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2- Darren Lazan reported as taking two bites at the bidding apple; this link.
Ditto, re reporting of Ramsey's City Attorney opining that the identical set of individuals meeting as council members and separately as HRA commissioners are to be regarded as lawfully separate to the extent that contracts reached between the HRA and Lazan's Landform firm re HRA projects in the Town Center do not bind the council in its awarding a contract to others.
Regarding Lazan's unusual conduct in standing at the public podium and arguing in behalf of his second bite at the bidding apple, Sakry reported:
The council voted 4-3 July 10 in favor of the contract to WSB for engineering, construction staking and record plans.
Councilmembers Colin McGlone and Jeff Wise as well as Mayor Bob Ramsey voted against the contract.
[...] During the June 26 discussion on the contracts, the council wrestled over whether or not the city was required to give the contract to Landform.
According to Landform President Darrin Lazan, the company’s COR contract with the city Housing and Redevelopment Authority (HRA) requires the city to give his company these types of contracts.
The contract, which made Lazan the city’s COR management director, included several conditions for engineering, landscape and other projects in the COR from the city and from incoming development.
City Attorney Bill Goodrich said July 10 the contract is with the HRA and it does not obligate the council to award Landform city projects. It only applies to HRA projects.
Based on Goodrich’s opinion, staff recommended WSB’s not-to-exceed bid.
I watched the QCTV streaming video of the July 10 thing, and the reporting conforms with my memory of what I saw and heard. Sakry further reported:
“I know some (on the council that) would like to vote (Lazan) into this deal, but it has to go through the proper channels,” Councilmember David Elvig said.
Lazan was able to look at the other contract and change his numbers to be slightly lower than WSB, he said.
I cannot say for certain whether Sakry's quote was verbatim from the streaming video or was attained by interview, but Elvig's characterization seems spot on to what I viewed and is what I mean by taking a second bite at the bidding apple.
My understanding of things is that such procedures as seen in that braodcast are unusual, where competitive bid juggling after the submission deadline is countenanced at all as a practice. I do not think it is a frequent or proper thing.
The appearance of the video was that the mayor crossed from presiding at the meeting to becoming an insistent advocate for Lazan's interests to the point where another council member had to call the question.
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3- I went to Ramsey's mayor's informal open session at city hall last night, and the mayor indicated he first learned of Emily McGlone's employment from the City Attorney informing council of one member's spouse working for Flaherty interests. He said McGlone subsequently, informally and not of record at any meeting, indicated it was Emily, his wife, involved in that employment. The mayor mumbled something about "other applicants" but never said he had any evidence any other persons were considered for the job. He was vague. McGlone later arrived and at one point I asked if he wanted to say anything about Flaherty and Emily. His reply was that he had been advised by a PRIVATE (he emphasized that word) attorney that the employment was between two private parties and he did not have to say anything about it. I asked if that meant he was declining to say anything to me, and he replied that was so. He never invoked or mentioned the Fifth Amendment. There was no reference to it in the conversation.
From that I infer that not only is McGlone held to know the law governing his conduct and his wife's, but he is in the position of having hired professional consultation so that knowing the law is more than a presumption applied only to the McGlones, but to them, in consultation with a lawyer.
That the McGlones have an attorney and rely upon that attorney for advice and not upon the City Attorney is my best understanding, which is how things should be because the City Attorney's full fiduciary duty is owed the city in investigating conflict of interest situations with due diligence and then if called upon to opine on whether the city in anything it has done or controls is at fault, and that the City Attorney does not advise any individual official in an attorney-client capacity (especially where serving two masters might itself be a conflict of interest). My best guess is there never was any attorney-client relation established between the City Attorney and the McGlones. Not at any point in time. But that has not been revealed in any public way, one way or the other, or lack of clarity as to facts on the record and in minutes, is how things seem to the best of my knowledge.
Whether or not city attorney due diligence has been evidenced, and due regard for applicable law, are unknown to me. I do not know how extensively Goodrich acted to learn relevant facts, nor what his deliberations were before speaking to the council in the manner the mayor described, nor whether the mayor with passage of time might have misrecollected things. He did not put a time frame on when this presentation to the council was recalled to have happened. Hence, I do not know at what point in time Goodrich spoke to council. I do not know but have cause to believe that when Goodrich spoke to council the McGlone-Flaherty employment was in place, not contemplated and pending approval of the city attorney or any other city official(s). I.e., the McGlone-Flaherty employment was offered and accepted before any of McGlone's colleagues on council had any notice from the McGlones, nor any actual inkling such things were afoot.
