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MN CLIMATE-GATE PT 2: LEGISLATORS GONE WILD-BEACHSIDE CLIMATE EARMARK BONANZA
By Andy Post | December 6, 2010
Part 2 of a series.
Senator Ellen Anderson and Rep. Kate Knuth don’t always drink beer, but when someone else is buying, they drink Dos Equis.
We first reported on the self-serving funneling of environmental research and education funding by state Rep. Kate Knuth and Senator Ellen Anderson last week. Turns out, there are deeper connections to other areas of the budget and those that employ these two lawmakers.
Anderson and Knuth are sipping pina coladas and partying it up with climate change enthusiasts from around the world this week at the “COP16″ conference in Cancun, a continuation of climate change rhetoric from the United Nations Climate Change Conference of 2009 known as “COP15″. The conference was opened with an appeal to a Mayan goddess. Power Line blog has provided some coverage of the fun in the sun being experienced in the name of climate research.
Knuth and Anderson are at the conference with a group of students from the U of M, sponsored by a program that lists Knuth as a staff member. Multiple sources also confirm Anderson works for the University as an instructor, including her own campaign website and Senate member page which mention her occupation as a ‘College Instructor’. Knuth has been live-blogging from the event here.
Knuth and Anderson pictured with U of M students during a two-week conference on global warming
Knuth and Anderson are part of the Institute for Environmental Studies at the University of Minnesota. A school that has received millions in earmarks for research and grants, among other things. One initiative that receives substantial funding due to the work of these legislators is the Institute for Renewable Energy and the Environment (IREE). Is the trip to Cancun a pay-off by the University of Minnesota to Sen. Anderson and Rep. Knuth for services rendered in the past year? You decide.
“Bureaucrats Gone Wild” at the COP16 conference in Cancun.
The IREE money is sourced from Xcel Energy’s Renewable Development Fund (RDF) which they are required to pay to the state annually for operating their nuclear plants at Prairie Island and Monticello. Xcel (and in turn, Xcel rate payers) pay $19.5 million annually to the State of Minnesota for as long as they operate those plants. More on the fund HERE. This fund was established in 1994 and has increased exponentially every couple years since. The amount Xcel pays the State is scheduled to increase again in 2012.
In 2009, a Senate committee (that Anderson sat on) amended the law to provide the University of Minnesota’s Institute for Renewable Energy and the Environment (IREE) with $5 million annually beginning in July, 2009. The amendment was attached to S.F. 550, a similar version was passed in the House (HF 863) and the bill went to conference committee. One of the members of the conf. committee was, conveniently, Rep. Jeremy Kalin (whom we told you in the first installment of this story attended the COP15 conference in Copenhagen with Rep. Knuth last winter).
SF 550 Appropriation
The Bill was passed by the House and Senate again, became known as the Omnibus Energy Policy Act of 2009, and was signed into law. Anderson voted for the final bill that contained the funding for the University, link to Senate journal here. Knuth and Kalin voted affirmative on the House side. (Journal of the House – 54th Day – Thursday, May 14, 2009 – Top of Page 6402)
The legislative guidelines for how the money can be spent invite questionable spending. Just look at this line from the Senate Conference Committee report:
- Environmentally sound production of energy from a renewable energy source, including biomass and agricultural crops
- Environmentally sound production of hydrogen from biomass and any other renewable energy source for energy storage and energy utilization
- Development of energy conservation and efficient energy utilization technologies
- Energy storage technologies
- Analysis of policy options to facilitate adoption of technologies that use or produce low-carbon renewable energy
Could this expedition to Cancun qualify as “analyzing policy options” to solve global warming?
Sen. Anderson and Rep. Knuth are currently in Cancun as part of their roles as teachers at the U of M through the same initiative that now receives that $5 million. Here is the press release that confirms their role as teachers and excerpt:
“Seven of the students are enrolled in a climate change policy course offered by the University’s sustainability studies minor and co-taught by state Sen. Ellen Anderson, chair of the Environment, Energy and Natural Resources Budget Division committee, and state Rep. Kate Knuth, who was part of the Will Steger Foundation’s delegation to the 2009 climate talks in Copenhagen. Along with nine other graduate and undergraduate students, they represent a spectrum of majors, including landscape architecture, law, conservation biology, civil engineering, political science, and environmental sciences, policy and management. Anderson and Knuth, who is also a conservation biology graduate student and a researcher with the Institute on the Environment, will co-lead the delegation.”
Budget deficit? What budget deficit?
Between the three bills below, Ellen Anderson provided $6,381,000 of earmarks for the University and tried to provide another $418,000 for fish contraception and socio-political studies of global warming that Governor Pawlenty vetoed.
