Fox 9′s Trish Van Pilsum brought an investigative team together to check into the finances of the U’s presidential palace and found its market value to be less than $3 million, while nearly $5 million in renovations have been put into the property in the last two decades. These include huge projects such as reviving the president’s private pool and bathhouse, painting and re-painting his private quarters (because of a color mishap) and even installing a second large kitchen in the residence.

Watch the whole story here:

Tags: Checks and Balances, University of Minnesota

The Legacy Amendment increased the state sales tax by three-eighths of one percent beginning on July 1, 2009 and continuing until 2034. The additional sales tax revenue is distributed into four funds as follows: 33 percent to the clean water fund; 33 percent to the outdoor heritage fund; 19.75 percent to the arts and cultural heritage fund; and 14.25 percent to the parks and trails fund.

Amidst an avalanche of messages from Republican capitol staffers and concerned activists, MPR wrote a great series on the research they’ve done into the lack of transparency into how the funds are distributed and how they’re being spent. Here’s part of the report:

St. Paul, Minn. — Nearly three years after Minnesotans authorized a new sales tax to send additional money to conservation, arts and parks, there is no public comprehensive list of the funded projects and their outcomes.

Moreover, a quarter of the $456 million allocated in the first two years of the Legacy Amendment is missing from the state website required to be the resource for displaying where and how the tax money is spent, according to an MPR News analysis. And while the website lists broad programs that received money, details are often lacking about which groups or projects received grants and whether the work was finished.

For example, none of the nearly $9 million in clean water funds the Minnesota Department of Agriculture received in the first two years appears on the website. And a website visitor can’t find out which groups received part of an $8.4 million Department of Natural Resources conservation grant.

In another report on what is missing from the reports, MPR even points out that records for public radio spending are incomplete (below). Watchdog Andy Cilek has covered this as well for a few years.

WHAT’S MISSING?

• The amount of money that went toward each program carried out in each of 12 regional library systems.

• The vast majority — $35 million worth — of grants to artists and art organizations distributed by the State Arts Board and 11 regional arts councils.

• A breakdown of costs for Legacy-funded programs carried out by public TV and radio stations.

• A list of grant recipients receiving money through the Outdoor Heritage Fund’s Conservation Partners Legacy Grant Program, administered by the Minnesota DNR (recipients are listed on a DNR website, but a link to the site can only be found under “opportunities for funding” on the state’s main Legacy website.)

• A breakdown of costs for all Legacy-funded partnerships between the Minnesota Humanities Center and Councils of Color.

• A full list of the hundreds of clean water grant and loan recipients that received money from the Minnesota Department of Health, Public Utilities Authority, Minnesota Department of Agriculture and state Board of Water and Soil Resources.

• A breakdown of specific projects receiving funding through the DNR’s parks and trails Legacy funds.

• Up-to-date information on projects and programs from 2010-2011 that have been completed in all four areas of Legacy funding, as well as their outcomes. This information is available for only a small percentage of the listed projects.

Tags: Andy Cilek, Checks and Balances, DFL Legislators

Question: How did Dayton know that the GOP proposals to be brought up in this meeting we’re new if he didn’t go?

Minnesotans shouldn’t be worried about a July 1 government shutdown, we already know where Dayton stands on that:

This evening, GOP House and Senate leaders went back to the Governor’s office (checking first that he wasn’t hiding under his desk) to propose another compromise in a series of ideas they’ve offered to keep the government open without making Minnesota the highest taxed state in America under Dayton’s plan. The GOP offered to increase the amount spent on schools and public safety by over $100 million today while Dayton’s plan is still nearly $2 billion more than that. It isn’t clear what Dayton actually wants the money spent on, only that he is demanding a tax increase. Dayton even called out the GOP plan to de-fund one of the most mismanaged and poorly run school aide formulas in the country, Minnesota’s integration aide program.

