DFL takes SD 25!
January 4th, 2008
Kevin Dahle takes it by 13%. YES! Not that I’m a big fan of Dahle’s, don’t know him well at all, but it seals the DFL majority in the Senate. Pawlenty was stumping for Cox, saying that, threatening?, that if Ray didn’t win, the DFL Senate could override any veto. AWWWWWWWW… But this isn’t so surprising, given the index of the district. What’s most surprising is his high level of support in the southwestern and western part of the district, 25A, where a Republican could be expected to do better. But despite party endorsement, Ray had two challengers in the Primary:
So it’s clear that there’s resistance, and that resistance was from the 25A part of the district. In LeSueur County, it was less than two percentage points, and Vance Norgaard’s share was 3.5%, but it’s hard to tell where Vance’s voters were, and typically independents draw equally from both, ask Ralph Nader!
On the other hand, Ray won in Sibley County by a wide margin, nearly 10 percent:
Then there’s the Scott County share of SD25, where Ray won by nearly 14 percent:
And coming in last, the latest to report, was Rice County, Northfield holding up the show while we sit on the edge of our chairs:
Dahle wins Rice County by 27 percent! Northfield, of course, thinks it’s so special, but look at the townships, where I think candidates rise or fall. Look at Bridgewater, a township lurching towards urbanization in disturbing ways:
Dahle takes Bridgewater by over 6%, which has traditionally been a Ray precinct in House elections. Look at Shieldsville, which Dahle took by 12 percent:
Wheeling Township, home of Doug Jones,
oh, not THAT Doug Jones, this Doug Jones is one of Ray’s Republican handlers, the guy who has the award-winning McMansion sprawling across a hilly pasture near Nerstrand… anyway, typically, that’s a township leaning Republican, but here’s the Wheeling vote, exactly equally divided:
And look at Ward 2, Precinct 1 of Northfield, looking like a Northfield precinct should, with Dahle getting 73 percent of the vote:
Ward 2, Precinct 2 is also a strong win for Dahle:
Ray didn’t take a single precinct in Northfield, where they know him best and where his prior representation of House District 25B apparently didn’t go over too well! Here’s the Secretary of State site so you can look at the County and the Precinct by Precinct numbers:
Now, what will the DFL do with this? Does the DFL have the gonads to use their majority, to stand up and turn our wrongheaded policy, particularly energy policy, around? The whole world is watching… well, at least Minnesota!
CapX 2020 Transmission - Hearing Schedule
January 3rd, 2008
The hearing schedule has been issued in the First Prehearing Order in the CapX 2020 docket. For more info, go here:
CapX 2020 Transmission Prehearing Order
And for the whole scoop, it’s at www.nocapx2020.info
GO VOTE!
January 3rd, 2008
Senate District 25 election is today!
No excuses, get out and vote!
Excelsior wants to claim transmission for IGCC project
January 2nd, 2008
Stolen “Fair Use” from NWS-Shreveport!
We’re in another of those confusing spots, one that leaves me wondering whether Excelsior Energy had to blow a lot of money on legal fees before the end of the year… it’s hard to find another explanation for the flurry of inexplicable activity zipping through the wires lately (see prior posts, chimp scratching). Excelsior and Xcel are fighting in the Appellate Court, see Excelsior Appeal - Statement of the Case
And then there’s the Excelsior Energy Petition under Minn. Stat. 216B.1694 where they are saying that the statute says they get transmission associated with the Mesaba Project free and clear, with no requirement of a Certificate of Need, but hey, guys, if the PPA has not been approved, and if the Chair of the Commission is saying “You’ve got to come up with something else,” and “No one wants it, no one needs it, and we’re not going to force it on anyone,” get a grip… there’s NO project, and NO entitlement… give it up…
I couldn’t let that Petition sit like the fart in the elevator so today I filed this:
MCGP Motion to Dismiss Excelsior Energy Petition re: Transmission
Now why might they want to shore up their claim to transmission for a project that doesn’t exist!
Lisa Goodman gets holiday smack upside the head!
January 1st, 2008
Doing some catch-up here. I’m still downloading and finding files and getting everything into this computer, dealing some with my hospitalized mother, a brief time out that just wasn’t sufficient, and on and on and on… so, here goes!
