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Current Topics
Campaign Contributions
Mayor Kautz is the current chair of the Suburban Transit
Association (STA), a lobbying consortium of transit
organizations. One of the members of STA is Minnesota
Valley Transit Authority (MVTA), which includes Burnsville
as a member.
Records of STA appear to confirm legitimate reasons for not
awarding a certain law firm with a lobbying contract. The
STA awarded the lobbying contract with that law firm, in
spite of a recommendation of that association’s committee
to NOT renew their contract, rejecting the committee’s
recommendation for a competing law firm.
Now it comes to light that the law firm was awarded the
contract, and some of its members, contributed almost
$1,000 to the mayoral campaign of Mayor Kautz. None of the
contributors live in Burnsville. What great interest in our
civic affairs do people from Mahtomedi, Minnetonka, St.
Paul, and other surrounding cities have? Although their
contributions might meet the legal test, they at least create
the appearance of impropriety.
The feeble defense by the mayor that she didn’t make the
motion to hire the firm, although she voted to hire it, comes
across as a complete disconnect. The protest that there
was a potential conflict of interest with the other law firm
doesn’t wash, either, since the firm awarded the contract
appears to have even more of those potential conflicts.
Incidentally, the firm recommended by the STA committee,
but not hired, reported NO contributions to the Kautz
campaign. To erase the doubt of impropriety, it seems the
least the mayor should do is to return the contributions to
the donors from the law firm which she voted to award a
contract to, valued at over $75,000.
Budget Shortfall
City officials were quoted earlier that they didn’t see the
budget crisis coming. Now the quote is that “we are not
blind to what is going on around us.” They can’t have it
both ways. It seems more like a white cane is in order to
enhance their vision. Other government units have come
to grips with this early on, and now with about 25% of 2009
under our belts, the city has come to the realization that
there is a fiscal emergency. A special work session was
held to attempt to get their arms around a means to reduce
costs to stay within budget. Several options for reductions
were discussed, but, as you might expect, there are
hallowed personal agendas that were given a strong hands-
off stance. This was supposed to have been an
“everything is on the table” discussion, but, as an example,
when Heart of the City came up, it evoked a defense by the
mayor worthy of a congressional filibuster. That makes the
everything on the table statement empty rhetoric, and
typifies the pet project possessiveness.
Campaign Financing
Campaign financial records, which are required by state law
to be filed by candidates for public office and are open to
the public, have been researched for the mayoral
campaigns of Jerry Willenburg and Elizabeth Kautz. There
are some revealing and startling facts that should be
known by the public.
Ms. Kautz received contributions that were about 135%
greater than Mr. Willenburg. That, in itself, creates a huge
advantage in an election, especially when added to the fact
that Ms. Kautz was the incumbent.
Of great interest was the source of those contributions.
Listed here are some of those facts, as gleaned from the
filed reports of the campaigns.
Place of Residence (number of donors):
Candidate Burnsville Non-Burnsville No city listed
Willenburg 56% 12% 32%
Kautz 35% 53% 11%
Source of Dollars Contributed:
Candidate Burnsville Non-Burnsville No city listed
Willenburg 60% 29% 12%
Kautz 32% 66% 1%
Some observations could be drawn from the above. With
over half of Kautz’s contributions coming from people
outside of Burnsville, they accounted for 2/3 of her total
dollars collected. Some of those sizeable contributions
came from individuals who work for companies doing a
sizeable business with Burnsville. A few examples are the
Wilderotters with Frontier Communications, who now list
their address in California, and attorneys from a law firm
that was awarded the big lobbying contract by Suburban
Transit Association (Kautz is chair of the STA). There are
more that you will probably recognize who have affiliations
with the mayor, and who are big donors to her campaign
(and who perhaps have been awarded contracts with the
City).
Under the current political donation rules, the amount
allowed per person ($300) to contribute is in place, but the
residence of those contributors does not matter. There
just seems to be an inherent injustice in a local election
like ours that outsiders could have had a big enough
impact to affect the outcome of an election. It also gives a
lot of people a healthy amount of skepticism to watch for
possible political payback to those contributors.
