News Day

Q Comp: A little comp, not so much Q The Governor’s educational flagship, Quality Compensation, came under scrutiny by the non-partisan legislative auditor’s office, which reported that, after three years, there’s really no measurement of whether the program has improved student achievement. Some 72 public and charter school districts participate in the program, which rewards teachers based on “performance” rather than on education and experience, and encourages teacher mentoring programs. The Guv wants to increase funding for the program by $41 million this year, but legislators are not so enthusiastic, Tom Weber reports on MPR The MN DOE spent $181,000 on its own independent study of Q Comp, released a day ahead of the legislative auditor’s study.

Emily Johns and Bob Von Sternberg wrote in the Strib that the Guv’s plans to mandate Q Comp statewide would not be fully funded by the $41 million increase he proposes. Participants give the program mixed reviews, according to MN 2020 education writer John Fitzgerald: “Over 80 percent of administrators in Q Comp settings agreed or strongly agreed that Q Comp had improved classroom teaching and will lead to increases in students’ performance on standardized tests at their school. Less than half of teachers in Q Comp settings who responded to our [legislative auditor] questionnaire felt similarly.”

Hey, be careful out there! According to the Minnesota Department of Public Safety, seven motorists were killed on MN roads in January, and six of them were not wearing seatbelts. That’s even higher than the norm, according to the AP report in the PiPress, which is about 55% of all annual traffic deaths in MN.

And this differs from blogging … how? The PiPress reports on-line:

A fire overnight has destroyed a house in St. Paul, a local television station is reporting.

Just below 11 p.m., firefighters were called to a home on the 800 block of Marion Street, WCCO-TV said. No one was home at the time and the house may have been vacant, the station said.

Walk on the wild side Coyotes are invading the Twin Cities, writes John Brewer in the PiPress. The “small, skulking cousin of the wolf” has been spotted near the Roseville library, fighting with a dog in Reservoir Woods, and standing on the frozen ice of Lake Calhoun a few years ago. (And, I might add, in alleys near the Town and Country golf course in St. Paul.) The PiPress says that the February-March coyote mating season will probably lead to more encounters. That doesn’t mean the Twin Cities are rural — Chicago boasts lots of coyotes and the Urban Coyote website with info on the wily critters and how to tell a coyote from a German Shepherd.

And one more wild animal story: the criminal charges against the man in Willmar who sprayed teens with fox urine to keep his yard from being toilet-papered.

The never-ending Coleman-Franken recount Punxsutawney Phil predicted six more weeks of winter, but no one is predicting when the end to the endless recount will arrive. Yesterday, the judges said they would look at no more than 4,800 of the 11,000 rejected absentee ballots that Coleman wants reviewed. According to Rachel Stassen-Berger in the PiPress , the court also said the law on absentee ballots is “clear, objective and unambiguous.” That probably means Coleman voters like Janet Czeck of Brooklyn Park, who testified that she just forgot to sign the ballot envelope, will not get their ballots counted. Coleman and Franken legal teams also agreed to withdraw any challenges to the 933 previously-rejected absentee ballots that were accepted and included in the recount. MinnPost sums it up nicely:

If you, Mr. or Ms. Voter, are among the 4,797, and you cast your vote by absentee ballot but you royally screwed up — like, say, didn’t sign it, or you voted in person, too, or you weren’t registered — your vote still won’t count.

No ifs, ands or buts, the court order seems to say.

But if an election judge happened to discard your vote by mistake or the lady at the counter who took your absentee ballot forgot to tell you to sign in … your vote just might count, the same court order seems to say.

Indeed, no more “The dog ate my ballot” stories from Coleman or Franken voters.

The votes in this new universe will only be counted if they were previously rejected through no fault of the voter.

Housing’s mixed bag Tim Nelson at MPR warns that as bad as the housing crisis looks now, it may be about to get worse again, as “high-risk loans … with obscure names like Cash-Flow ARMs, Pay Option ARMs, and Pick a Payment Loans” come due. Many of these loans, in what is called the “Alt-A” category, were made to more credit-worthy customers who were entrepreneurs or self-employed.

In Minnesota, for instance, there are only about half as many adjustable rate Alt-A loans as there are similar subprime loans.

But Minnesota’s Alt-A loans are about a third larger on average, and nearly twice as many are the most volatile interest-only loans. Many more are also secondary loans. That’s according to end-of-year data for 2008 from the New York Federal Reserve Bank.

And while Alt-A loans are generally better quality, and the borrowers better off financially than with subprime mortgages, no one knows how they’ll fare as unemployment grows and real estate values continue to plummet.

