At the AP, Brian Bakst takes Gov. Dayton to task for breaking a 2010 campaign promise: “Dayton won't allow inspection of his daily calendar despite saying as a candidate that taxpayers would ‘have a right to know what I'm doing with my time’ and should know who he's meeting with privately. Dayton told the Associated Press in an interview during his 2010 campaign that he would open his schedule to public view. The AP followed up in December with a formal records request and was told by the administration that ‘calendar data is considered private data on individuals and as such is not public.’ The Democrat's current posture mirrors that of his predecessors, who carefully guarded their appointment calendars, citing legal opinions on data privacy and security concerns. All recent governors, including Dayton, have released a self-selected public events schedule that offers an abbreviated look at their day. The AP and other media organizations pressed then-Gov. Tim Pawlenty's administration for release of his calendar when the Republican was under consideration for vice president in 2008 and again when he was building toward his own White House run. All requests were rebuffed.”
The New Hampshire company that pocketed nearly $1 million in Minnesota taxpayer money to build cellulosic bio-fuel plants here ... is going somewhere else. David Shaffer of the Strib says, “Just nine months ago, Mascoma Corp. told Minnesota officials that it could build ‘one of the first commercially viable cellulosic ethanol plants in the world’ in Little Falls, Minn., with a project schedule that listed construction starting this May. But the Lebanon, N.H.-based company has quietly abandoned the Minnesota-funded project, and recently told investors that its first cellulosic ethanol plant will be in Kinross, Mich., and its second in Drayton Valley, Alberta. In a statement e-mailed to the Star Tribune on Friday, Mascoma said the Little Falls venture was terminated in the second half of 2011. The company said the decision with its partners was ‘primarily as a result of financial feasibility.’ " Fine. I assume that cash was lent out at something like 18 percent APR. Right? Right?
Get your wolf huntin’ gear together. Up at the Duluth News Tribune, Sam Cook reports: “It seems a reasonable assumption that Minnesota will have a wolf hunting and trapping season this fall. But the details of that season are still the topic of much debate. Rep. David Dill, DFL-Crane Lake, and Sen. Tom Saxhaug, DFL-Grand Rapids, each have introduced bills calling for wolf seasons. Their bills, which have the same language, call for a wolf hunting season to begin no later than the first day of Minnesota’s firearms deer season, which opens Nov. 3 this year. The legislators propose a wolf trapping season to begin Jan. 1, 2013. Under the proposed bills, a resident wolf hunting license would cost $38, a non-resident hunting license $195, and a trapping license $50. The bill also would allow the DNR commissioner to limit the number of wolves harvested and to establish a lottery for issuing licenses.” I wonder, will there then be a Wolf Harvest Moon?
This guy will be getting a lot of unwanted attention. Says Warren Wolfe at the Strib: “One day soon, perhaps as early as next Saturday, convicted child molester Clarence Opheim will walk off the campus at the Minnesota Security Hospital in St. Peter and into a cauldron of politics and community apprehension. The first patient to be discharged from the Minnesota Sex Offender Program (MSOP) in more than a decade, Opheim, 64, will take his first steps at an intensive St. Paul therapy program called Project Pathfinder. Together, they will test whether Minnesota can navigate a historic turning point for the controversial sex offender program. Since it was created in 1994 to hold and treat dangerous offenders who had completed their prison sentences, death has been virtually the only way out. But with a population that has soared to 635 patients, annual costs in the millions of dollars, and looming court challenges filed by restive patients, the program faces mounting pressures to find an alternative to indefinite detention. ‘Clarence knows there's a lot riding on him, the first guy out of the gate,’ said a former sex offender from Minneapolis who has volunteered to be one of Opheim's mentors.”
With it this close to being re-named White Bear Slough, John Brewer of the PiPress reports: “[T]he dwindling water level of White Bear Lake has been affected by precipitation amounts, federal and state researchers say. But now, they're realizing that increased municipal water use and a potentially leaky lake bed have an impact on the level, too. ‘When we look at pumping records, we see that the pumping rates have increased,' said Perry Jones, a hydrologist with the U.S. Geological Survey. ‘We also see that somewhere along the lake bottom, at various locations, there's leakage.’ Jones will share the preliminary findings of a $200,000 federal study at the White Bear Lake Conservation District board meeting Tuesday night, as well as go over potential solutions. In the latest quarterly progress report on the study, researchers pointed out that the ebb and flow in the lake's level between 1980 and 2002 matched closely with rain and snow amounts during that time. But after 2002, a lack of precipitation didn't account for the lake's dramatic 5-foot drop.”
Actual response to consumer complaints is apparently becoming something like a reality. So says Stribber Kelly Smith: “Businesses are grappling with a new world, thanks to social media and increasingly popular review sites such as Yelp. The dynamic has even forced the traditional avenues of consumers' complaints to lay it all out in the open. Next month, the Better Business Bureau of Minnesota and North Dakota will start publishing entire complaints online, something it has never done before. ‘This is something people really want,’ BBB spokesman Dan Hendrickson said. ‘The Internet has really opened the doors wide.’ While the growing realm of reviews is adding more outlets for consumers to sound off, it's also expanding the virtual landscape companies must sift through to protect their reputation. One local orthodontist filed an FBI fraud complaint after someone trashed him online. From posting a review of a plumber on Angie's List to rating a restaurant on Urbanspoon, everyone is now a click away from being a critic.”
This one sounds like a something out of Deadwood circa 1876. The AP story says: “A Duluth man who died after a shooting with police in Superior, Wis., had a brother who died under similar circumstances in Alaska about six years ago, according to friends who knew both men. The Duluth News Tribune reported Sunday that Superior police shot Luke Daniel Anderson, 34, on Friday as he raised his gun at them. Anderson also shot himself; an autopsy was being conducted to determine which shots caused his death. Police Chief Charles LaGesse said no officers or bystanders were hurt. Friends said Anderson's brother, Jason Karlo Jacob Anderson, 31, died in a shootout with police and federal marshals in 2006 in Homer, Alaska.”
At least a couple of metro area courthouses are getting serious about the possibility of gun-toting legal combatants. David Chanen of the Strib says: “Anoka County is spending $50,000 to install bulletproof glass in two offices where prosecutors and other courthouse employees work, and Ramsey County now has armed deputies guarding two similar offices. In Washington, D.C., Sen. Al Franken, D-Minn., introduced a bill this month that would give courts access to security training and allow states to use existing grant money to improve security. The actions come as renewed emphasis is placed on protecting prosecutors and others in the judicial system, an issue that gained prominence after a December courthouse shooting in northern Minnesota.”
You know it’s going to be a really bad day at the office when IRS criminal investigators show up. The Strib’s Dan Browning writes: “IRS criminal investigators say an accounting and immigrant services firm with offices in Shakopee and Florida appears to be running a multimillion-dollar income-tax-fraud conspiracy. Search warrants unsealed Tuesday in St. Paul show that federal agents seized dozens of boxes of records and computer equipment from the office of American Group US Inc. in downtown Shakopee and the nearby residence of its married executives, Mark and Ornella Hammerschmidt. An IRS agent said in a sworn statement that American Group and the Hammerschmidts are suspected of submitting more than 700 tax returns that included dubious claims and expense deductions resulting in more than $2.5 million in refunds. American Group remained open for business this week despite the Feb. 9 raid. Signs out front offer taxes and accounting services, promising ‘The Best Refund, Guaranteed.' "
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Dayton not so transparent on private meetings
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