Chris Heineman really stepped in it. This was right out of the tRump playbook, taking unfounded punitive action at the last minute, and then, doing a 180; never admitting it was HIS idea; and putting someone else in the middle to both cancel use of the Community Room and then to retract that cancellation, and of course, Heineman offers no apology. This is not professional behavior. It’s my belief that he did this because it was my name, my workshop, that it was retribution for challenging a couple of his actions, and it’s possible he acted with encouragement from others. It’s time for the City Attorney to give a refresher of the meaning of “under color of law” given his actions as Council Administrator.
What did Chris Heineman do?
In mid-December, December 11, 2025, to be precise,I’d scheduled the Red Wing Fire House #2 “Community Room” for January 24th, a “Lobbyists ‘R’ Us” workshop that Tom Dunnwald, Esq. and I, Esq., had presented elsewhere, going back ages… Why? Because I hear so many people whining, “What can I do?” and complaining and complaining and… well, it’s pretty simple. If you don’t speak up, you WILL be run over, guaranteed. And if you stand up and ACT, and ACT, and ACT, you just might help make change!
It’s not easy. It takes a LOT of years of hard work to achieve a major policy change, and sometimes as long for a small one. And it’s not just about making progress, it’s also about holding fast to the good work of so many who have come before us so we don’t go backward. Yet here we are. Make no mistake about it, it’s WORK, banging your head against the wall, but don’t forget, this is, ostensibly, government of the people, for the people, by the people. It’s “a republic, if you can keep it.” Yup, that’s our job.
Hence our January workshop:
On January 20th, I received a phone call and was told I would not be able to use Fire Station #2, and on asking why, I was told that the workshop was deemed partisan and Red Wing’s Fire Station #2’s Community Room was not to be used for partisan activities. I tried to get more information on where that notion that it was partisan came from and was told to talk to City Council Administrator Chris Heineman.
I quickly reached out to a couple of potential venues, but got voice mail and a forwarded message, and started calling Heineman. Four calls, still “in a meeting,” and it was close-of-business time, so I went over to City Hall. The lights were being turned off, but I was granted leave to wait… and wait… and ultimately Heineman did come out, some papers/email in hand, and declared that my workshop was a partisan activity. My bottom line was that I wanted assurance that the workshop could go forward as planned, and I said that at least three times. Heineman said he’d contact the Fire Chief who was at a conference, that it was his idea, and that I’d hear back tomorrow. Heineman did not admit that the revocation of use of Fire Station #2 was his idea.
The next day, Matt Lenz, the second in command at the Fire Dept called, and left a message. I returned the call, and I was told that my workshop could go ahead at Fire Station #2.
The workshop went on as planned, we had a good turnout, and hopefully some of those attending are motivated to do some lobbying on local, state, and federal levels, or better yet, all three!
The following Monday, I fired off a Data Practices Act Request to dig into how that last minute cancellation, and retraction the following day, came about, and copied each City Council member so they would all know, as “the boss,” that this had occurred:
So what happened? Well, it started with this, when “someone” forwarded Heineman a screenshot from one of the Red Wing groups of my announcement of the workshop:
And then Heineman got to the Fire Chief, Mike Warner — note it’s Heineman driving this:
In the email below, dated Monday afternoon, January 19, 2026, see page 2, where Heineman concluded, based on the flyer for the workshop that had been forwarded to him on SUNDAY EVENING! I’d not published any other info about this, just posted notice on a couple pages, and it was forwarded to him by ????? and who knows what else was said between them. It’s likely mostly based on my name, because my reputation in town exceeds me. Note he did NOT contact me, he had no questions, didn’t seek information — and yet he says, the next day, Monday, January 19, and note,it’sHEINEMAN’Sidea:
I recommend cancelling the use of the Community Room at Fire Station 2 for the “Lobbying ‘R’ Us” (sic) event on Saturday, January 24.
… “I recommend…” and Heineman goes on to declare, “IS” and then qualify with “MAY” his two very bizarre notions of “POLITICAL FUNDRAISING OR CAMPAIGNING ACTIVITIES,” notions pulled out of some nether orifice:
The proposed “Lobbyists ‘R’ Us” training is a partisan political activity that may relate to political fundraising or campaigning activities which the current usage policy lists as activities that are not allowed.