My understanding is that Colin McGlone gave no prior notice in writing of the contemplation of an employment before the job was taken, nor after. Zippo. I have not seen any minutes evidencing any notice, nor has anyone informed me or any prior oral notice from McGlone to any other city official. It appears others on council were hung out to dry, on notice, and that the employment was a fiat acompliti at the time oral notice was given without any entry of same in the minutes. By email I shall seek confirmation or correction of these understandings.
My understanding is to this very day Colin McGlone has never put anything in writing and into city public records concerning one single thing about the Flaherty-McGlone employment.
4- Before others arrived the mayor said he thought "Chinagate" would be an election issue, that was his term, and in expanding on the comment reaching beyond possibly James Norman and his and the city severing ties in the past, the mayor seemed focused upon a claim previously asserted against the city related to expenses incurred in sister city travel and activity, which the city settled.
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5- Please vote in the sidebar poll, if you have not already.
______________UPDATE______________
More Coon Rapids news; here and here. Here, with it unclear to me if Coon Rapids ever elected to fill the vacancy or not. Anoka re-up on its city manager and now half way through the renewal term, here.
_________FURTHER UPDATE__________
With the City's contractual relationship with Flaherty lasting years and not being over and finalized by full performance soon. Indeed, Flaherty still will be having an obligation to pay back millions of dollars to the City, over years of time, into the future while McGlone continues to chair Ramsey's HRA where Flaherty might ask for forebearance or concessions at any point. The McGlone chairmanship of Ramsey's HRA shall last indefinitely, unless terminated in January 2013 via election outcome in Ward 2. But it could last years longer.
I contend McGlone's continued intransigence to own up of record to details of what the Flaherty-Emily McGlone employment entails, its genesis details and ongoing status, is improper, and clearly so from governing law from 1987 reinforced per 2008, and onward.
How the McGlones meet their legal duties is for them and their attorney to discuss, and then the McGlones make decisions to act to finally disclose or to extend their stonewalling.
Perhaps the time for a reasonable disclosure has passed so that putting a writing into HRA minutes now would be a tardy locking of the barn door.
I could make a specific argument of law now, but I will not. I think the point for now is that any sentient, reasonable and reasonably sophisticated person would disclose conflict of interest detail up front and thoroughly, in writing, in this kind of situation; in order to avoid undue embarrassment to a city and a city's other council-HRA members; and that this should be so regardless of any specific term of law one way or the other. It is the notion of having a moral compass.
Giving immediate notice at the start of employment discussions is simply the common sense decent thing to have done, some time ago before any binding offer and acceptance of an employment arrangement between Flaherty and the McGlones had been negotiated and finalized by signing final paperwork and Emily reporting to the Flaherty trailer for work. The very start of any discussion of Emily McGlone's possible employment is whan disclosure was due.
Children know right from wrong.
The appearance of things is that the McGlones would have maintained absolute stealth and silence, willfully so, had not some event of discovery intervened. It is possible one McGlone or the other approached city officials, or an official, and instigated some kind of disclosure or notice of some kind, taking the initiative that way but declining to go public. However it is the other likelihood that is more troublesome, i.e., that something smoked out the situation and there were then and only then delinquent and reluctant responses to questions, but not a voluntary disclosure in absence of questioning. The McGlones refuse to say which way things happened.
Express and adeauate notice or lack of it is a very, very, very important thing in situations such as the McGlone-Flaherty-Cronk-Landform-HRA tangle.
Millions of city dollars are at risk, about a hundred or so free ramp parking spaces were given Flaherty free of charge with the ramp expansion costing around a million or so, and Flaherty's obligation to pay SAC and WAC charges upon issuance of an occupancy permit or sooner was compromised; (Flaherty being required to pay no such charges - none whatsoever). Then Emily gets a job.
While I have asked, nobody has seen fit to point any specific set of minutes out to me saying, "See, there, it was disclosed." I ask it again via this post. Jerrry McGuire style ---- Show me the record.
The written public record as best as I understand things is bare, without any hint of disclosure present. If that belief is wrong ---- SHOW ME THE RECORD.
