Minneapolis City Hall. Photo: Wikipedia

A handful of financial reports from Minneapolis political committees and candidates remain as imaginary as the just-pretend primary election that made them mandatory more than two weeks ago.

The reports are supposed to let voters know who is putting money into political funds, how the committees are spending their money, and how much money they have on hand. The size of individual candidates’ purses is kept in check by donation limits, but greater quantities of unrestricted cash can go to political action committees (PACs) — about a dozen of which still haven’t filed.

Several of the PACs for which no reports are available have proven active and influential in the past. A group registered with the county as Parks Present Future (and chaired by Park Board President Tom Nordyke) successfully battled back a proposed city charter amendment this year that would have done away with the city’s quasi-independent park board. Treasurer Kari Dziedzic didn’t respond to messages about the group’s finances.

Another committee, People for Independent Parks (PIP), raised thousands of dollars from developers and donors outside the city to help elect a slate of candidates in 2005, including incumbent park commissioner Carol Kummer, who defeated challenger Jason Stone by 300 votes out of nearly 13,000 cast. The group didn’t register until after the 2005 primary, so the sources of its funding weren’t revealed until just before and after the general election.

PIP re-registered as an active committee early this year, but at that time there was to be no pre-primary reporting requirement; the first financial filing was set for just before the general election. Only after the Minneapolis City Council voted in June to set a faux primary for Sept. 15 (because instant-runoff voting makes a real primary unnecessary) did the earlier filing become required.

Financial reports can tell a lot about a political committee once they’re filed. A case in point in Citizens for Independent Parks (CIP). CIP led a petition drive to put a city charter amendment on the ballot that would give the park board greater taxing autonomy, then fought an ultimately unsuccessful court battle after the city council rejected the referendum as unconstitutional.

CIP’s pre-primary report (pdf) reveals that of $32,100 CIP raised, $20,000 came from park board attorney Brian Rice, and $1,700 from six other park board staff members. The Police Officers Federation of Minneapolis, another Rice client, donated $10,000, and a catering company that leases space at park board headquarters provided $1,500 worth of T-shirts.

Treasurer Patty Hillmeyer said the group hasn’t met to decide what to do with its money, but staffer Justin Fay tells the Minnesota Independent that most of the nearly $16,000 CIP reported having on hand as of Sept. 1 “has gone to pay for various overhead costs.” The group has 60 days from an adverse Sept. 10 ruling to file a planned appeal, according to Fay.

Nordyke and City Council Member Don Samuels are the biggest candidates still missing from Hennepin County’s online records. Nordyke’s treasurer said Tuesday she tried to file by email a week late but was sending a required hard copy, while Samuels’ treasurer didn’t respond to messages. Technical difficulties at the county also delayed some timely reports’ posting.

Delays of more than three days incur fines, since late filing robs the public of critical information about those who seek their trust. The problem is even more acute with pre-general campaign finance reports, which are supposed to be filed a mere week before the general election.

Minneapolis City Hall. Photo: Hennepin Co. Library

Although Minneapolis held no primary election this year, candidates for city office still had to file “pre-primary” campaign-finance reports under a new ordinance passed this summer. Yet for two weeks after the Sept. 8 deadline, confusion and other delays kept dozens of candidate and political committee reports from reaching the public.

The city’s adoption of instant-runoff voting (IRV) did away with the separate primary election in early September, long the traditional time for pre-primary finance reports that provide the public with its first peek into candidates’ campaign coffers.

So after the state Legislature took no action to resolve the matter, the Minneapolis City Council set a primary date of Sept. 15 for the sole purpose of triggering the pre-primary financial-report requirement.

The problem: In the meantime, candidates had been told there would be no financial filings until just before the Nov. 3 general election. Notices went out from both the city and Hennepin County election offices to alert candidates to the change.

Of the nearly 100 candidates who had filed for office, about a third are not registered with the county — a requirement only once a candidate raises or spends $100 — and don’t need to file financials. Most of the rest filed pre-primary reports more or less on time.

But as of Tuesday, two weeks after the deadline, the Minnesota Independent found that the county’s online records were missing pre-primary reports for at least a dozen Minneapolis campaign committees and a dozen more political-action committees (PACs). The financial wherewithal of incumbents like City Council Vice President Robert Lillegren and Park Board President Tom Nordyke remained a mystery.