Meanwhile, DFL legislative leaders are back in their districts cooling their heals. They want to play no part in fixing Minnesota’s largest budget shortfall in decades:

Tags: 2010 Election, 2010 Governor, 2011 Session, Checks and Balances, DFL Legislators, House DFL Caucus, Mark Dayton, Senate DFL Caucus, Star Tribune, YouTube

When asked for a suggestion of a possible “fair” mediator, Dayton named retired Chief U.S. Magistrate Judge Jonathan Lebedoff, whom has made campaign contributions to the following campaigns: Sen. Amy Klobuchar, President Barack Obama, and Mike Ciresi for Senate. MN State News wrote, “A review of campaign finance records shows that Lebedoff has made political contributions to the campaigns of Amy Klobuchar and Barack Obama. Additionally, at least one relative of Lebedoff was a major contributor to Dayton’s 2000 Senate campaign. Katie Tinucci, the governor’s press secretary, said Dayton ‘suggested Mr. Lebedoff as a possible mediator, but at this point, it was just a suggestion‘.”

Justice Lebedoff

Dayton seemed flustered after pulling the plug on allowing his Commissioners to appear before the Legislative Commission on Planning and Fiscal Policy meeting which Speaker Zellers and Maj. Leader Koch called to help move the fiscal impasse forward in a constructive and open forum. Dayton’s suggestion of a mediator was disturbing and reminiscent of his strong ties to labor.

GOP leaders told Dayton of their stance on the LCPFP meeting in a letter to him, saying:
“We would like information on plants to offset the loss of $1.8 billion in revenue in the Governor’s budget due to the recent change in the administration’s tax plan. Specifically, be prepared to discuss the legislature’s spending reductions the Governor will agree to, or new spending reduction proposals. On multiple occassions the Governor has indicated an interest in exempting small business from the effects (of) his tax increase plan. We are interested in knowing how this proposal changes revenue estimates for the administration’s budget, and what offsets are proposed to allow small businesses to keep more of their hard-earned money.“

Tags: 2010 Election, 2011 Session, AFSCME, Amy Klobuchar, Barack Obama, Checks and Balances, DFL, Mark Dayton, Mike Ciresi, YouTube

Tags: 2011 Session, Checks and Balances, DFL Legislators, Senate DFL Caucus

One such bill Dayton has taken great fascination in is the State Government Finance Bill, which Sen. Tom Bakk was able to successfully fillibuster with Sen. Pappas for hours before final passage yesterday. On Tuesday, one of Dayton’s commissioners met with Sen. Bill Ingebrigtsen, chairman of the Environment and Natural Resources committee, and Sen. Mike Parry, a chief author of the State Government omnibus bill to discuss the contents of both omnibus bills.

Shortly after the meeting ended, Sen. Parry told the media, “There is great concern for the gardener at the Governor’s Mansion. That one took us by surprise — we hadn’t heard that before.”

Gov. Dayton was unsure about proper funding in the government finance legislation for the gardener at the governor’s mansion in St. Paul, so he asked someone in his cabinet to make sure this was taken care of.

Dayton must have had time to think about this in between meetings he’s been having at the mansion with high-ranking NFL officials to build a new stadium while the state continues to run a deficit in the billions.

Both bodies of the legislature are scheduled to meet again tomorrow morning. Meanwhile, the Governor has vetoed several of the omnibus spending bills and an agreement appears nowhere in sight.

Tags: 2010 Governor, 2011 Session, Checks and Balances, DFL Legislators, Mark Dayton

MDE first reported on the questionable funding being funneled to groups with direct to connections to those doing the funneling in our report surrounding the LCCMR (Minnesota Legislative-Citizens Commission on Minnesota Resources). We have re-posted the entire series of stories below:

MN CLIMATE-GATE PART 1: DFL LEGISLATORS SECURED FUNDING FOR LEFT-WING ENVIRONMENTAL FOUNDATION THEY WORK WITH
December 2, 2010

Part 1 in a series:

In December, 2009 DFLers Rep. Kate Knuth (New Brighton) and Rep. Jeremy Kalin (North Branch) took to the skies for Copenhagen. Their destination? The United Nations Climate Change Conference of 2009 known as “COP15″. Funding for Kalin’s portion of the trip is unclear, but multiple sources confirm Knuth’s portion of travel and/or additional compensation was paid by the Will Steger Foundation-a progressive group that funds education programs pushing a global warming agenda.

Reps Knuth, Kalin and Sen. Ellen Anderson

Rep. Knuth has made no effort to hide her affiliations with the Foundation, as she expresses in this press release and this press release on her state website claiming, “Knuth is traveling as a policy mentor to the Will Steger Foundation youth delegation.”