Now the legal argument. Minn. Stat. Ch. 469 governs city HRA conduct in charter or statutory cities. In the original 1987 enactment all HRA units including those of cities are subject to MS. Sect. 469.009, re Conflicts of Interest, and written disclosure is mandated in no uncertain terms, of record, with a one week window allowed. Moreover, regarding the same chapter's EDA requirements, in 2008 language parallel to MS Sect 471.87 was stricken by the legislature to word Sect. 469.098 in parallel to Sect. 469.009 language; i.e. the legislature reapproved the specific language by extending it in place of other language to fit EDA units as well as HRA units. Nothing could be clearer.
This is not a "gotcha" thing but it is the legislature's twice since 1987 showing a good sense of common sense. With that express law in place I find it hard to envision any competent attorney advising ones in the McGlone family situation to stonewall.
However, it is what the McGlone man claimed, when asked.
"Relying on PRIVATE counsel," he would not say a thing about what's up. No curative intent expressed, none whatsoever.
Again, the thing is to not get bogged down in legalities and detail, but to see the forest rather than obsessing over any individual trees. The law conforms to ordinary common sense; the notion that one's fellow HRA members should not be kept intentionally in the dark while conflicting interests are pursued is instinctual. The law sensibly follows that, without ambiguity or room to split hairs. Complications do NOT exist. It is very simple. SHOW ME A RECORD.
Last, an interested person should do a word/phrase search of Sect. 469.009 text for the phrase "gross misdemeanor." So, given clear law; what will our Ramsey officials do?
Push them.
Things seem clear as a conflict diamond, so what's next? Ask the mayor, city attorney, and city administrator.
We watch. We vote.
It's time for the bullshit to stop. Or am I wrong in any single detail? If so, please tell me.
__________FURTHER UPDATE__________
Another interesting search of Sect. 469.009 is for the phrase "no later than one week." The legislature did not want to see things dragged out, or put under a hat for months on end.
_______FURTHER AND HOPEFULLY FINAL UPDATE________
While nobody has requested that I alter or retract anything I wrote, I have had a few days to reconsider, and I truly am in no position to evaluate the McGlone family's "moral compass," since I do not know them or their history, and I am focused on a single situation that may not reflect their conduct over their lifetimes.
In saying it is a question of right or wrong, the focus is upon a single situation, and the subjectivity inherent in our making judgments of right and wrong is understood. The McGlones, from the one time I spoke to Emily McGlone, do not believe they have done anything wrong. I see things differently.
We judge politicians, primarily if not always, by their judgment. My own moral compass, a subjective thing, points against the employment situation, but that is a judgment and basically I am questioning the soundness of the judgment of the McGlones, in doing what was done.
I credit Colin McGlone's ideas of using City Hall space for the license center, I believe that idea originated with him. In any event I know he supported and advocated that step.
Colin McGlone's explanation of including a "lake" in Town Center by moving fill from one part of the land to other parts seems to be reducing the cost of what's being done, and as long as DNR has no objections to the land's profile being changed, the saving is good.
While saying that in pushing aggressively now with the Town Center stuff instead of showing patience, a partial degree of savings has nonetheless been attained in the course of what I see as a wholly wasteful course of action, I focus upon the folly of pushing aggressively now, at great expense and against the will of the market, which again is me questioning the council majority's judgment.
I do not like the decision, the judgment, to have Emily McGlone take employment in a situation that, but for the consistent 4-3 course of voting of Colin McGlone, would not have been available. I do not like the silence over it when it seems there was a duty to speak, to disclose things, from the very outset of that employment being contemplated. I see this as an opportunity for a new council to amend the city's charter to impose stern advanced written and public disclosure measures concerning conflicts of interest, particularly where there has been the pattern of nondisclosure and a subsequent silence over material details.
I have been told by the mayor and McGlone that neither knew Darren Lazan before Landform gained its contract with the city and I have no reason to doubt that. However, I have read the Matt Look statement in minutes about Senator Jungbauer's then being affiliated with the firm, as a factor in his mind favoring that firm. My understanding is that the Landform-Jungbauer affilaition has been severed. Lazan has said so. I believe both McGlone and the mayor each knew Jungbauer well, at all relevant times, and that Look was not alone in weighing the Jungbauer position as if it should be a material factor in their voting to choose Landform.
I disagree with the price paid for the distressed Town Center land as extremely beyond its worth, particularly when city liens and assessment rights are considered a factor in the price paid, beyond the cash paid over to the foreclosing banks. I disagree with the judgment there, and with the judgment to enter into the Flaherty contract, with its terms being as they were - with subside via SAC and WAC charges being compromised, with the city banking a part of Flaherty's risk, and with the free parking being given away. Even absent that string of subsidy, I think the Flaherty rental by the rails property will prove a mistake, long-term.
