PLAIN TALK

Port: Gov. Walz has too much baggage to be a good VP pick

Rob Port — Mon, 29 Jul 2024 18:11:02 GMT

With President Joe Biden bowing out, Vice President Kamala Harris has stormed to the top of the Democratic ticket, stoking no small amount of enthusiasm among our liberal friends, and accomplishing a rare feat in modern American politics: occluding Donald Trump from the sort of non-stop media attention he typically enjoys.

Now Harris, with just 98 days to go until election day, is tasked with keeping that momentum going. One way she can do that is with a strong vice presidential pick. She's going to want someone who can keep Democrats stoked. She certainly doesn't want someone who could be a distraction in the way Sen. J.D. Vance has for Trump's ticket.

Can you imagine how furious the disgraced former president is right now? This preening narcissist has been one-upped not just by Harris's splashy entrance to the race but by the foibles and eccentricities of his own running mate, and he'll almost certainly be goaded into increasingly outlandish behavior to get the spotlight back, which may or may not redound to his benefit at the ballot box.

Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz had a great line recently when he called Trump and his various fawning acolytes "weird." Democrats have embraced it as something of a slogan. It could be an effective one, and it's raised Walz's profile as a potential running mate for Harris.

But that, I think, would be a mistake. A Vance-level blunder, given that selecting Walz would open up a veritable supermarket of problematic anecdotes from his time as Minnesota's governor that could be an untimely wet blanket when Democrats need a bonfire of enthusiasm.

I'm not talking about ideological concerns. I'm talking about competency issues.

In 2022, Walz's administration lobbied for legislation providing "hero pay" for Minnesotans who served in key roles during the COVID-19 pandemic. The Walz administration estimated that some 667,000 workers would qualify for $500 payments. After the bill was signed into law, though, the Walz administration announced that about 1 million workers qualified, meaning the original estimate on which the legislation was passed was off by nearly 50%.

An audit found that less than 60% of those who received the payments were eligible for them. Many of the recipients were dead. Some, per the audit report, were dead for years before receiving payment.

A bad look, but even the most competently managed state governments can make mistakes. Yet this sort of mismanagement is a recurring theme from Walz's time in office.

The Feeding Our Future scandal saw more than a quarter-billion dollars worth of public funds diverted to luxury purchases like cars, homes, jewelry and more. When the Department of Justice brought indictments in the fraud in 2022, it "was the largest pandemic relief fraud scheme charged to date."

The massive scale of this fraud was made possible because the Walz administration, through the Minnesota Department of Education, failed to act. “Time and time again over the four years it participated in the federal nutrition programs, MDE missed opportunities to hold Feeding Our Future accountable,” Legislative Auditor Judy Randall told lawmakers last month.

"Between June 2018 and December 2021, the department received more than 30 complaints about the organization — ranging from unethical practices to demanding kickbacks from vendors — which must be investigated by law," CBS affiliate WCCO News reported. "But the department’s investigation procedures were 'of limited usefulness' in the context of alleged fraud, the auditor found. At one point, the education department asked Feeding Our Future to investigate complaints about itself. Some of the complaints weren’t looked into at all, 'despite their frequency and seriousness.'"

Another example of this pattern: multiple audits found that the "Minnesota Department of Human Services Behavioral Health Division did not comply with certain grants management policies." The division "failed to complete financial assessments for more than 40 percent of grants reviewed. The grants ranged from $49,000 to nearly $1 million, and totaled $11.5 million. A 2021 audit had a similar finding."

Another audit released just last month found that more than 30% of retroactive payments to state employees tested by auditors were inaccurate. The Walz administration hasn't remedied this problem.

In 2019, the Minnesota Department of Health announced that it paid $29 million for opioid treatments that were never administered.

Just last month, when Axios requested Gov. Walz's text messages under state open records laws, they were told that they disappeared. This, like the apparent mismanagement of public funds under the Walz administration, seems to be a pattern. The nonprofit Public Record Media has also criticized Walz for his slow response to open records requests. During his 2018 campaign for governor, Walz promised to release his daily calendars to the public and then reneged.

"Walz’s text messages mysteriously disappeared despite public-records laws, his appointed state cannabis director was selling products that violated state law, and one of his appointments to the gubernatorial Task Force on Broadband stepped down after allegations of domestic abuse came to light," Jim Geraghty writes at National Review (my source for much of the above information).

I could continue, but I think you get the point.

Any one of these stories and scandals on their own don't amount to much. But collectively, they demonstrate something larger about Walz's approach to governance, and it doesn't exactly commend him to higher office.

I can understand why Minnesotans might be enthusiastic about one of their own being elevated to a national ticket. Certainly, that was the case here in North Dakota as we watched (sometimes wincingly) as Gov. Doug Burgum campaigned to the cusp of joining Trump on the ballot.

But Harris choosing Walz would be a debacle. Any candidate she chooses is going to have some baggage, but Walz has more than most, and his problems aren't ephemeral. They're rooted in questions of competence and integrity.

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Port: Bill gives taxpayer dollars to group recently found liable in sexual harassment case

Rob Port — Tue, 04 Apr 2023 16:49:12 GMT

MINOT, N.D. — Last week a jury in Becker County, Minnesota, found that Honor the Earth, a left-wing activist group, must pay a former employee to settle a sexual harassment suit.

Meanwhile, state lawmakers in St. Paul are considering whether to appropriate hundreds of thousands of dollars to the organization.

