News Cut: March 9, 2009 Archive

Transparency

Posted at 9:35 AM on March 9, 2009 by Bob Collins (2 Comments)
Filed under: Economy, Politics

A year or so ago, I tried to find the number of people employed by the state of Minnesota. It took more than a dozen phone calls to find an agency of state government that knew, and even then the data was more than a year old.

So it's no surprise that Minnesota is one of the 19 states that hasn't set up a Web site to track how federal stimulus money is going to be spent, according to the Web site, ProPublica, which tracks these things.

At the same time, it's also not surprising to read in today's Star Tribune that one of the governor's policy advisors (why can't people who run the state agency's on behalf of the governor be his policy advisors?) is actually paid through the budget of seven state agencies.

What is surprising is that anyone could figure it out. Minnesota is not a candidate for "transparent state of the year."

The Minnesota Office and Management and Budget, formerly the Minnesota Department of Finance, posts -- for example -- salary information on its Web site, with information for eight different unions. As long as you're on the union's bargaining team and understand 11 different "step ranges" (or even know what a step range is) and 16 different "comp codes" (and what they are) you can figure out how much an information technology specialist makes. But you can't find out how many there, what they do, or whether we need so many of them.

A total compensation report is somewhat more illustrative of our budget dollars in the executive branch, but not for mere humans who want to figure out whether (a) money is being well spent and (b) how.

"Transparency" is the new buzz word in government. it's meant to provide all the details of where the money goes. It's mostly a dodge. Transparency isn't just throwing a blizzard of numbers at you for you to sort out, transparency is making it easy to sort out.

President Barack Obama's recovery.gov Web site is a good example. It intends to follow how the economic stimulus money is being spent, but there's no indication that it will. It's "news" section is simply puffed-up press releases to tout components of the plan. A section on "justice grants," for example, tells us about money being thrown at anti-crime programs, but it doesn't tell us that while the president promoted a graduating class of police recruits as evidence the stimulus plan is working, it doesn't mention that subsequent classes for potential recruits have been canceled.

A link on the page sends us to the Justice Department to find out how much each state will get. There, we download a spreadsheet for Minnesota and learn, for example, that $19,000 of the $2 billion is trickling down to South St. Paul. How is it going to be used? Call South St. Paul (Note: I did. I had to leave a message.). Now repeat that for every line item in the stimulus package and you've got your transparency. More likely? People trying to figure out will give up.

Is there a better way to do this? ProPublica thinks so; it points to Missouri's Web site to track how stimulus money will be spent. It lists only $223 million received for Medicare reimbursement, so far. But it provides e-mail alerts and RSS feeds as the money is spent.

It also has an area for people to make suggestions on how the money can be spent but, unfortunately, like the Minnesota Legislature's "submit your idea about the budget," it keeps the suggestions to themselves. Why?

How will we know whether the money is being spent correctly? The Boston Herald reports today that the feds are planning to go undercover to "monitor whether unqualified applicants try to obtain stimulus funds." That must be under the "spies" line-item.

Don't look for it on a Web site, though.

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Morality and the economic crisis

Posted at 11:02 AM on March 9, 2009 by Bob Collins (0 Comments)
Filed under: Economy

John Redwood, a member of Parliament, asks a salient question on his blog today: If it was wrong for banks to lend, why wasn't it wrong for people to borrow?

If lending too much was greedy and wrong, wasn't it also wrong for so many people to borrow so much, especially if they cannot now repay it and are going to walk away from their obligations? Who was more guilty - the lender or the borrower?

If the bankers who did the lending were greedy and wrong, weren't the shareholders in the banks similarly guilty as they were happy to receive the dividends from all that excessive lending? Didn't that include most people in the country? The Church Commissioners who pay the clergy salaries doubtless owned lots of bank shares, as did practically every pension fund in the country. I don't remember them speaking out at Bank shareholder meetings asking for the banks to grow less and pay smaller dividends.

What's interesting is the assertion that the economic crisis, formerly known as a "banking crisis" is an issue of morality. Is it?

Related reading suggestions from MPR: Recovering from a layoff, one step at a time, and The 90 second job interview.

MPR's Midmorning also discussed the fallout from layoffs today, although the subject of morality did not come up.

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The Labor Day standard

Posted at 11:34 AM on March 9, 2009 by Bob Collins (15 Comments)
Filed under: Politics, Schools

Go ahead and schedule your Labor Day vacation. A Minnesota House committee killed a bill late this morning that would've allowed schools to start classes before Labor Day.

It's not often that a one-sentence bill at the Legislature can get Minnesota worked up, but HF195, which went before the House Finance Committee today, is one such occasion.

Notwithstanding Minnesota Statutes, section 120A.40, a school district may begin the school year on any day before Labor Day only for the 2009-2010 and 2010-2011 school years.

Labor Day comes late this year (September 7), and some educators say that's too late. Graduations would be held in mid-June, proponents say. Besides, the kids in the band and football teams are already practicing by mid-August, according to Rep. Kim Norton, DFL-Rochester, who is sponsoring the bill and is also a substitute teacher.

But the underlying issue is the economy, specifically the resort industry. If kids are back in school before Labor Day, they and their parents can't be spending the week at a campground or resort. And young summer employees can't be working if they're in school.

"They'll have about a 45 percent decline in booking," Rep. Larry Howes, R-Walker, said today. He said in 2004, the State Fair lost thousands of visitors because of an early school start date. He predicts the fair could lose up to $2.5 million in revenue if the bill becomes law.

