And now for something completely different
It's the Friday of a holiday weekend, this building is empty, the city is closed for business, perfect time to party, right? Well, yes, but it's also a good time to help out DNT online editor Jimmy Bellamy, who found a stray dog yesterday. He writes:
A lost dog was found Thursday night in Lakeside by News Tribuner Jimmy Bellamy, who is looking for the dog's owner. Is it your dog or do you know to whom it belongs? E-mail jbellamy@duluthnews.com or call Bellamy at (218) 723-5390.
Posted by: Stahl on 7/03/2009 at 11:01 AM | Comments (4) | Permalink
If you could interview Al Franken...
What would you ask him? I've got a 10 minute interview setup with his at 10 a.m. My editors and I have bounced around potential questions, but sometimes readers hit me over the head with: why didn't you ask him that?
So, whatcha got?
Posted by: Stahl on 7/03/2009 at 8:10 AM | Comments (9) | Permalink
Tags: al franken
They were mad as hell...
And they opened up their windows ... or rather, went down to the Superior lake front on April 15, and shouted they weren't going to take it anymore during the Tea Party, attended by anywhere from two to a thousand people, depending on who you asked.
But what did the protesters actually do about it since then?
Well, let's be honest: nothing. At least not publicly, but behind the scenes, the same group that organized the tea party is now organizing the Northern Liberty Alliance.
"The tea party was about venting," said Bob Hansen, a founder and interim president of the Northern Liberty Alliance.
Hansen requires a full disclosure everytime I write about him on this blog as he advertises his business, Superior Computing Products, on the banner up above here. He is also a failed city council candidate and is one of the co-founders of Connect Duluth, the largely defunct conservative-leaning political action committee that is perhaps best known for spawning the Duluth Citizens Blog (for which Connect Duluth now has no part. I'm told.)
But Hansen says the NLA at least for now is not a PAC, and will never have anything to do with Connect Duluth. Whereas that group focused on local issues, the NLA, he said, will focus on, among other things, a return to limited government and getting away from restricting individual freedoms -- and of course, no more government bailouts (I assume he means no bailouts for newspapers, but hopefully he's keeping an open mind).
"People are upset with both republicans and democrats and the heavy-handed tacticts put with regulations to the economy in the last year and a half," said Russ Stewart, a former city councilor.
Hansen and Stewart said they and what are thus far 13 other board members feel threatened by excess government spending and borrowing and intrusion into private lives and the NLA is being formed as a response to all of that. But, what, exactly will they do to stop it?
That's a gray area, they admit. Other than a rally on Aug. 24 at the Skyline Bowling Center, not much else is planned. There will be more rallies, discussion groups and possibly position advocacy and maybe even promoting people for office, they said. But mostly both said they're focused on trying to build the organization so that it will stick around for awhile before concentrating on what's next.
"We don't want to be seen as shouting 'we're mad as hell and we won't take it anymore," Stewart said. "The next step is, what will do about it?"
Here's what I'm skeptical about: both also said they want to show people the positive side of a return to the principals of the founding fathers, and don't want to get into negative politics -- and they say they're not politically affiliated (these are libertarian principles, Stewart said, but he stressed it was with a small "l" and not the big "L" Libertarian party). Looking at it strategically, that's the right thing to do. But is that really possible with a group like this? And how large an audience can a group like this attract -- and assuming they build a solid organizing like the one they're envisioning, what changes can they possibly bring?
I'll leave that up to you guys to debate.
Posted by: Stahl on 7/01/2009 at 4:32 PM | Comments (30) | Permalink
Tags: northern liberty alliance, tea party
Fool's gold
A few weeks ago when I was working on the story about the city asking for a $100,000 more to pay the outside lawfirm on the retiree health care case, Jim Stauber, the only councilor critical of the proposal, said I should do a data request on all the bills sent by the firm to the city. The implication: won't I be shocked to find out what little the firm has been done, and how much they're charging us.
GOLD! I thought. And so I requested the files, got them (without a fight) and they're ... not really gold, more like telling us what we already know: it costs a lot of money to hire an attorney, and they bill for just about everything. I don't know -- maybe an agate or two? At any rate, a headline of "attorneys are expensive" won't be blaring out this Sunday, which is why you're reading about this in a blog post.
Recall that last year when the retirees sued the city claiming their health care benefits were changed, the city attorney's office begged out of the case, claiming that because they were also due retiree health care benefits, they had a conflict of interest. The city asked the council to spend up to $40,000 to hire an outside law firm to represent it on the case. The council was asked to chose between three firms -- two in Duluth, and the eventual winner, Kennedy & Graven, which is hq'd in Minneapolis.