Ultimately, it comes down to judgments that elected officials have the power to make. If we do not like the judgment shown, the ballot box exists for expressing that. If McGlone is reelected, it will be by a majority of those voting in Ward 2 preferring that, and if that happens we live with the electorate's decision making whether we believe them sound or not.
I dislike the ward system in a town as small as Ramsey is. It is pretentious, and I favor the previous system where everybody had a chance to vote for or against each incumbent seeking reelection. I understand arguments can be made that having more "rural" wards can balance population changes to dense housing near the highway and that things of interest to dense housing advocates and those living shared-wall, may diverge from those in older parts of residential Ramsey. The current 4-3 vote splits have proven things can be as contentious as when Ramsey had 3-2 contentious vote splits in the past, (as with earlier comp plan submission disagreements). And going from a five member council to a seven member body seems to lengthen meetings instead of having any streamlining virtue.
One good I would hope to see would be seeing the Charter revised to remove the near impossibility of recall of an elected Ramsey official. Recall should be available automatically once a petition threshold has been reached, and a majority of those then voting should unconditionally be sufficient to remove an official.
Anything else is insufficient, in my view of what a charter should provide citizens.
The other Charter reform I would hope to see is, as noted, a tight requirement of written advance disclosure whenever a conflict of interest situation arises. To look at the criminal law of the State, and to say a line of conduct is not a crime so it is okay, to me is an affront to what I believe should be the aims and goals of good government. Citizens, in my view, are entitled to expect more than attention to the question of whether a crime happened or not, in the course of the McGlone employment coming into being, or in earlier conflict of interest situations.
The McGlone employment situation has presented a concrete instance where we can all hone our opinions, and hopefully positive change can happen.
Again, nobody requested that I alter or retract or explain a thing. I reflected on what I had written and concluded I should add this final wrap-up statement about the McGlone employment. It is the last thing I intend to write of it, absent some newsworthy change in events.
I will, of course, be leaving the sidebar poll open until noon of Aug. 14, the date of the primary election, and I urge everyone to vote.
And I openly urge anyone having a dispute with anything I may in the future write to make a timely objection in writing stating a rationale in requesting a retraction or qualifying explanation. I am not at all closed minded to civil disagreement, i.e., disagreement on point and not a mere pejorative and conclusory insult, and my noting the open channel of communication again serves to emphasize that I cannot read minds and know if somebody has information or explanations or beliefs that I should take into consideration. After speaking once to Emily McGlone, at length, before writing of the employment nobody has taken the care or time to challenge my writing or opinions, or to request I reconsider or retract a thing. That door is always open.
FINAL COMMENT - During the term of those running for reelection in Ramsey now, if I recall correctly, the pay was raised by instituting a separate pay for HRA meetings/membership. I do not know whether EDA is a compensated authority. It would have seemed more in line with most boards and commissions of the City to have not compensated HRA, but to have raised the council stipend accordingly, while noting that participation in the HRA demanded more time. I have consistently believed and argued that the honorarium paid for service on council is out of line with the work demands, and if the several businesses the McGlones have were not providing healthcare coverage and Ms. McGlone had that as a factor in mind as well as resume building and a paycheck in taking an offer from Flaherty people; then it argues for council members not otherwise covered to have healthcare needs met through membership in the city's covered pool.
Service on council is not a full time job, despite the hours it takes; but my belief is that as long as we have employer paid coverage vs. single payer or other arrangements, part-time help should be covered. So, others may carp, but coverage and the amount paid vs time demanded by the job to me suggest council members are decidedly underpaid.
Anyone running for office makes a sacrifice in time and cost of signs, mailings and such. Generally speaking, motivation to serve on Ramsey's council is not money driven. That said, it is worth noting that Look, one of the biggest boosters of buying the distressed Town Center project and pushing against the market at great cost quit mid-way through a single term on council to chase a substantial paycheck and other duties on the county board. I think it incumbent on those on council to finish a term, health and residency permitting, and to not let ambition intervene. That does not mean someone like Tossey or Backous half-way through a term should not take a shot at being mayor if so inclined, but to hop from one political body to another is different from seeking a different responsibility but staying in the jurisdiction and not jumping ship.
_________UPDATE__________
I was unsure of who called the question on the contract award carryover session. It was Jason Tossey. It appeared to be a decision whose time had come. The discussion had exhausted itself by then, if not before then.