"Labor Day is the largest vacation week in the state of Minnesota," he said. "It's not just the resorts, the airline industry loses bookings when school starts before Labor Day."

But Rep. Mark Buesgens, R-Jordan, says the economic argument is a shallow one. "It's a question of whether they're going to spend it at the end of the sumer, or at the beginning of the summer," he said.

"Rep. Norton picked the worst two years to try this," said Rep. Tom Rukavina, DFL-Virginia. "It's the worst years since the Depression. If you stop them from spending on Labor Day weekend, it's going to hurt those resorters. We don't need to put another nail in the coffin for rural Minnesota."

The not-until-Labor-Day policy of Minnesota schools -- Michigan and Virginia are the only two other states with the policy, according to Rep. Norton -- extends back to the state's agrarian history. The kids needed to help out on the farm.

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Mondays

Posted at 10:45 AM on March 9, 2009 by Bob Collins (0 Comments)
Filed under: Life

Monday. Why does it seem like Mondays always behave like a Monday?

MPR's Tim Nelson was patrolling the St. Paul waterfront today when he saw someone's summer being ruined.

"This house boat was bobbing down the Mississippi in downtown St. Paul between the ice floes about a 7 AM. Firefighters watched until the motor vessel Mary J fetched a crane to get the boat out of the river. Police said the boat appeared to be unoccupied." --Tim Nelson

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Tracking the stimulus

Posted at 3:34 PM on March 9, 2009 by Bob Collins (1 Comments)
Filed under: Crime and Justice, Economy

I wrote early today about the difficulty anyone is going to have keeping track of where all of the stimulus money is going, despite the stated best intentions of many of those involved.

So this afternoon, I've been calling around the state, asking communities how they intend to spend the $29 million coming into the state from the Justice Assistance Grants announced by President Obama last week as part of his stimulus package.

This is "small potato" money in the big scheme of things, but the exercise has revealed how stimulus money gets absorbed into budgets at the lowest levels of government and is probably going to take someone with enough time and resources to call and e-mail every city in the state literally hundreds of times to be able to determine how it's spent.

Some cities and counties know how they'll spend it already. Some don't know how the'll spend it, and some don't even know they've got it. Most are scrambling to figure out what strings -- if any -- are attached. In many cases, the communities just found out today that it's available to them. Only a small handful of the more than 50 communities I contacted responded.

Here's a sample of how some of it is going to be spent in Minnesota.

Dakota County - $11,168
According to Chief Deputy Sheriff Dave Bellows, they're trying to determine if it can be used for equipment. The county has recently been upgrading camera systems in squad cars.

Woodbury - $21,804
"Woodbury is a first-time recipient of this funding. As a result, we need a little time to review the specifics of the program and determine what types of expenditures are eligible," city communications director Julie Lahr said in an e-mail. "Once we do that, the public safety director will make a recommendation to the city administrator regarding what he believes would be the best use of the grant money."

Rosemount - $10,104
The Byrne grants have been used for joint ventures with other government agencies in such things as investigations of gangs and drugs, asscording to Jeff May, the city's finance director. He says he's not sure, however, whether this is "new" money that will allow additional programs or whether it's "old money under a new name."

Apple Valley - $46,001
"Our police chief, Scott Johnson, is currently evaluating a number of different options for these funds. Given the one-time nature of the funding, it is most likely these funds will be used to purchase capital equipment items," Apple Valley's city administrator Tom Lawell said.

Inver Grove Heights - $34,301
"The money you refer to would come to Dakota County and not directly to the City of Inver Grove Heights. In that case, I have not heard from the County on any of their plans for receipt of that funding," responded Joe Lynch, the city administrator.

Brooklyn Park - $245,693
Our police chief is busy working on figuring out what the eligible expenditures would be for so I can't tell you specifically what we'll use it for," city manager Jamie Verbrugge said.

South St. Paul - $19,411
"We have not made decisions about where it would be used. The Governor's initial 2009 budget proposal would reduce our Local Government aid - an integral part of our revenues - by about $400,000 in 2009 and another $1 million in 2010. If that becomes reality, there will be lots of uses for the $19,411," wrote Stephen King, the city administrator.

My favorite response, however, came from Tammy Omdal, the chief financial officer of Burnsville, which is receiving $75,250. "I have no idea what you're talking about," she said.

Incidentally, Kerri Miller will have the two mayors in the house on Midmorning on Tuesday (9 a.m.) to talk about the stimulus money.

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Are you smarter than a Minnesota math student?

Posted at 6:01 PM on March 9, 2009 by Bob Collins (27 Comments)
Filed under: Schools

Whenever we discuss education in Minnesota, there's a tendency to lament that our kids are stupid, our teachers poor, our schools failures. And, it's true, some kids are stupid, some teachers are poor, and some schools specialize in failure.

But it also ignores that many are none of those things. Quite the opposite, in fact. Why are some kids so smart and some kids aren't? Is it their teachers? Their parents? Their schools? Or is it just the way it is? Nature vs. nurture?

MPR's Tom Weber will have a story on Morning Edition tomorrow on an event in South St. Paul on Monday -- the Minnesota State High School Mathematic League Tournament. It's not done, yet, but you can find it up top here later this evening.

About 300 kids -- from the state's public and charter schools -- attended.

Is it time to rethink -- even if just a little -- some of the sweeping generalizations we make when the subject is education? Take this quiz and then you tell me.



Here are some of the answers -- as well as more questions -- for hours of News Cut fun.

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