And since that time, Kennedy & Graven has charged the city for darn near everything anytime it's worked on the case. Send an email to the city? That'll cost you. Talk to the media? That'll cost you. Have dinner in Duluth while working on the case? Cost you. Talk with other attorneys in the firm about the case? That'll really cost you -- and by you, I mean the taxpayer. Because you are paying the bills -- and paying the firm about $220 an hour.
| Date | Hours | Charges (not including expenses) | Expenses | Total | Charges/hour |
| Sep-08 | 47.3 | $9,877.00 | $1,096.85 | $10,973.85 | $208.82 |
| Nov-08 | 13.05 | $2,741.75 | $6.39 | $2,748.14 | $210.10 |
| Oct-08 | 15.7 | $3,280.00 | $51.53 | $3,331.53 | $208.92 |
| Jun-08 | 39.2 | $12,443.00 | $884.13 | $13,327.13 | $317.42 |
| Jul-08 | 36.9 | $7,356.00 | $442.15 | $7,798.15 | $199.35 |
| Aug-08 | 25.55 | $5,266.00 | $148.12 | $5,414.12 | $206.11 |
| Dec-08 | 13.9 | $2,875.00 | $59.04 | $2,934.04 | $206.83 |
| Jan-09 | 36.3 | $7,741.00 | $406.73 | $8,147.73 | $213.25 |
| Feb-09 | 15.7 | $3,318.00 | $134.39 | $3,452.39 | $211.34 |
| Mar-09 | 59.75 | $15,147.50 | $564.25 | $15,711.75 | $253.51 |
| Apr-09 | 33.75 | $7,112.50 | $57.66 | $7,170.16 | $210.74 |
| Totals | 337.1 | $77,157.75 | $3,851.24 | $81,008.99 | |
| Averages | 30.65 | $7,014.34 | $350.11 | $7,364.45 | $222.40 |
I talked with other attorneys and found that $220 an hour for this type of lawsuit is reasonable, and going through the files, I didn't see an example of the city being billed for, say, golf outings or visits to spas or anything outrageous (though I wish I could charge to talk with Kim Johnson).
But is our money going to the right place? I reviewed the documents, (which I've split into two PDFs here and here) (and for those curious, the firm charges by percent of hours -- .1 equals 6 minutes, .2 equals 12 minutes, .5 equals 30 minutes, etc.) with councilors Stauber and Council President Greg Gilbert, himself an attorney who voted last year to hire Kennedy & Graven and has supported increasing the funding for the firm.
Let's start with Stauber's arguments as to why the city is putting the money in the wrong place. He argues that the city should have hired its own attorney to handle the case.
"What I have seen tells me that hiring a firm from the metro area us very expensive to the taxpayers of the city of Duluth," Stauber said. "Because of the need for travel time, travel expenses and meal reimbursement."
He reasons that if the city hired its own attorney that person would be paid about $100,000 a year, could work on the case and work on other issues related for the city. As it stands, Kennedy & Graven has spent a combined two and a half months working on the lawsuit.
"If this were a standalone issue, I probably wouldn't have much concern about it," Stauber said. "But now we're having our union negotiations handled by an outside firm, our negotiations over the tribe with the casino handled by an outside firm and lobbying in Washington. It's a disturbing pattern and trend at a time when our resources are scarce."
"I can't agree with the philosophy of hiring these law firms to do our attorney's work," he said.
At the very least, Stauber argues, the money should be kept local.
Au contraire, argues Gilbert, who monitored the case on behalf of the council. Every local judge recused him/herself from the case.
"I have never seen anything like that before," said Gilbert. "What that tells me is that there are too many people in this area who are impacted by this issue. When that happens, you need someone from the outside to look at this objectively and with a fresh lens." (it should be noted that four other councilors voted with Gilbert to hire the Twin Cities firm).
And now what's at stake -- and no one is arguing about this -- is millions of dollars for the city, which Gilbert doesn't believe could find an attorney with the experience and expertise to handle this issue.
"You're definitely not going to find someone out of law school for this," he said.
The reason it's taken so long, he said, isn't some sort of waste by the firm. It's just that a case like this can tend to drag on, as both sides ask for information of each other, both sides agreed to go to mediation, both sides had to work out the class action language, etc. And here, he's right -- anyone who expected a quick resolution of this case wasn't being realistic.
"I haven't seen any reason I need to be concerned," Gilbert said after looking through the documents.