It should come as no surprise, then, that after Knuth received extensive compensation from the Steger foundation for international travel, etc. in late 2009, Knuth and Kalin were part of, and supported, a measure in early 2010 to include $250,000 in funding through the LCCMR (Legislative Citizen Commission on Minnesota Resources) to the Will Steger Foundation. The Steger Foundation even commemorated the moment with a press release to thank their loyal servants at the Capitol. The LCCMR recommends uses for Minnesota Lottery Funds to the legislature for approval.



As a piece of background information, LCCMR’s website outlines their role as:

The LCCMR is made up of 17 members: 5 Senators, 5 Representatives, 5 citizens appointed by the governor, 1 citizen appointed by the Senate, and 1 citizen appointed by the House. The function of the LCCMR (formerly LCMR) is to make funding recommendations to the legislature for special environment and natural resource projects, primarily from the Environment and Natural Resources Trust Fund.

But if neither Knuth nor Kalin sit on the LCCMR, who carried their water for them?

THE LEGISLATION

In the Senate, Sen. Ellen Anderson (St. Paul) was the Senate author for the bill that would include the funding (HF 2624) and line 17.3 shows the section devoted to the funding for Steger. Anderson is a member of the LCCMR.

The LCCMR and Sen. Anderson made the papers this year when a controversial documentary called “Troubled Waters” (which raised eyebrows this fall) was played at the U of M. Roughly $349,000 was given by the LCCMR to the making of this documentary, according to Rep. Wagenius, quoted in the Star Tribune. Sen. Anderson has long supported ridiculous projects out of the lottery fund, which many in the legislature say has become a slush fund for special-interest spending.

Rep. McNamara(R-Hastings) moved an amendment on this bill during House floor debate to remove the Steger funding from the bill. The amendment was defeated, but Knuth excused herself from voting on the motion, found in the House Journal HERE. If Knuth has no conflict of interest to hide regarding this funding, why would she recuse herself from voting?

Knuth also decided to recuse herself from voting on Final Passage, despite being present during the rest of the day’s legislative activities. However, when the bill passed out of committee earlier in the spring (House Environment and Nat. Resources Committee on Feb 11, 2009) containing the measure, Knuth was present and no note was made that she had excused herself from voting. A voice vote was held on the measure and a quorum present, the audio of the vote can be heard HERE.

—-

MN CLIMATE-GATE PT 2: LEGISLATORS GONE WILD-BEACHSIDE CLIMATE EARMARK BONANZA
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.

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).

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: 2010 Election, Checks and Balances, DFL, DFL Legislators, House DFL Caucus, Senate DFL Caucus, Uncategorized

Click here for the complete post. 

Tags: 2008 U.S. Senate, Al Franken, Checks and Balances, Mike Ciresi, Norm Coleman

The blog MN Publius may be the latest example of the tenuous nature of credibility.  MN Publius published a story with the headline of the post: "Makeover Mark's Website Scrubs President Bush".   The story contended Congressman Mark Kennedy (R) "scrubbing" his congressional website clean of references to President George W. Bush (R).

Kennedy's staff didn't "scrub" references to Bush, a search of Kennedy's website produces numerous references.  It seems the bloggers behind MN Publius didn't take into account the dynamic nature of websites, especially political ones.

MN Publius' claims flew through the blog-o-sphere and nobody – aside from Republican operatives – fact checked their claims.  Hours after firestorm began, national publications like the "The Hotline" were publishing corrections and apologizing to Representative Kennedy and his staff.  The Star Tribune even took the unusual step in today's newspaper of being critical of the claims made by MN Publius calling them "exaggerated". Source: Checks and Balances, June 29, 2006 

Click here for complete story.

Tags: Checks and Balances, Mark Kennedy, MN Publius

I agree that Checks and Balances' analysis is questionable and Shawn Towle's methods of reporting are suspect.  But that doesn't justify someone editing Checks and Balances without permission.   You will always find more complaints of Checks and Balances on my blog than compliments. 

It would be foolish for anyone reading my post exposing potential computer subterfuge by Ellison’s campaign as anything remotely close to an endorsement of Towle's tactics.

Tags: Checks and Balances, Shawn Towle