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With an insider’s eye, Hot Dish tracks the tastiest bits of Minnesota’s political scene and keep you up-to-date on those elected to serve you.
Contributors in Minnesota: Jennifer Brooks, Baird Helgeson, Mike Kaszuba, Patricia Lopez, Jim Ragsdale, Brad Schrade and Rachel E. Stassen-Berger. Contributor in D.C.: Kevin Diaz.
Contributors in Minnesota: Jennifer Brooks, Baird Helgeson, Mike Kaszuba, Patricia Lopez, Jim Ragsdale, Brad Schrade and Rachel E. Stassen-Berger. Contributor in D.C.: Kevin Diaz.
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Ramsey County won't investigate GOP recount company
Posted by: Baird Helgeson under Minnesota campaigns, Republicans Updated: May 25, 2012 - 6:39 PM
The Ramsey County attorney’s office will not investigate a company created by GOP activists to pay recount costs for unsuccessful gubernatorial candidate Tom Emmer.
Ramsey County Attorney John Choi’s office wrote in a letter to a group pushing for the investigation that his department “is not the appropriate office” to handle the request.
Common Cause Minnesota called for an investigation after the Star Tribune reported that over two years, the company, Count Them All Properly Inc., listed two CEOs on state documents who had never heard of the company. When the two heard they were listed as CEO, they asked to be removed from the corporate filing.
Republicans created the company as the Minnesota GOP faced mounting debt. Count Them All Properly now faces at least $500,000 in unpaid legal fees and has not mounted a significant fundraising campaign to pay the bills.
Common Cause has alleged the company was illegally set up to keep new debt off the Republican Party’s financial ledger and is fraught with campaign finance infractions. The group also wants the GOP company investigated for forgery.
The county attorney’s office lacks “jurisdiction to take any action with regard to alleged violations of the state's campaign finance and practice laws," wrote Assistant Ramsey County Attorney John Kelly.
Kelly encouraged Common Cause to contact law enforcement to see if they wanted to pursue an investigation.
Mary Igo, the company’s CEO, said earlier that the company is legitimate and was never created as a way to stash debt. She said the debts will be repaid, but it might take longer than people want.
Obama signs pay benefits for Minnesota 'Red Bulls'
Posted by: Kevin Diaz under Minnesota U.S. senators, Minnesota congressional, President Obama Updated: May 25, 2012 - 12:04 PMPresident Obama signed legislation Friday ensuring long-promised paid leave benefits for members of Minnesota’s “Red Bull” National Guard unit and more than 49,000 Guard troops across the country.
The president’s signature came a week after Congress cleared the measure recouping time-off benefits that had been promised before the soldiers shipped overseas last year.
“Promises made should be promises kept,” said U.S. Rep. John Kline, a Minnesota Republican who has been meeting with Pentagon leaders, including Defense Secretary Leon Panetta, to reverse a decision last fall that cut many of the troops’ benefits in half.
In the end, congressional action was needed to restore the benefits, which will help more than 2,000 Minnesota soldiers spend more time with their families. Many returned from their last deployment at the end of April.
The measure, which was carried in the Senate by Minnesota Democrat Amy Klobuchar, exempts troops who were deployed before the Pentagon issued new restrictions last October that limited paid time off.
Some troops, including members of the famed Minnesota "Red Bulls," faced the loss of as much as a month of paid time.
“When our men and women in uniform signed up to serve there wasn’t a line, and there shouldn’t be a line to get the benefits they earned when they come home,” Klobuchar said
Obama to address economy during Minnesota visit
Posted by: Corey Mitchell under 2012 Presidential election, President Obama Updated: May 25, 2012 - 4:16 PMPresident Barack Obama will address the economy during a Friday, June 1, speech at Honeywell's campus in Golden Valley, a White House official says.
Obama will urge Congress to act on his "To-Do List," a five-point plan that he says will create jobs and help the middle class. Here's a look at the list, which calls on Congress to pass legislation that would allow for more mortgage refinancing, cut corporate tax incentives, create a Veterans Job Corps, invest in clean energy manufacturing and establish a small business tax credit to encourage hiring.
Obama will also attend three campaign fundraisers at the Bachelor Farmer, a Minneapolis restaurant owned by Gov. Mark Dayton's sons, during his trip to Minnesota.