Sen. Anderson chief authored SF 2624 passed this year (the LCCMR Appropriation Bill) that draws money from the environmental trust fund (the Minnesota Lottery). We first reported that this has become a massive slush fund for liberal pork projects in our last post. This bill provided another $4.301 million of environmental earmarks for the University of Minnesota including:
- $640,000 to study the impact on fish fertility in the Zumbro River when humans flush their unwanted birth control pills
- $550,000 for the University to train habitat restoration professionals
- $507,000 to identify the habitats of Minnesota moose and create a program about moose for the Minnesota Zoo
- $237,000 to study ways to build barriers and buffers between farm drainage tiles and waterways
- $144,000 to study how to bury carbon in shallow lakes and wetlands
- $545,000 to study exotic microbes that grown in the underground Soudan Mine near Ely
- $297,000 to study the impact of insecticides on pollinating bees
- $161,000 to create an atlas that shows where Minnesota birds go to breed
- $1.13 million to continue production of county geographic atlases
Eco-Ellen was also the driving force behind her 2009 LCCMR Funding Bill (SF 1012, that became law as Chapter 143) that included grants to the University of Minnesota for the following wastes of taxpayer dollars:
- $150,000 to study invasive earthworms in Minnesota forests
- $300,000 to study sonic barriers to invasive alien carp
- $180,000 to study the potential impacts of global warning in Minnesota
- $250,000 to find the cold-water sources of trout streams
- $80,000 to study a new disease that might affect some Minnesota fish
- $820,000 to continue producing an atlas of geographic resources in each Minnesota county
That is a total of $1.78 million of bureaucratic waste money for the university.
Invasive Earthworms Received a Bundle of Cash
The price-tag of that bill would have been worse, if Governor Tim Pawlenty had not used line-item vetoes to kill Ellen Anderson’s proposals to spend $143,000 for the University to assess the socio-political impact on Minnesota of curtailing economic opportunities and raise family expenses to reduce greenhouse gases and climate changes and $275,000 to see if fish fertility drops when humans flush away unwanted birth control bills.
Finally, Sen. Anderson was the Chief Author and Rep. Knuth was the House Co-Author of the 2009 Environment Finance Bill (HF 2123, which became law as Chapter 37). That bill included a $300,000 earmark for the University to study the potential for geothermal energy projects.
Is such mutual back-scratching by legislators and their gravy-train, government trough beneficiaries just the way things are done in Minnesota? Or will a new sense of shock persuade at least two Representatives or two Senators to seek an investigation of this trade-off by Sen. Anderson and Rep. Knuth when they return from the mojito sipping and coco bongo of the Mexican Riviera?
Tags: 2011 Session, DFL, DFL Legislators, Senate DFL Caucus, Uncategorized
Topics: 2011 Session, DFL, DFL Legislators, Senate DFL Caucus, Uncategorized | 12 Comments »
12 Responses to “MN CLIMATE-GATE PT 2: LEGISLATORS GONE WILD-BEACHSIDE CLIMATE EARMARK BONANZA”
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December 6th, 2010 at 9:17 AM
“Invasive Earthworms Received a Bundle of Cash”
Which they no doubt use for their Christmas shopping.
December 6th, 2010 at 9:29 AM
Good stuff, Andy. It’s been a very long time since Minnesota Democrats Exposed was really into the business of exposing Minnesota Democrats for their corruption and conflicts of interest.
If this is the new direction for this blog, well done man!
December 6th, 2010 at 9:54 AM
After hearing about the car stink in California, does Minnesota have any similar deals we should know about?
December 6th, 2010 at 11:22 AM
It looks like you’ve managed to expose a Senator of being from the other side of the aisle from you politically.
I get the impression that you’re not a fan of issues that are framed as being environmentally beneficial. However, what if the same issue is framed in terms of conservation? If researching earthworms helped figure out how to protect foliage in forests that are homes to animals Minnesotans like to hunt, would it still be a bad thing?
http://www.dnr.state.mn.us/invasives/terrestrialanimals/earthworms/index.html
December 6th, 2010 at 12:08 PM
So, after watching the video, MDE’s definition of ‘gone wild’ is some people on stilts giving participants high fives as they walk by?
It’s obvious this is some sort of reception, do republicans ever eat food or have a cocktail at their events?
December 6th, 2010 at 1:32 PM
So many places to cut spending. I doubt if eliminating this spending would upset voters.
December 6th, 2010 at 3:53 PM
Post, I used to read you all the time in the MNDaily. I always thought you were holding back in your editorials. I now know I was right. I see you’ve gone full Teabag. Glad to see that you are going to keep the MDE tradition of mildly insensitive cultural commentary and completely disingenuous political “reporting” alive.
December 6th, 2010 at 4:10 PM
“Ed Kohler Says: December 6th, 2010 at 11:22 AM”
Ed Kohler, again demonstrates he’s either too ignorant or lazy to consume information and comprehend it in any sensible manner.
Perhaps you should confine your reading to the works of Dr. Seuss, Ed.
December 6th, 2010 at 5:48 PM
Why on earth would counties need $1.13 million worth of atlases??? Do the DFL legislators/U of M think taxpayers are made of money??? I couldn’t believe my own eyeballs when I saw that.
December 6th, 2010 at 9:20 PM
Ed Kohler, apparently, doesn’t have a problem with Democrats whose votes direct taxpayer dollars into their own pockets… so long as the money their stealing is hidden under guise of eco-fascist bullshit.
December 8th, 2010 at 11:22 PM
The only shocking thing here is that there are still a few whackos that are clinging bitterly to the scam that Algore has sold them, ie. the global warming hoax.
A pox on anyone who subscribes to such tripe.
December 9th, 2010 at 10:48 PM
Climate Conference attendees sign petitions to reduce US GDP by 6% and to ban H2O.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TzZ_Zcp4PwY&feature=player_embedded
At the end it begs the question if you are dumb enough to ban water is it any wonder you will fall for this?