Olmsted county political corruption
From Sunshine Review
Contents |
Olmsted County, Minnesota has a public law library located in the county courthouse. However, most citizens don't know that this service exists. All counties are supposed to offer a public law library. The 2007 budget for Olmsted's library was just over $170,000.
The library is overseen by a group of judges and attorneys who have been active for about 10 years. However, most of these 10 years the previous county attorney has controlled the library budget, not the oversight committee.
[edit] Oversight of the library budget
In 2008, with a new county attorney and a rejuvenated oversight committee, attempts are being made to get it back on track from a budgeting view. One now former member, an attorney, estimates the previous county attorney misdirected $125,000 from 2003 to 2007 for use by his department.
Allegedly the funds were used by the previous county attorney for reference materials for his department, not the public. Talks have begun to get the county attorney to repay the funds but because of the amount, the current county attorney doesn't know when complete repayment will occur.
However minutes of the oversight committee show that no effort was going to be made to bring in law enforcement to investigate actually what happened. This isn't a question the oversight committee has chosen to deal with despite their ethical obligations as judges and attorneys.
[edit] Data for investigation
The attorney and former member who researched the information developed his estimate using county records obtained through data privacy requests. However the county has not been forthcoming with the data that he has requested. As of October 208, there is a pending FOIA request going back to March.
Included in the the attorney's files were 11 years of budget summaries for the county attorney's office under two officials. The county attorney is an elected official. A new county attorney was elected in 2007.
These budget summaries show that many line items still use the same estimated numbers that have been used for several years in a row. From year to year no changes are made in budget estimates for even the cost of inflation.
Also in recent years the totals are in the red. It's understandable that budgets can end up in deficits, but for several years there are too many line items in the red. Also vague line item titles are used such as "professional service-other."
[edit] Lack of detail
No attempt has been made to look at the detail regarding these line items. But in providing the library information, detail was attached about furniture purchases.
This detail shows that the current county attorney spent $1,500 in 2007 just on three chairs.
With these and additional questions, the budgets summaries have been sent to the state auditor. According to the auditor's website they annually field public inquiries totaling more than 1,000. The reponse from the state auditor will be put on this site when received.
Also many attempts have been made in recent months to have the press talk about this situation. However no press have published a story.
A member of the general public has been informed of what is happening in Olmsted County. He is from central Minnesota and has taken it upon himself to become an expert on the county level law libraries. His correspondence says that many believe Rochester's law library is the worst in the state.
The funding for all of the libraries comes from the state. Fund sources include such items as percentages of fines collected.
An update on November 7, 2008
Between the end of June and the above date, at least four contacts were made with the managing editor of the newspapers. Finally on this previously noted date, the attorney who did the homework uncovering the problem was interviewed by the assigned reporter. But this still isn't a promise that the story will be published.
If it is ultimately published, this will be the first investigation of city or county government operations the newspaper has done in several years.
(More to come)
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