Did you catch the great article about Lisa Goodman’s role in the Kandiyohi proposal for the Midtown Eco-Crapper? It’s here in the STrib:
Goodman’s actions on burner questioned
As an investor, Lisa Goodman left the debate on the project and did not vote. But was her letter to the MPCA a conflict of interest?
By STEVE BRANDT, Star Tribune
Last update: December 24, 2007 - 7:43 PM
Lisa Goodman says she did everything by the book when she invested last year in Midtown Eco Energy, which wants to generate energy in Minneapolis’ Phillips neighborhood by burning wood.
The Minneapolis City Council member filed a statement with the city clerk disclosing a conflict of interest. She left the room during the council’s discussion of Midtown Eco Energy’s request that the city reserve up to $86 million in tax-exempt revenue bond authority for the project. She abstained from voting on the request. She didn’t lobby colleagues.
Goodman said those actions exceed what’s required.
But she also wrote in August to the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency, urging it to issue an air quality permit for the facility.
Although on personal stationery, the letter began by referring to her post as a council member. It didn’t disclose that she had invested at least $2,500 in Midtown.
The wood-burning proposal has attracted opponents, some of whom look askance at the Goodman letter.
“I think it’s a little sleazy,” said Carol Greenwood, a Seward neighborhood environmental activist. She called Goodman’s omission of her investment “a little disingenuous.”
Goodman’s action may not run afoul of the city’s ethics ordinance. It says that a city official should avoid any situation that might give rise to a conflict of interest. A conflict is defined as participating in the discharge of official duties in a government decision, action or transaction in which one has a financial interest greater than an occupational peer.
An ethics professor weighs in
But the proscription appears to apply only to city officials influencing a city decision, not a state action. David Schultz, who teaches government ethics at Hamline University’s law school, calls that a “statutory gap.”
“She’s got a conflict of interest, no doubt about it,” Schultz said, even if no law is broken. “What’s she’s doing here more than anything else is using her position as a council member for personal gain. That fits under one of the classic definitions of conflict of interest.”
In an interview, Goodman refused to disclose the amount of her investment but it’s at least $2,500, the threshold that required her to disclose it on an economic interest statement last year.
“I can’t afford to be making a large investment,” Goodman said. But she also said: “I could lose a ton of money.”
She described it as an investment in a project in which two “people who are in my life like family” are involved.
They are Kim Havey, the city’s former Empowerment Zone director, and Michael Krause, a former Green Institute president and city DFL chairman. They are two of three partners in Kandiyohi Development Partners, which is proposing the Midtown project. They said they asked friends and family to invest seed money in the project.
Goodman and Havey have known each other since college days in the 1980s and shared a condo for years. Goodman, Krause and Havey own an 8-acre Kandiyohi County farmstead.
Goodman adapted form letter
Goodman, who represents downtown and the Cedar-Isles area, said most of her letter was copied from a form letter circulated by the Midtown project. But she inserted her council title at the form letter’s start. Although it’s on personal stationery, her letterhead also lists her council title.
Asked about that, Goodman said: “I was just listing what my job was. It wasn’t a position of the city.”
Schultz disagreed: “She’s using her position. If she had just signed it Jane Doe at 1 Elm Street, maybe that wouldn’t have been so much of a problem.”
“She’s using her influence as a City Council member,” said Nancy Hone, one of the activists opposing the Midtown project. Another opponent, Alan Muller, who discovered the letter in state files, said it raises questions about Goodman’s ethical sensitivity.
After Goodman was asked by the Star Tribune about the letter, she wrote the agency to clarify that she was not acting in her official capacity.
The city’s ethics code requires those working for the city to “maintain the highest ethical principles and avoid misconduct and conflicts of interest, apparent or real.”
Steve Brandt • 612-673-4438
Here are endorsement letters by various officials, from Speaker Margaret Kelliher to Mayor Rybak to Corcoran’s Eric Gustafson and East Phillip’s Carol Pass (Pass revoked her endorsement at the MPCA public meeting, but is it in writing in the MPCA record?).
Speaker Kelliher endorsement using form letter from Kandiyohi
Let’s watch as the endorsement retractions roll in…