At about 3 p.m. on Tuesday, January 20, 2026, days before the scheduled workshop, I received a call from the Asst. Fire chief, Matt Lenz, who told me that I could not use the Community Room! WHAT?!?!?! The workshop was to be that Saturday! And that’s when I started calling Heineman and sent this email while I was waiting on the chance that he was confused:
After leaving 4 messages, I went over and did finally get to have a chat with Heineman. I went to him directly, first calling persistently, and unsuccessful, then went to City Hall and waited and waited.
In those days between the heads up email he received Sunday night and the call from Matt Lenz to me on January 20th, Heineman made zero effort to contact me, he made no effort to get more information about the workshop, not a peep from Heineman. That was what told me this was a targeted action and that he was a gutless wonder with a preconceived notion. I would like to know who it was who sent him the flyer and got him going, I have a few likely suspects.
Heineman’s take on our discussion at City Hall? Oh my…
Oh, I’m so demanding. Heaven forbid I should make a calm, clear, direct statement of expectation. After this email, Chief Warner sent this missive to Matt Lenz:
Ah, “the Carol issue.” What Heineman did do was, again, NOT call me after HE reneged, no apology, and he passed on that duty to inform me to someone else, and Matt Lenz was stuck in the middle again. Here’s Matt Lenz to Chief Warner (“ended up”?), though Matt had left me a message and I called back:
The workshop went on as planned, a good group and lots of good questions and ideas and I hope there was sufficient motivation to get lobbying! It’s also my hope that Chris Heineman has learned a few things about dealing with the public, his co-workers, and, last but not least, Overland!
Methinks we’ve got trouble… right here in River City… I’ve not been able to make recent City Council meetings, but it appears that Heineman’s overreach needs more attention. Why, in addition to the above? There are his appearances before the Charter Commission wanting to unilaterally change the Charter without publicly discussing it with the Council (yet with no specific proposal, maybe “concepts of a plan”); the elimination of the convenient “one email” to reach all Council members and installing an email to the Administrator who would then choose who should receive the email (!). Another example was the jaw-dropping response to the legit question of who was acting when Heineman was not present, a duty assigned in the Charter to the Administrative Services position that, again, no longer exists. At ~3:03:30 in the meeting, LINK HERE, Norton asked who had taken that role in Heineman’s 2 prior absences. There was mobius avoidance of answering, and then, at ~3:03:55, DIRECT REFUSAL TO ANSWER — Heineman said, “I respectfully decline to answer the question…” He was not challenged on that response. WTAF? We have our very own Bondi? Unacceptable.
Keep your eyes and ears open!
p.s. I’ll be holding a CAMPAIGN FINANCE workshop on June 20, 2026 from 1-2:30 p.m. at the Library. I’ll be sending out engraved invitations to those who have recently been found to have violated campaign finance law, to all those currently in office, and to those who have filed to run. And of course, as always, open to the public, and FREE OF CHARGE.
December 10, 2024 was the Power Plant Siting Act Annual Hearing. It was before ALJ Christa Moseng, and there were very few commenters. I’m not seeing any minutes, and don’t know if they’ll ever be posted. There were only two of us commenting, myself, and Dan Wanbeke, who has a CapX 2020 line on his land. If the proposed MN Energy CON line is built, he could be surrounded by transmission.
Wanbeke gave a detailed description of his experience and takeaways, one of the most important was a comment of the PUC’s Bob Cupit (since retired):
There are winners, and there are losers.
A very interesting part of Wambeke’s testimony was regarding the stray voltage problem, all the water in their farm was energized, and the shower tested at 15 VOLTS! The local utility has been out many times, and when Capx 2020 was down for a brief time, no stray voltage, and when it was again energized, the stray voltage was back. He testified about induction current, that when there’s a distribution line running parallel to a massive transmission line, there can be induction current (this also happens with pipelines), and the distribution lines are indeed parallel with CapX transmission. This is NOT rocket science, and the CapX utilities better deal with this. If meeting minutes come out, I’ll post, though the thought occurs to me that this was a “hearing,” so it will probably be a top secret transcript. Will keep an eye out.