Snafus and confusion

It turned out that a technical snafu had kept some reports out of the public eye. Filings by park board commissioners Bob Fine, Carol Kummer and Annie Young had been received, just not posted.

But the pre-primary deadline without an actual primary election proved a source of confusion for others.

Nordyke’s treasurer told MnIndy she’d mistakenly thought the deadline was Sept. 15, the date of the sham primary, and then tried to email her report. Veteran candidate Marcus Harcus, one of 10 three challengers to Mayor R.T. Rybak Council President Barb Johnson, also tried the not-yet-accepted method of filing electronically.

Others filed early and potentially incomplete reports. The Becker Volunteer Committee, working to re-elect Board of Estimate and Taxation Vice President Carol Becker, promptly completed and returned a report form that the county sent as a reminder in mid-August — well before Sept. 1, the final day of the reporting period.

“The notice was somewhat confusing to me,” treasurer Ted Becker wrote in an email to MnIndy. “I did not expect any [financial] activity between August 20 and September 1. However, I was mistaken.” The report from Ward 6 council candidate Michael Tupper’s campaign also appears to have been filed prematurely.

As of Wednesday, pre-primary financial reports remained missing online for at least four city candidates: Dick Franson, who is running for mayor; Charley Underwood, a Ward 12 council candidate; David Wheeler, a Board of Estimate and Taxation candidate; and Don Samuels, the Ward 5 council incumbent. County officials were double-checking records to ensure that all documents they have received are uploaded to the Web.

Late filers can face fines of $50 per day, up to $500, beginning four days after the deadline, according to Deb Bohler of the Hennepin County. Unexpected personal emergencies usually lead to waivers, whereas chronic tardiness increases the likelihood of a fine.

Of 26 PACs registered with the county as current in Minneapolis, pre-primary reports for only 14 are posted online. All are required to file, even if their bank accounts are empty or they’ve been inactive this year.

Unlike candidates’ campaigns, PACs aren’t sent information about filing rules in the first place, so they didn’t receive notice about the newly imposed pre-primary requirement. But they can keep up to date via the county website, Bohler said.

Not interested in making that kind of statement

State law also requires candidates for office in a “metropolitan governmental unit” to reveal financial details of a more personal nature, including occupation, employer, compensation, securities held, property owned, and money owed. But two people running for election in Minneapolis have so far refused to file a “Statement of Economic Interest,” according to the city clerk’s office.

James R. Everett, a Social Entrepreneurship mayoral candidate, tells MnIndy he doesn’t trust the police and other city powers-that-be with that information. “For my safety, I’m not playing by the rules,” Everett said.

Michael Cavlan, who is running as an Open Progressive candidate for city council in Ward 8, didn’t return a call from MnIndy told MnIndy he’d received an email threatening a $1,000 fine and was planning to visit City Hall on Friday, where he’d either settle up or take a principled stand against completing the form.

Gary Goldsmith, executive director of the Minnesota Campaign Finance and Public Disclosure Board, said cities or counties can report local candidates who don’t fill out an economic-interest statement to the board, which may impose a fine of as much as $1,000. Once elected, officeholders who don’t comply risk removal from office, he said.

Tom Nordyke, Jon Gurban

Every couple of years, the Minneapolis Park and Recreation Board makes headlines for violating citizens’ right to free speech. The latest example? The board’s president, Tom Nordyke, and superintendent, Jon Gurban, are banning the Minneapolis Charter Commission from holding public meetings at park buildings because the commission’s topic is a proposed charter amendment that would eliminate the Park Board.

Last week, according to the Star Tribune’s Steve Brandt, Nordyke told Charter Commission Chairman Jim Bernstein that the Park Board’s objection was to the content of the speech that would take place at the commission’s public meetings:

I cannot support holding the meetings in our buildings and wasting more taxpayer dollars and staff time on this initiative.

Bernstein ran unsuccessfully for park board in 2005. That same year, the suprintendent sicced police on another park board candidate who was attempting to distribute flyers for his reform campaign at a city park. Gurban told park board candidate Jason Stone to stop handing out campaign literature on park property and eventually called park police. The American Civil Liberties Union of Minnesota (ACLU-MN) intervened on Stone’s behalf.