Posted by: Stahl on 7/01/2009 at 8:01 AM | Comments (2) | Permalink
Tags: greg gilbert, jim stauber, retiree health care
Spin the BUZZ: Retiree lawsuit edition
There's nothing like traveling through Iowa, the most boring-to-drive-through state in the country not named Nebraska or North or South Dakota or anything south of Chicago in Illinois, to force you to pick up a Time Magazine. And in the most recent issue of Time, the one with a hospital bed on the cover, was an interesting article examining Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor's history on the bench seeking to determine whether she was a radical or a moderate on the bench. She's a moderate, was the answer, quoting a University of Texas law professor's study of her 226 court rulings, finding that 38 percent of Sotomayor's opinions could be clearly characterwized as liberal, and 49 percent as conservative.
This isn't to debate Sotomayor (that's for another blog far, far away from here), but it's interesting, I thought, that someone could determine when a judicial position is conservative or liberal -- is it always so black and white?
And that got me to thinking about the retiree health care lawsuit, the one that the media has done a terrible job of hyping. In just over a month, Judge Kenneth Sandvik, who traditionally presides in Two Harbors but has come to Duluth because no other local judge will touch this case, will make a monumental decision that will have long-reaching and lasting impacts on the city and its retirees. He will be asked to decide: can the city change retirees' health care plans? If the answer is yes, then the city can save millions. If the answer is no, then retirees get to keep their free-health-care for life.
While my guess, based on other court rulings in similar cases, is that the answer will be no, remember that the only reason the city has a fighting chance here is language in past contracts that says retirees shall have health care coverage "to the same extent" as active employees. Retirees counter that their health care coverage should stay the same as the contract they retired under.
And so, Buzz Readers, which is the liberal position on this issue, and which is the conservative one? Is the city taking the conservative stance by asking to change the contracts to save money? If so, the irony would be deep -- the city is run by a liberal mayor, while the retirees are led in part by Eli Miletich, who I would guess isn't posting on the Progressive Action blog.
Your thoughts?
Posted by: Stahl on 6/30/2009 at 8:21 AM | Comments (10) | Permalink
Tags: retiree health care
The court of public opinion
Here's what I hear all the time when it comes to how city councilors Tony Cuneo and Sharla Gardner handled their respective controversies: Cuneo handled it well, Gardner did not. Cuneo was upfront, apologetic, non-accusatory, answered every question asked, and as an added bonus, related what happened to him to normal, everyday people. These are tough economic times and this was something that could have happened to anyone, was his gist. A month later, I hear almost nothing about it, aside from an angry email from Chuck Horton (below).
Gardner, on the other hand, was defensive, angry and almost non-apologetic, and for awhile didn't return phone calls on the issue. While she was essentially cleared on the conflict of interest by city attorney Gunnar Johnson, the issue of her saying that she initially paid her own way not being true hasn't gone away, and it's an issue I still hear about from people.
Horton, however, doesn't care how either responded to the controveries. He just wants both to resign, and has threatened a protest at City Hall if they don't. He sent his letter to the entire council, but he said of Cuneo and Gardner, only Cuneo responded. Horton sent that response, along with his response back to Cuneo, to the local media today:
Mr. Cuneo,
Thank you for your response. It’s obvious you put a lot of time and thought into it. I want to make it very clear my actions are in no way a judgment of your personal financial hardships or how your family has chosen to deal with them.
I do, however, completely disagree with the statement, “I will not ever ask another councilor to refrain from making policy decisions because of their own personal financial situation.” The problem is, in this particular circumstance, “personal finances” were the policy decision.
You voted to burden Duluth taxpayers with yet another tax increase -- to burden the personal finances of everyone who lives in this city -- when you yourself were not paying taxes due to personal hardships. This entire issue is based on the hard reality that many are – like you were -- facing: pay this bill or that one?
People like me are fed up with politicians, both nationally and here at home, telling us to do one thing, while they themselves do another. This year more and more people here are out of work or trying to make it on reduced work hours.
Most people can’t bank on getting a new job that will make these hardships go away. Your ability to obtain such a lucrative position with the Zeppa Foundation – the same place where our Mayor was employed prior to being elected – raised a lot of eyebrows. I’m afraid it further damages the credibility of one who raises taxes on his fellow citizens in a community where good job prospects are slim.
We need councilors who stop putting themselves above the people.
