Strib carried an AP feed on the matter, this link.
Why post about that? Well -
Details differ, but to me it is akin to Senator Jungbauer's being the Landform "Water Resources Manager," and sponsoring a bill to route more than two million state taxpayer money to Ramsey on a speculative water recycling adventure, and to not want it direct but via DEED, (where Pawlenty has done musical chairs shifting of his chief of staff and agency head individuals, suggesting it is a more than ordinarily politically polarized agency).
Any reader caring to can explain the difference.
If any such State issued bonds were to have been earmared to where the Landform firm would be disqualified from exercising any role in [and taking any cashflow from] the proposed item I would look at the thing in a different light.
However, with the appearance being that a Landform employee, its "Water Resources Manager," was proposing a Senate bill for a multi-million dollar State bonding effort for a water project in Ramsey, where the legislator's firm already had a lucrative contract situation and where the firm held an expectation or a possibility of prospering financially were the grant to be awarded and it was "in the bidding" if not in a favored position because of its existing contract status, the appearance of things is far from one where the sponsoring firm and/or individual legislator would have held no possible expectation of personal or corporate benefit - i.e., where the Landform firm was not expressly barred from any chance to prosper were the bonding to have been awarded and a grant appropriated through DEED.
It will likely be a moot question, as to the funding but not the possible ethics breach, because the money was never appropriated - stripped from the bonding bill - and presuming a DFL victory for governor in November, present DEED leadership will be swept out, etc.
It might be a good time now for Ramsey to consider terminating on 30 days notice the Landform contract. That power of termination is in the contract.
Of course that decision is up to the city council. Neither citizens nor city staff can make that decision. With the irregularities of the 4-3 vote at the start of Landform contracting and some council members having inside prior knowledge of a proposal that was dropped out of the blue upon at least three council members, i.e., outside of the prepublished agenda, back in the summer of last year; and with the then highly unusual flat-fee "professional" services contract given later to Landform, things look different from ordinary cautious and prudent practices.
I ask any reader with knowledge to correct me if I am wrong, but the contract to the firm Jungbauer is involved in is unprecedented in Ramsey - i.e., no prior contract has been awarded where professional services have not been itemized throughout the contract, by the firm providing the services.
I do not believe the Tinklenberg Group contract relating to Highway 10 land purchasing with RALF funds was one where at any time a flat-fee relationship was established. Bolton and Menk has done much engineering, and I believe it never was on a flat-fee basis.
Once flat-fee status was put in place, there was no accountability or capability to track what of Landform's "services" to Ramsey were by Jungbauer, and what activity was offered as constituting any such services.
In 1914 in a book titled "Other People's Money," Justice Brandeis coined the now-a-cliche saying, "Sunshine is the best disinfectant." That probably applies most, where transparency is also existant. And when regular practices regarding council resolutions to seek legislative assistance [as for the train stop hopes] are not followed and there is a scant paper trail, things become an enigma, and opaque rather than transparent and reviewable by interested citizens wanting to know how specific decisions are made and documented.