Reporter Scott Russell quoted Gurban in the Southwest Journal:

Jason would say: “How are you this evening?” My response would be, “Jason, you can’t do this. And you know better. You were at that meeting last Wednesday night. Stop doing this.” … Am I happy three squad cars showed up? No, I am not. I know those squad cars have better things to do than to deal with an issue like this. If I was Jason Stone, I would be a little bit embarrassed about that. All Jason had to do was to stop handing out his literature.

Stone lost his 2005 race and is running for a place on the park board again this year.

Two years ago, Nordyke’s predecessor as board president, Jon Olson, wouldn’t let a citizen criticize Gurban during “open time” at board meetings. As the Star Tribune’s Pam Louwagie reported, the ACLU-MN again intervened after Olson cut off Minneapolis resident Arlene Fried, a co-founder of the citizen watchdog group Minneapolis Parkwatch, in the midst of a statement critical of Gurban:

FRIED: … Four: Failing to comply with the Minnesota Government Data Practices Act by not honoring all requests for public information. Five: Withholding of information from commissioners and the public, for example –
OLSON: Um, Ma’am … 
FRIED: These are governmental issues. 
OLSON: Okay, do you have documentation that we have failed to comply with the open Data Practices Act?
FRIED: I’m aware of it.
OLSON: You know, this is not — I’m going to cut you off right there. I’m going to cut you off.
FRIED: Excuse me. Excuse me. You can do that –
OLSON: Thank you very much and you have a good night. Thank you. And we’ll move on to our next speaker –
FRIED: Freedom of speech. You’re denying me freedom of speech.
OLSON: I don’t think so. I’m not going to allow you to get up there and make accusations like that, that we violated the law.

May 2, 2007:

After the ACLU-MN intervened, Fried tried again at the May 16, 2007 meeting. In this second clip, Nordyke (who was not the board’s president at the time) persuades Olson to let Fried finish her statement.

Disclosure: I know Fried and have worked with her on several park-related issues, including posting these two clips from the official park board meeting videos to YouTube. I also wrote a January 2008 commentary for the Daily Mole expressing hope that newly elected President Nordyke would raise the park board’s standard of transparency, accountability and professionalism.

Minnehaha Park annually attracts three-quarters of a million visits from people who gaze at the falls, hike along Minnehaha Creek or picnic in the park’s many glens and glades. Not far from the falls, a bronze plaque directs visitors, intriguingly, to an “abandoned waterfall,” a separate site from Minnehaha’s famous falls. It’s at the end of a grassy cul-de-sac known as the Deer Pen, a gentle valley that meets Minnehaha Creek on its way to the Mississippi River. The Deer Pen is really a long-gone western channel of the Mississippi where the river fell and flowed for eons before abandoning that channel in a course change 9,000 years ago. (The same waterfall still exists today, having receded upstream until finally being fixed 120 years ago by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers at its current site: St. Anthony Falls in downtown Minneapolis.)

Many park visitors seek out the abandoned waterfall and riverbed, but fewer are finding it these days because it’s been buried under tons of fill dirt from a nearby construction project. The new earthen slope stretches over about a third of the 340-yard length of the Deer Pen, and in places nearly fills its 70-yard width. “It’s a geological feature,” says Irene Jones, a member of the Longfellow Community Council’s River Gorge Committee, of the falls site and old river channel. “You don’t just fill it up, at least not without talking to people.”

Jones and others from the neighborhood say the idea of dumping dirt into the Deer Pen wasn’t mentioned last year when the Minneapolis Park and Recreation Board presented plans for building new shelters and roads in the adjacent Wabun picnic area — the project that turned out to be the source of the dirt.

Continued: Click “Read more”

  The fall and winter passed with simmering consternation. To many the new slope looked like the makings of a road, while the park board’s Minnehaha District newsletter asserted that “the design of the slope was actually revised to accommodate sledding.” Last month, the gorge committee sent a formal letter to Park Board President Tom Nordyke complaining about the dirt pile and demanding an explanation.