Charles P. Horton
From: Tony Cuneo <tonykcuneo@gmail.com>
Date: June 23, 2009 11:40:31 PM CDT
To: charlesp.horton@gmail.com
Subject: Re: Demand Resignation of CouncilorsCharles,
thanks for the letter and for expressing your concerns. clearly you are passionate about your thoughts on these matters, but i thought i would take a moment to respond, if only to let you know that i am willing to discuss this further. certainly i regret that my actions might have, in some people's eyes, eroded my credibility. i take my job on the council extremely seriously and want at all times to be as credible, upfront, and able to work with all of my colleagues as possible. that said, whether i or anyone else likes it, my family was in a tough financial situation for a bit of time, and i had to make decisions about which bills i could pay. i didn't like those decisions, and i wish i didn't have to make them, but i did, and that's the reality.
being that it was public information, and being that if i had continued to fall behind for too long i would have lost my home and my house, it strikes me as inaccurate to say that i could have refused to pay my fair share. in the end i paid everything i owed and all penalties and interest, as i knew i would. if i hadn't, my home and house would have been used to cover the debt. in either case my fair share is paid.
as i have said in the past, i feel lucky to now be in a position where i was able to get caught up. we have been saving aggressively and it felt good to get square on those payments.
in terms of the critiques of the policy decisions that i have made that you disagree with, i am happy also to discuss those with you, but i do think they are a separate matter. i will not ever ask another councilor to refrain from making policy decisions because of their own personal financial situation, unless there is some legal or ethical reason to do so. councilors, just like everyone else, can suffer a health issue, be laid off, leave a job for personal reasons, or any number of other circumstances that might put them in a difficult financial position. it is not for me to judge them or their personal choices. that is not my place. i will expect that they make votes for what they believe is in the best interest of the city regardless of their own circumstances, and i do not believe the two are necessarily linked.
please know that i am open to discussing this more with you, either in person or via email. and thanks again for sharing your thoughts.
tony
Posted by: Stahl on 6/25/2009 at 12:36 PM | Comments (13) | Permalink
Tags: chuck horton, political controversies, sharla gardner, tony cuneo
The future of this blog
I woke up this morning thinking: I have nothing to blog about. Nothing interesting, anyway, and nothing that doesn't require a few hours of research and interviewing, which I don't have time to do today. So, I thought I'd use this occasion to write about something that's been on my mind a lot lately: the direction of this blog, and in particular the comments here.
When I started doing the blog, it was basically with someone twisting my arm. If I had something interesting to write about, I thought, well, it should just go in the paper. Looking back at the start of this blog is just ... cringe-worthy. And with good reason, no one ever commented on the posts.
And yet over the months I realized this was a great place to give people a better understanding of city politics and government -- to bring readers with me as I've learned about the various processes or interesting little behind-the-scenes tidbits that wouldn't typically make the paper, or explaining how I do my job and telling people where I've gone wrong. With the blessing of my editors, who have seen traffic grow to this blog and others here at the DNT, I sometimes now spend a good solid hour to two each day working on the blog.
And with the extra effort came more readers and more comments. Many of them created very reasonable, intelligent and lively discussions. Sources from inside the city and its unions started commenting, providing great insight. Sometimes posters went too far, and so I had to start moderating the comments. After that, posters were generally more well behaved and the more intelligent ones triumphed.
But over the last few months, I think much of the comments have devolved into the same few posters yelling at each other, which has only gotten worse during the Sharla Gardner/Sister Cities controversy (which spawned a few repulsive posts). And at the same time, I think some of the better posters have been scared away, thinking this is going to be another online slug fest comment board.
I don't want that. I really, really, really don't want that. I don't want the idiotic, bullying comments of the few dominating the comment section of this blog.
And so I'm turning to the readers to ask what you think I should do. A part of me is wondering if I should turn the comments off, but I think that's too rash a decision. If I develop a comments policy, what should it include?
Thanks for your help.
Posted by: Stahl on 6/25/2009 at 8:13 AM | Comments (41) | Permalink
Tax dollars going to fight the red plan?
Well, indirectly, yes, I'd say that's a fair characterization -- fair enough for a tabloidy headline anyway. Here's how: on the list of 250 or so property owners who need to repair their sewer lines to comply with the feds and the consent decree is one Harry Welty, whom you may have heard has a beef or two or several million with the red plan.
When I did a story a couple months or so ago on the people who needed to fix their lines, I saw Welty's name on the list and called him to see if he had yet fixed the pipes. He said he had at a cost, if I recall, of about $6,000 or so (though please don't hold me to that -- it's lost in a notebook somewhere)(edit: I just checked his blog. Yep, it's $6,000). Last week, Welty called me to ask about the council's approval of a plan to raise sewer bills to help people pay for their sewer line repairs (which gives homeowners up to $4,000), wanting to know if the plan was retroactive for those who had already fixed their lines. I told him so far as I knew that was the case, but would call the city to make sure.