Honor the Earth, founded by Winona LaDuke, has organized protests against pipeline projects, such as the Dakota Access and Line 3 pipelines, and also advocates for divestment from energy sources like oil, gas, and coal.

According to a report on the suit from my colleague, April Baumgarten, Honor the Earth employee Margaret "Molly" Campbell says she was harassed by a co-worker named Michael Dahl who made "inappropriately sexually charged comments." Campbell reported the incidents to LaDuke who responded by dismissing her concerns.

“That’s just how Michael is,” LaDuke told Campbell, per filings in the latter's suit.

Campbell resigned in early 2015 after being placed on unpaid administrative leave. At that point, LaDuke sent her an email telling her to “stay quiet” about her allegations of harassment lest she face a defamation lawsuit.

Honor the Earth's lawyer argued that Becker County lacked jurisdiction since the organization was formed in the White Earth Nation. The court rejected that argument, and the jury rendered a verdict awarding Campbell $750,000.

Rep. Alicia Kozlowski, a Democrat from Duluth, introduced House File 2091 to Minnesota's current legislative session. It would appropriate $920,000 over two fiscal years to the Minnesota Humanities Center "for grants for museum-related programming and educational efforts to teach the public about the history and cultural heritage of Indigenous people in Minnesota."

Of that total, $520,000 would go to "upgrade and convert the Carnegie Library building in Park Rapids" to "Giiwedinong — The Museum and Cultural Center of the North."

This is a project LaDuke has founded and touted in her columns, to be built in a building that once housed offices for Enbridge, the company behind the Line 3 pipeline.

Also among the earmarks in the legislation is a $200,000 appropriation to "coordinate, curate, and organize displays of collections from Honor the Earth, Akiing, and other organizations at the museum."

Even setting the financial liability created for Honor the Earth by the jury finding in Becker County aside, Minnesota taxpayers might wonder why their money should be flowing to such an overtly political organization.

HF 2091 was referred to the Legacy Finance Committee in February. There haven't been any significant actions on the bill since then.

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Column: Sunshine laws hold government accountable only when we use them

Rob Port — Sun, 12 Mar 2023 12:00:00 GMT

Editor's note: This is one in a series of news stories, columns and editorials from Forum Communications in support of open government. Sunshine Week, which champions open government and celebrates access to public information, is March 12-18.

MINOT, N.D. — On March 10, 2011, I requested 30 days of emails sent to and from the president of North Dakota State University.

I can't remember now what I was looking for at the time. It certainly wasn't what I ended up uncovering, which is that a state lawmaker, who also owned a business that did millions upon millions worth of business with the university system, was flying two university presidents to western North Dakota for a hunting trip on his company's private airplane.

The university tried to block my records request by inflating its cost to thousands of dollars. I challenged the costs and ultimately paid nothing.

The university tried to hide the identity of the person organizing the hunting trip, but I challenged that, too, and beat the redaction.

It took me 956 days of wrangling, but I was finally able to tell the public about a too-cozy relationship among North Dakota state officials, university leaders, and a major contractor.

It wouldn't have happened without open records and open meeting laws.

During Sunshine Week, we celebrate laws that require our government to be transparent with the public. I'm passionate about this topic, and the anecdote above is one of my favorites to share when I write or talk about it because that example illustrates both the power of transparency laws and how complex uncovering government problems can be even with good laws on the books.

Sunshine laws only work to hold the government accountable when we use them. But using them isn't always easy, and there is an eternal push to narrow our transparency laws and make them less accessible to the public.

Public officials often complain about nuisance requests for public information. They'll talk about the taxpayers' expense of fulfilling records requests. It's true some abuse open records laws, but that's a small price to pay for what these laws afford us.

Just about every work of journalism about government you read or watch is made possible, to one degree or another, by transparency laws.

Local television anchors can bring you news of an impending property tax increase because it was discussed at a meeting that was open to the public.

But these laws aren't just about reporters. They're for you, too. When a controversial bill is to be discussed by a legislative committee, you can find out about it, and attend, because lawmakers are required by law to make public notice.

When public officials refuse to speak about a controversial story, their emails, text messages, and other records, available thanks to open records laws, can often give us insight. And they can be requested by anyone, from newspaper reporters and television producers to curious members of the public.

When a state lawmaker here in North Dakota was harassing his colleagues, I could break a story about it that ultimately led to his expulsion from the Legislature — the first time that happened in state history — thanks to the documents I obtained from an open records request.

Public records revealed South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem's efforts to get an ethics complaint against her dismissed and to block from public scrutiny other records detailing her efforts to procure preferential licensing treatment for her daughter. Noem is currently fighting, in court, another open records request seeking information about her travel expenses.

Last year the city of Minneapolis was forced to pay a journalist $100,000 in legal expenses after he won a lawsuit over an open records request seeking police disciplinary records. He got the records, too, and wrote multiple stories about what they contained, including one about an officer hitting a teenager and another about an officer making racist remarks to Somali children.

You might not always agree with the motivations a given person has for seeking public records. You might not like what's revealed or how the information is interpreted.

Yet, you wouldn't know any of that information, nor even have the opportunity to form an opinion about it, if we didn't have access.

Government accountability is built on a foundation of robust laws that require the government to do its business in the sunshine. These laws can be hard to enforce. Costly, too. But how in the world would our society function without them?

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