This week, park planner Andy Lesch responded by e-mail, conceding that park staff had authorized the pile without board review or even a drawn-up plan. But dumping dirt excavated from the Wabun picnic area into the nearest depression was the more “sustainable” option, Lesch argued, “rather than truck this material off-site.” (Cheaper, too, for the contractor or the Park Board.) The actual lip of the former falls had already been covered years ago by earlier fill, he says, though without explaining the logic of extending that by a factor of three. He said the project had “all applicable permits issued by the city, local and state agencies,” allowing for disposal of excess dirt within a project area that included the Deer Pen, and he denied that the Park Board was building a road into the Deer Pen, saying that the Wabun topsoil is of no use as roadbed material anyway.

Residents remain suspicious of a stealth road-building project because of what they recall park planners saying last summer regarding “creation of a hard surface access road for vehicles from the north end of the Deer Pen down toward the creek, primarily for police use, although the possibility was raised that this would be a route to perhaps also be used by people with disabilities; some form of vehicular access for large picnic events to take place within the Deer Pen area; and a new park building/structure for picnicking in the Deer Pen area.”

One government agency that didn’t sign off was the Minneapolis Heritage Preservation Commission. Minnehaha Park is both a local and nationally designated historic district (the state’s first), and the HPC is charged with evaluating proposed changes to the natural and historic landscape there. But the Park Board didn’t ask for HPC approval until the Wabun project was well underway, and then only for a single building. (The park board says the city didn’t say the project needed HPC approval.) In November, then-HPC Chairman Phil Koski said he was “distraught that the project has proceeded to a point where we are really only reviewing one structure and I think there are several elements, pathways, view sheds, entrances, materials, ground surfaces, that need to be considered as part of this landmark. The entire landscape is the landmark.”

On Wednesday evening, several people wandering through the Deer Pen said they were looking for a landmark in the landscape. The old falls site shown on the bronze plaque was the goal for Charlotte Eastin and her husband, Michael, who said, upon learning that their intended destination lay under tons of new dirt, “Boy, talk about abandoned falls!”

Joni Lager, who works just across the river as a fitness specialist at the Ford plant, said she’d been looking for the abandoned falls for weeks. This time she had help from a friend, Jessica Vossen, who brought along her brother Justin and his fiancee, Kelly Garrett. They, too, took their cue from the bronze plaque and were confused about where to look by what Justin called “manmade dirt.”

Brian Johnston, out for a run with his son, Jack, 3, said, “I love this little stretch,” adding that it looked as if the dirt pile area had been clear-cut of trees and bushes. “This part was really secluded,” he remembered.

If Minneapolis park commissioners were to look at the bronze plaque installed 39 years ago, they would see this message from their predecessors: “A great deal of effort has been put forth to retain the natural beauty of the glen so please leave everything as you found it.”

“I don’t know anything about that,” park board president Tom Nordyke tells the Minnesota Monitor. “I don’t think we get to just decide when we delete e-mails.” Nordyke says he assumes staff is familiar with legal requirements for preserving data, and adds that the board had hired a staff person to handle data requests.

“Don [Siggelkow] considers his e-mails transitory and deletes them,” wrote MPRB Administrative Services Coordinator Beth Broich in an April 14 e-mail to Arlene Fried, a co-founder of Minneapolis Parkwatch, whose complaints about lack of compliance with the Minnesota Government Data Practices Act during the park board’s “open time” last year got shut down by then-President Jon Olson until the ACLU-MN intervened. In messages sent April 18 to another resident, Edna Brazaitis, Broich said the superintendent also deletes his e-mail: “Pursuant to our Records Retention Schedule, approved by the State of Minnesota, our employees are not required to keep e-mail communications. It is up to each staff person whether they keep e-mails, and Mr. Siggelkow and Mr. Gurban do not.” The park board’s records retention policy permits destruction of “transitory messages, e-mail or phone messages of short-term interest which are considered incidental and non-vital correspondence.”

Policy or not, the park board’s practices may run afoul of state laws. The park board administration has been sparring with members of Parkwatch and other residents for more than a year over the park board’s compliance with state data practices laws — including the “duty of each agency, and of its chief administrative officer, to carefully protect and preserve government records from deterioration, mutilation, loss, or destruction.”

Disclaimer: The reporter is a member of and has served as spokesperson for Friends of the Riverfront, a citizens group that has taken the MPRB to court and of which Edna Brazaitis, one of the citizens mentioned above, is president.