insists that he has never slept at the office. Late nights are when "I do my school board work."

"This is Al Oertwig being a night owl," he said. "What's the evidence to say it's not?"

Oertwig, 60, has been elected to the school board five times, serving 18 years.

He has served as board chairman, led a 2002 fight for an excess levy referendum and is the school board's representative to numerous state, regional and national organizations and committees.

Yet this "night owl" may be the biggest enigma to hold public office.

Few know him

Neighbors and tenants of Oertwig's duplexes near Payne Avenue say he is seldom home. Or he's there for only a few hours in the morning.

Tilly Kuntze lived in the lower level of Oertwig's duplex for two years before moving out in June. She said she was never completely sure if he lived upstairs. A couple of other tenants seemed to come and go.

"I'd hear someone up there once in a while, but I can't tell you if it was Al or not," she said. There was no phone upstairs, she said. And she never saw mail addressed to Oertwig.

"The only place I could even call him was at the school board, and then I had to leave a message," she said. The same holds true for constituents, school district employees and even other school board members: If you want to reach Oertwig, you've got to leave a message at district offices.

"I leave messages," said school board Chairwoman Elona Street-Stewart. "Some days you know it might take longer for him to get back to you."

But it's Oertwig's schedule that leaves people scratching their heads.

While school board members can have keys to enter the fifth-floor offices at 360 Colborne any time, they must sign in after hours with a security guard. While the logs are destroyed after 30 days, a Star Tribune review of those sheets for June and July found a trend. For the 48 days through July 18, Oertwig was in the building after hours 34 times, including Saturdays and Sundays.

For example, on June 3 -- a Friday -- Oertwig signed in at midnight and signed out at 4 a.m. On June 7, he signed in at 10:30 p.m. and signed out at 5:45 a.m. And, on Friday, June 17, he signed in at 9:40 p.m. and signed out at 5:25 a.m. For most of July, it was much the same.

"So that's where he goes," Jay Huebscher said. "I thought he had a part-time job working at a SuperAmerica."

Huebscher lives in a duplex Oertwig owns and has known the board member for the past 10 years. "He does spend time there," Huebscher said of Oertwig's home next door. "But, typically, he gets home between 5:30 and 7 [a.m.] and he's out of here by 10 a.m. to noon. That's the routine, seven days a week."

Some longtime friends and political colleagues were surprised to learn of his late-night use of district headquarters.

Andy Driscoll, a St. Paul public affairs specialist who has known Oertwig for years through the city's DFL Party, said: "I think it speaks volumes that I, and several other people who are close to him, don't even know that."

Pulling back

"I had heard that he had late hours, but not all night long," said Mary Thornton Phillips, former chairwoman of the school board. She said that Oertwig wasn't regularly staying late at district headquarters until the end of her time on the board in 2001, but it was worrying district employees who work on the fifth floor.

"Staff members were concerned about the privacy of their papers and their materials and their computers. That kind of thing. Because someone was there all alone," she said.

Oertwig acknowledges that while he has always been a late-night person, he wasn't so secretive until 1990, when the St. Paul Pioneer Press reported that he advertised for tenants at his duplex by putting fliers in a Minneapolis gay bar. The flier was written on Oertwig's campaign stationery. Some called for him to resign from the school board, though others, including board members, supported him. Oertwig, who is gay, said the incident prompted threats and ridicule. He didn't run for reelection in 1991 and did not return to the school board until 1996.

When asked if public reaction to that story contributed to his pulling back from public view, Oertwig said: "I think it did."

But Driscoll said Oertwig has always kept his distance. "He's always been someone in the shadows," Driscoll said. "He'll slide into conventions and say hello. But he doesn't work the room. He stands there and people come up to him. And, as far as I can tell, he goes back into his shell when it's all over."

24-hour access

Oertwig said spending so many late nights at 360 Colborne "became a habit" during the 2002 referendum campaign. Praised by his board colleagues for his hard work and passion for the job, Oertwig worked for months to persuade St. Paul voters to provide more money for their schools.

He admits he has more time than most to devote to the board.