Yesterday, I got a call from the city confirming that I was correct, so I wrote Welty to let him know (I didn't want to give him bad information).
"Yipee," he replied, "then I can afford to make another donation to our fund drive if necessary."
Welty, you see, is part of a group trying to raise $100,000 for a court-ordered bond to get a temporary injunction on additional red plan spending. Welty's already put in $10,000 of his own money, he said on his blog, and now the city, indirectly, will give him another $4,000.
I should note that the ordinance says the money should go toward the sewer repair, but I don't know how the city can possibly track that. And so how homeowners choose to use that $4,000 is up to them. If one chose to use the money toward buying crack, for example, then one could make the argument that the city is indirectly subsidizing crack purchases. Come to think of it, why Todd Fedora or any of the other councilors who voted against the sewer subsidy didn't make that argument is beyond me. I would have loved to hear Fedora or Jay Fosle rail against the plan saying "you watch -- drug deals are going to go up because of this!"
In other news, I think I need more sleep.
Posted by: Stahl on 6/24/2009 at 8:04 AM | Comments (21) | Permalink
Tags: red plan, sewer overflows, stahl is an idiot
Will the mayor become a Tweeter?
The mayor isn't in the habit of taking my advice -- mostly because I don't give it, if only because he's smart enough not to take it -- but if I could, I'd tell him to start blogging as well as open a Twitter account.
Don't like a story the media has done, or feel we've short-changed him on his stance on an issue? Blog and/or tweet about it, using that as an opportunity to offer an unfiltered retort. Quotes you see from the mayor in the paper and TV are almost always cut down from longer statements or interviews he's given -- generally, we just don't have the space or time to include everything. But a blog would give him a chance to describe a position in his own words, rather than hoping that the media conveys his position correctly (even when we feel we do, he might feel otherwise).
Or, if he just wants to promote something quick and easily, or keep people up to date on his latest plans or projects? Twitter's a great way to go. And, I know this sounds weird, but blogging/Tweeting would humanize him to residents and voters -- he wouldn't just be some pol in the fourth floor of city hall. He already has a Facebook account and has racked up nearly 2,700 friends, so a blog seems like it would be a logical extension. Plus, he's supposed to be the young and hip mayor (and I realize I sound 80 just writing that), so why in the world isn't he blogging/Tweeting?
My favorite political writer, Chris Cilliza, who writes the Washington Post's Fix blog, disagrees, arguing that politicians would be crazy to start Twittering. He offers up as exhibit 1A Newt Gingrich calling Supreme Court nominee Sonja Sotomayor a racist:
"The thousands of innocuous tweets you send won't matter. It's the one time that you decide to pop off in the space of 140 characters -- perhaps after a cocktail or two at a fundraiser -- where problems will arise. Make one slip of the tongue, er, finger, and the sweet joys of Twitter will sour in a moment."
Well, yeah, there's that. And I suppose if the mayor ever did make a slip-up Tweet, it'd make for a good news story. But ultimately, I think the rewards outweigh the risks.
At any rate, I asked the mayor if he has any plans to blog and/or Tweet, and here's his response:
"We've been in the concept mode of a city blog for the past year, but it hasn't happened because I simply don't have the time right now to commit to writing on a consistent basis and I don't have staff available to help out with it. I hope to get around to this eventually.
Twitter is for folks who are witty, funny, and interesting - definitely not for me. It's hard to bore people into submission if you only have 140 characters."
The mayor's last line, for those interested, was 158 characters. So maybe he's right.
Posted by: Stahl on 6/23/2009 at 8:30 AM | Comments (18) | Permalink
Tags: don ness
Republicans give local legislators an F-
The Taxpayers League of Minnesota, a conservative-leaning taxpayer advocacy group, released its legislative scorecard and gave grades to local representatives that resemble my college Geology test scores (how I passed that class -- and college -- I'll never know).
Anywho, the taxpayers took a look at how the legislators voted on up to 15 spending bills in the house and senate and somehow added up the scores. Top grade = 100. Not surprisingly, state republicans generally faired well in the scorecard (though the representative from my old reporting stomping grounds, Bud Nornes of Fergus Falls, got a C -- and Ithought Nornes was generally as conservative as they come.)
How Duluth-area reps did:
Sen. Yvonne Prettner Solon: 7
Sen. Tom Bakk: 14
Rep. Tom Huntley: 0
Rep. Roger Reinert: 0
Rep. Mary Murphy: 0
Somehow, I doubt any of the above people will lose any sleep over the low grades.
Posted by: Stahl on 6/22/2009 at 2:43 PM | Comments (7) | Permalink
Tags: state legislature