The president last visited the state when he addressed the American Legion National Convention in Minneapolis in August 2011. Earlier that month, he spoke in Cannon Falls during an economic bus tour that winded through Minnesota and several other Midwestern states.
Senate's $46,000 legal bill is due for sex scandal defense
Posted by: Rachel E. Stassen-Berger under Minnesota legislature, Minnesota state senators Updated: May 25, 2012 - 1:46 PMThe Minnesota Senate is discovering that defending itself from sex-scandal related legal threats is expensive.
On Friday, Senate officials disclosed that they owe $46,150 for three months of legal fees -- and the bill will only grow.
The bill from Dayle Nolan, a private attorney the Senate hired to defend it against ex-employee Michael Brodkorb, and her firm only goes through March of this year.
Those costs do not yet include all the time Nolan sat in Senate ethics committee meetings, where a former Senate leader was accused of mishandling the sex scandal, and come before Brodkorb has even filed a suit in a court room.
Brodkorb was fired in December after former Senate Majority Leader Amy Koch quit leadership, in the wake of being confronted about the affair she and he were having. He has threatened to sue the Senate for his firing and for defamation.
The bill, which includes a detailed accounting of Nolan and other attorneys time, includes repeated references to conferences with Tom Bottern, Senate counsel, and Cal Ludeman, the secretary of the senate.
It also includes one $3,960 charge for Nolan's attendance in a March Senate ethics committee. It does not include the charges for attending an equally long April meeting that deadlocked on whether former Deputy Senate Majority Leader Geoff Michel violated proper Senate behavior by not disclosing his knowledge of the affair before December and then misleading the press about when he discovered the affair.
Dayton issues pocket veto of child custody bill
Posted by: Jennifer Brooks under Gov. Mark Dayton, Minnesota legislature Updated: May 24, 2012 - 4:56 PM
Gov. Mark Dayton has vetoed the final bill of 2012, an attempt to change the child custody formula to guarantee parents more time with their children
"Both proponents and opponents make compelling arguments in support of their respective positions," Dayton wrote in a Thursday letter to the Legislature, after opting not to sign the custody bill, essentially issuing a pocket veto of the legislation.
Right now, Minnesota law presumes that both parents in a custody settlement will get a minimum amount of time -- 25 percent of the year -- with their child. The bill would have increased that minimum to 35 percent.
Supporters of the change said it would give non-custodial parents more quality time with a child than every other weekend and two weeks during the summer -- a breakdown that doesn't even equal 25 percent of the child's year. Opponents said the new formula took control away from courts and was designed to represent a parent's interest more than the child's.
In his letter to lawmakers, Dayton said there was too much uncertainty about how the change in the custody formula might affect children. But he urged lawmakers to take up debate on the issue again during the 2013 session.
"People and parties on both sides of the legislation share the same good faith intentions rooted in their shared desire to prescribe what will be best for every parent and, especially, every child ensnared in the painful dissolution of a marriage," Dayton wrote. "Torn between the persuasive arguments of both proponents and opponents of the legislation, I am particularly influenced by the strong opposition of so many organizations (although not all of their members), who work every day with the most challenging divorces and their effects on the well-being, and even the safety, of parents and children."
The news was a blow to supporters of the legislation, who have rallied at the Capitol several times this week, urging the governor to sign the bill.
"I'm a dad who has seen my desire to be involved in my daughter's life thwarted by the family court," said David Weiss of St. Paul, holding up a sign decorated with pictures of his now-16-year-old daughter. Weiss said he has been battling for more time with his daughter for the past 10 years. "It's reached a point where the best I can hope for is to have a relationship with my daughter after she turns 18. I'm here for the other dads now."
This is Dayton's 55th veto of the 2011-12 legislative session.
Read the full letter here:
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recent posts
- Ramsey County won't investigate GOP recount company
- Obama signs pay benefits for Minnesota 'Red Bulls'
- Obama to address economy during Minnesota visit
- State Senate's bill for sex scandal legal work: $46,000 so far
- Dayton issues pocket veto of child custody bill
- Republican Hegseth is out of U.S. Senate race for good
- MN commemorates Civil War this Memorial Day
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- Senate billed for legal services to deal with ex-employee Brodkorb
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