After stepping away from a job in the state Department of Human Services in the mid-1990s, he has been pretty much unemployed. A stint working as a night cashier at a convenience store in the late 1990s conditioned him to stay up past 5 a.m. Still, he acknowledges that rumors have been "simmering" about just what he is doing late at night, about whether he may be living there instead of at his house. That bothers him, he said.

"Nobody on the staff, nobody on the board has talked to me about this," he said.

Except for Board Member Tom Conlon, who shows up on the logs occasionally and for much less time, Oertwig is the only school board member using the facility late at night. When asked what kind of work he is doing, considering that he can't really call people that late, Oertwig said, "There's a lot of stuff that you can study and look at and think about."

He certainly isn't sending or receiving school-related e-mails at those hours. A review of Oertwig's more than 8,000 e-mails since Jan. 1 confirm that almost all his work-related e-mail arrives during the day. The e-mails that come at night are mostly spam. District officials said they can record sent e-mails for only a couple of weeks, but Oertwig admits he doesn't send e-mails very often.

Still, Oertwig said, he's doing work, such as reviewing budgets, going over funding proposals or mulling district policies. He has also been sorting through stacks of records he has accumulated in the office, he said.

But Street-Stewart said the school board may have to review how and when it uses the facility. "It raises some eyebrows," she said, adding that she has never asked for a key to the fifth floor.

Neither Anoka-Hennepin nor Minneapolis, the state's other large districts, allow such open access to their headquarters. While Street-Stewart said she personally has no problem with Oertwig's "unique schedule," the public also needs to know that district facilities are being used appropriately.

Thornton Phillips said it makes no sense to have board members in district offices in the wee hours of the night.

"I consider myself a very hard-working person. Never did I need 24-hour access. I wouldn't want to be there," she said. "No one told us we would have restrictions on when we could go in. But no one told us we would set up residence there."

There is an old green Army cot stored in a fifth-floor closet, district officials confirmed.

But Oertwig insists he lives at his East Side duplex. He has held a homestead on the duplex and on the one next door since at least the early 1990s, according to Ramsey County records. The next-door property is listed as a "relative homestead" in county records, meaning that even if Oertwig doesn't live there, he pays property taxes at the reduced homestead rate because a relative does. Oertwig's son did live there -- five years ago. His son moved out. Huebscher bought the property on a contract for deed in May of 2000 and moved in. But the homestead status was never changed.

Oertwig said he expected Huebscher to change the homestead status. Huebscher said Oertwig won't give him the original contract to file with the county. So Oertwig remains the legal owner of the property.

County officials said the difference in taxes paid by Oertwig would amount to only a few hundred dollars a year. And it's doubtful he will face penalties if it turns out he underpaid his taxes, said Dorothy McClung, director of Property Records and Revenue for Ramsey County. However, she said, her department plans to correct his status.

There have been problems, also, with Oertwig's primary residence. City records show that over the past year, neighbors have called city inspectors to complain about uncollected garbage, junk cars in the driveway and standing water and cat feces in the basement. About a dozen feral cats come and go out of the basement through a broken window, Huebscher said.

Staff members at the St. Paul Water Utility said that from January through April, there is no proof of water consumption at the duplex, no sign that a faucet had been turned on or a toilet had been flushed. Oertwig, whose name is on the account, paid for only minimal service.

Oertwig said he's a "cheapskate" who has considered turning off the natural gas in the house to save money. Kuntze, his former tenant, said Oertwig once had the furnace turned off when he thought the thermostat was set too high. But Oertwig insists he has been using water and has not tampered with the meter. In fact, a water utility staff member said last week that it appears water is being used again. Oertwig said that shortly after he was first interviewed for this article, he received a water bill for more than $100.

"I guess that proves that I'm using the water," he said.

It also appears he's no longer using the district offices at night. Since Oertwig was first interviewed the week of July 17, he has not signed in on the after-hours log. "It doesn't feel like a comfortable workplace anymore, so I've changed my habits," he said Tuesday.

So, where is he working nights now?

Oertwig said he's using the public libraries for the computer. "And Byerly's is open 24 hours," he said, adding that he can do his reading or leave voice mail messages from there. But he said he worries about what people will think about his nighttime habits. "I don't want it to infringe on my ability to be effective," he said. "And if this creates some kind of negative image, that does damage credibility." Source: Star Tribune, August 8, 2004