Or help Rhonda get rid of Erhart. Something like that.
Themewise, however the lyrics go, Erhart should go.
Rhonda did a very, very good thing if the reporting is true. She facilitated an exit, stage right, for Trainman Dan, the head spending man (chair of the county's Finance and Capital Improvement Committee and presumably thinking spending as this blurb indicates for a train line to Duluth is an "improvement").
It is Trainman Dan who now wants a useless line to Duluth where I suppose the Tinklenberg taconite trains will be running the other way so as to pave the Twin Cities with mine waste before cancer studies now pending over the next three years have any answers concerning taconite ore and tailings, and what caused an inordinate number of Iron Range miner cancer deaths.
And Dan's been the quarterback of that effort to help the folks of Anoka County with a referendum-free sales tax hike so that a wealthy guy named Wilf could prosper more at taxpayer expense - a subsidized football stadium for the Wilf guy, courtesy of Trainman Dan and county tax money. It fell through, but not for lack of effort to impose it on us wiithout any referendum. Trainman Dan knows best, I suppose that was the thought, so screw the idea of any referendum. That and the belief it would be voted down if voted on by the people, and Dan wanted it done.
They're only citizens, why give them a voice?
And while that whole thing fell through when the Wilf guy said he did not care a whit whether there was a roof or none, another taxpayer-subsidized stadium deal has links to NorthStar; and take me out to Pohlad's ballpark - all that same old stuff redux - Pohlad's no referendum ballpark. The difference, although there was uncertainty along the way, is that in Anoka County NorthStar and the Vikings tax-subsidized stadium were separate, downtown, tax-subsidized ballpark and train platform meet and greet.
Business as usual. Trainman Dan's costly plans.
Dan's parents really should have bought him a Lionel back during one of those December holiday seasons, and he might have gotten this train fetish out of his system while young. He can't get enough. NorthStar is not enough. He wants more. Spending is no problem - millions come and millions go.
And they even had a registered lobbyist, go guess, the initials are ET.
Taxing enough for his train desires seems Trainman Dan's major challenge.
And have you noticed how they low-balled the NorthStar cost up front, then when true and honest and realistic numbers came up, (does it surprise you), the low-ballers then cast blame on "delay" caused by "others" who opposed the low-balling game at its start; e.g., some typical sophistry that way, here:
“There was just a kind of a backlash to the fact he (Gov. Jesse Ventura) had already gotten the Hiawatha light rail line passed,” said former Ventura Transportation Commissioner Elwyn Tinklenberg, now running for Congress as a Democrat in the 6th District.
The “tragedy” is, Tinklenberg opined, is the delay has Minnesotans paying more for a line half the length.
Originally, Northstar was envisioned skirting 82-miles of track from beyond St. Cloud to Minneapolis. Its western railhead is now in Big Lake.
[italics added] Does that proposed reach all the way to St. Cloud sound like stretching unneeded costly rail from downtown Twin Cities to Duluth?
At least St. Cloud's somewhat closer. And later extending NorthStar makes more sense than a whole new thing, for Duluth, where there used to be a train nobody used and it was abandoned.
Putting such analysis aside, Paul Levy, Strib online, here, for July 19, 2008, calls it a "proxy war." Isn't Elwyn Tinklenberg a proxy candidate; Google the two, "Elwyn Tinklenberg" and "Dan Erhart" at the same time, look at the hits. Do the same, "Elwyn Tinklenberg" and "Oberstar" same story. That's a pack of proxies one for another if I ever saw one. Levy reported:
Anoka Mayor Bjorn Skogquist's candidacy for county commissioner has rekindled an already white-hot political rivalry between two incumbent commissioners -- Dan Erhart and Rhonda Sivarajah, who encouraged Skogquist to run for Erhart's seat.
Anoka Mayor Bjorn Skogquist's candidacy for county commissioner has rekindled an already white-hot political rivalry between two incumbent commissioners -- Dan Erhart and Rhonda Sivarajah, who encouraged Skogquist to run for Erhart's seat.
Skogquist, 30, a four-term mayor, told the Star Tribune last week that "Rhonda approached me" about the prospect of running for County Board. When asked if she suggested that Skogquist run for county commissioner, Sivarajah confirmed that she "did encourage him." Then she accused Erhart of "crawling around my district the last campaign, trying to find somebody to run against me."
"I have never talked to people about running against fellow board members," said Sivarajah, who is in her second term and who, like Erhart, is running for reelection this fall. "But, you know, if [Erhart] thinks crawling around my district last campaign was something OK to do ..."
Tension between Sivarajah and Erhart, who are seated next to each other at County Board meetings, has been obvious for years. Long before the campaign to relocate the Minnesota Vikings to Anoka County was aborted nearly two years ago, Sivarajah cast the one dissenting vote against building a Vikings stadium in Blaine, much to Erhart's consternation. At a meeting last December, when Sivarajah questioned plans for a proposed passenger rail line from Minneapolis to Duluth, Erhart bristled, failing to mask his frustration. [see, also, here, earlier and Northstar related]
"Maybe years ago that bully approach was acceptable," Sivarajah said of Erhart last week. "But a lot of bridges have been burned as a result."
Erhart, a county commissioner since 1982 and a former chairman of the County Board, said he was not concerned about possible encouragement Sivarajah may have given Skogquist or any other candidate.
"It's nothing I don't know about," he said.
He then said, "I have not had any conversations with anyone running against her. I'm very busy trying to get good things done for Anoka County."
There's more, so go read Strib.
Give the Erharts more time together. VOTE SKOGQUIST. 