These next two tidbits were handouts at the hearing:
FYI, the DOT “Policy of Accommodation” that should be entered in every docket, because it sets out how utilities can interact when projects are proposed near roads — I’ve observed cases where the utility paid no attention to DOT comments and landowners nearby were screwed with little notice because utility had to quickly alter plans because DOT would not allow planned placement:
I’d made oral comments at the hearing (via web), but had to put it in writing to be more specific, because the changes are immense, and there needs to be a record. As I said in my Comment, not for the first time, “I’m disgusted, frustrated, incensed, and committed to showing up before the Public Utilities Commission until I drop dead someday in the large hearing room.” I had to file a corrected version, was bleary-eyed and found typos, missing words and punctuation, and FYI, the first one below has been corrected:
This one, from Kristen Eide-Tollefson for CURE, Communities United for Responsible Energy, is important because she’s seen the changes over the decades, THREE decades, of dealing with the Power Plant Siting Act. Now it no longer exists, hence Eulogy for the PPSA:
Here’s the STrib’s map below — this map might be from just this year’s testing?
I’ve been tracking chronic wasting disease in deer for a while, right up there with bovine spungiform encephalophy (BSE, “mad cow”) sheep scrapie, even in pigs, and of course Creutzfeld-Jakob in humans (ages ago, it was also Jakob-Creutzfeld). This came to my attention in the late 1990s, when a swimming coach at Northfield high school died of Jakob-Creutzfeld.
Recent alert came over the wire about a transmission project on BLM land, this one in Wyoming, and yes, that map is fuzzy, no details, and it’s direct from the application on the BLM site, awful!
Here’s the BLM page for the project — a rather short line in the cosmic realm of things — and there’s little info to go on. There’s a 15-day public scoping period prior to preparing an environmental assessment (EA), and comments are open until 4 p.m. on January 7, 2025:
And as usual, the maps suck. How can one effectively submit a scoping comment “prior to preparing an environmental assessment (EA)” when there’s this timeline that shows the “Draft EA done 1/6/2024, and the EA was STARTED five days after it was DONE. From TIMELINE PAGE:
Recent alert came over the wire about a transmission project on Bureau of Land Management (BLM) land, this one in Wyoming, and it’s to be built “mostly” on BLM transmission corridors. WHAT? Yup, here’s the main page. BLMtransmission corridors And yeah, it’s grim. That map above shows how grim it is.
So before I get into Lucky Star Transmission, we need to get familiar with the BLM set up… and there’s a LOT. It’s originating with the “Energy Policy Act of 2005” There’s so much info that the BLM Lucky Star Transmission Project will be the next post. Lots of ground to cover — and they’re sure working on covering it with transmission. Ya wonder why challenging transmission projects feels hopeless, other than minor route changes…
That Energy Policy Act of 2005 is the law that triggered the coal gasification rush that thankfully was brought to a halt, particularly thanks to everyone of “No New Coal Plants,” challenging every one of them, and helping establish that coal gasification was nothing more than “Pipedreams of Green and Clean,” and that claims of feasible carbon capture and storage was not happening on a level to be even close to a CO2 climate change miracle.
As for CO2… CO2 capture and storage is a recurring nightmare, a red herring that keeps coming back.
It’s so disturbing to see the same ol’ thing coming around, after the intense challenge to the Excelsior Energy Mesaba Project, where Xcel Energy, of course, and our local advocates mncoalgasplant.com(pre 2012 captures) and Citizens Against the Mesaba Project (CAMP)(pre 2012 captures) worked together to tank Micheletti’s boondoggle. At the last minute, Excelsior Energy camp up with a CO2 capture and storage plan, where it would capture a minute percentage of CO2 and then transfer it to the PLANT GATE!Their plan? Read it and guffaw, snort, hoot and holler: Ex_EE1067_Plan for Carbon Capture and Sequestration
From nearly 20 years ago, that was a nightmare I don’t really want to remember: Pipedreams-of-Green-Clean-IGCC The Excelsior Energy Mesaba Project was an all encompassing HUGE project for me and all of us challenging coal gasification, time wise, technically, and the sheer room for all the boxes of crap taking up an entire wall in my office… and OH MY DOG, I missed a lot that grew from that Energy Policy Act of 2005.
But these BLM “energy corridors” are a whole ‘nother kettle of fish. When first established, they were challenged, with Plaintiffs arguing it wasn’t enough, hence a “Settlement Agreement.” Y’all know what I think of “Settlement Agreements” and this one seems no exception — look at all the groups blessing this BLM facilitation of another massive transmission buildout:
And here’s their study, which supposedly evaluates whether the Section 368 corridors are achieving their purpose to promote environmentally responsible corridor-siting decisions and to reduce the proliferation of dispersed ROWs crossing Federal lands.