Campaign Contributions
Mayor Kautz is the current chair of the Suburban Transit
Association (STA), a lobbying consortium of transit
organizations. One of the members of STA is Minnesota
Valley Transit Authority (MVTA), which includes Burnsville
as a member.
Records of STA appear to confirm legitimate reasons for not
awarding a certain law firm with a lobbying contract. The
STA awarded the lobbying contract with that law firm, in
spite of a recommendation of that association’s committee
to NOT renew their contract, rejecting the committee’s
recommendation for a competing law firm.
Now it comes to light that the law firm was awarded the
contract, and some of its members, contributed almost
$1,000 to the mayoral campaign of Mayor Kautz. None of the
contributors live in Burnsville. What great interest in our
civic affairs do people from Mahtomedi, Minnetonka, St.
Paul, and other surrounding cities have? Although their
contributions might meet the legal test, they at least create
the appearance of impropriety.
The feeble defense by the mayor that she didn’t make the
motion to hire the firm, although she voted to hire it, comes
across as a complete disconnect. The protest that there
was a potential conflict of interest with the other law firm
doesn’t wash, either, since the firm awarded the contract
appears to have even more of those potential conflicts.
Incidentally, the firm recommended by the STA committee,
but not hired, reported NO contributions to the Kautz
campaign. To erase the doubt of impropriety, it seems the
least the mayor should do is to return the contributions to
the donors from the law firm which she voted to award a
contract to, valued at over $75,000.
Budget Shortfall
City officials were quoted earlier that they didn’t see the
budget crisis coming. Now the quote is that “we are not
blind to what is going on around us.” They can’t have it
both ways. It seems more like a white cane is in order to
enhance their vision. Other government units have come
to grips with this early on, and now with about 25% of 2009
under our belts, the city has come to the realization that
there is a fiscal emergency. A special work session was
held to attempt to get their arms around a means to reduce
costs to stay within budget. Several options for reductions
were discussed, but, as you might expect, there are
hallowed personal agendas that were given a strong hands-
off stance. This was supposed to have been an
“everything is on the table” discussion, but, as an example,
when Heart of the City came up, it evoked a defense by the
mayor worthy of a congressional filibuster. That makes the
everything on the table statement empty rhetoric, and
typifies the pet project possessiveness.
Campaign Financing
Campaign financial records, which are required by state law
to be filed by candidates for public office and are open to
the public, have been researched for the mayoral
campaigns of Jerry Willenburg and Elizabeth Kautz. There
are some revealing and startling facts that should be
known by the public.
Ms. Kautz received contributions that were about 135%
greater than Mr. Willenburg. That, in itself, creates a huge
advantage in an election, especially when added to the fact
that Ms. Kautz was the incumbent.
Of great interest was the source of those contributions.
Listed here are some of those facts, as gleaned from the
filed reports of the campaigns.
Place of Residence (number of donors):
Candidate Burnsville Non-Burnsville No city listed
Willenburg 56% 12% 32%
Kautz 35% 53% 11%
Source of Dollars Contributed:
Candidate Burnsville Non-Burnsville No city listed
Willenburg 60% 29% 12%
Kautz 32% 66% 1%
Some observations could be drawn from the above. With
over half of Kautz’s contributions coming from people
outside of Burnsville, they accounted for 2/3 of her total
dollars collected. Some of those sizeable contributions
came from individuals who work for companies doing a
sizeable business with Burnsville. A few examples are the
Wilderotters with Frontier Communications, who now list
their address in California, and attorneys from a law firm
that was awarded the big lobbying contract by Suburban
Transit Association (Kautz is chair of the STA). There are
more that you will probably recognize who have affiliations
with the mayor, and who are big donors to her campaign
(and who perhaps have been awarded contracts with the
City).
Under the current political donation rules, the amount
allowed per person ($300) to contribute is in place, but the
residence of those contributors does not matter. There
just seems to be an inherent injustice in a local election
like ours that outsiders could have had a big enough
impact to affect the outcome of an election. It also gives a
lot of people a healthy amount of skepticism to watch for
possible political payback to those contributors.
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