On the other hand, Jim Buchta writes in the Strib that “pending sales in the 13-county metro area during January rose a robust 17.7 percent, marking the seventh consecutive year-over-year monthly increase, according to an analysis of data from the Minneapolis Area Association of Realtors.” That’s about the only bright spot, as home sales prices continue to fall and getting a mortgage remains difficult for many buyers. And the pending sales included many distress sales, which were 32 percent of all active listings in the metro area in January.

Aiding and abetting in North Minneapolis The latest chapter in the Jordan Area Community Council contest, reports Sheila Regan in the TC Daily Planet, came in court yesterday as the “old” board officers sued to stop just about everybody they could think of from recognizing, aiding or abetting the newly-elected officers. Attorney Jim Moore represents some of the defendants, including the city of Minneapolis, Don Samuels, Barbara Johnson, and Mike Martin. As far as the city council members, he asked: “What is it that my clients are supposed to be restrained from, not taking sides, or voicing opinions about neighborhood issues?” The judge deferred a ruling, guaranteeing another day in court.

Borrowing new money to pay interest on old debts: A T-Paw idea Patricia Lopez reported in the Strib that the legislature is cool to the Guv’s proposal to borrow $973 million this year and repay it at a cost of as much as $1.6 billion over the next 20 years, all in order to pay the interest on current state debts, a plan the Strib likens to refinancing credit card debt by taking out a mortgage on your house. Rep. Tom Rukavina (DFL-Virginia) has another name for it: “really a stupid idea.”

MN Job Watch Looked at the City of St. Paul website yesterday, and saw a big “no jobs available” message. But, on a more positive note, the PiPress reports that Vascular Solutions, a TC med-tech firm, plans to hire about 25 people across the state as it increases production. Bad news: AP reports that Phoenix Industries in Crookston, which employed about 100 people a few months ago, then cut to 20 employees, will not close its doors.

On the national/international scene, the jobs hemorrhage continues, with mass layoff notices from PNC Financial, Liz Claiborne, Beechcraft (airplanes), King Pharmaceuticals, amd Rockwell Collins (military). GM is offering buyouts to all hourly workers. UPS is freezing pay and stopping matching contributions to employee 401(k) plans.

New federal unemployment figures for January will be released this week.

Let them eat bonuses! Eighteen billion dollars in bonuses buys a lot of cake, and that’s what Wall Street’s fat cats pulled down last year, the NYT reported yesterday. Yeah, we know — it’s important to reward the hard work of the best and the brightest. BBC reports that President Obama denounced the bonuses as “shameful” and “the height of irresponsibility.”

Baseball and the big stink The Minneapolis garbage burner is supposed to be clean and odor-free, or at least that’s the official line when nearby residents or environmentalists raise questions about it. I almost believed it, when the Twins stadium was sited near the burner, since the temple of baseball would never be located anywhere even slightly smelly. But now, Mary Jane Smetanka writes in the Strib, county officials are thinking about spending “an estimated $2.3 million to remodel the building and grounds, about $500,000 of that to deal with odor control.” The 20-year-old burner, far from state of the art at this point, doesn’t smell, insists Commissioner Mike Opat — the smells just come from garbage trucks entering and exiting the burner. And that can be fixed by fancy double exit and entry doors and a “plan is to spray the equivalent of truck “perfume” on departing vehicles to kill the stench that often lingers in garbage haulers.”

Feeding on foreclosures Private “foreclosure consultants” promise to help struggling homeowners, but MN AG Lori Swanson says two of the firms are breaking the law by charging big upfront fees and failing to deliver. MPR reports that Swanson is suing two Florida firms: IMC Financial and American Financial Corp., which does business as National Foreclosure Counseling Services. This brings the number of foreclosure consulting companies sued by MN to twelve.
<b<MN Job Watch Even workers who still have jobs are seeing pay and benefit cuts in the current crisis, reports Nikki Tundel on MPR. While many companies have frozen salaries and hiring, others–including FedEx, Caterpillar, IBM and Gymboree–have cut pay and benefits. Overall, about five percent of U.S. companies have cut pay over the past year and another 11 percent are considering wage cuts this year.

The Strib reports that the governor has signed a bill extending jobless benefits for 3,000 people — about 10 percent of the Minnesotans who have used up state unemployment comp and don’t qualfy for a federal extension. What happens to the other 90 percent? The news comes as national unemployment compensation rolls reach 26 year high, according to AP. U.S. Labor Department figures show the highest number of claimants since record-keeping started in 1967, with 4.78 million claimants in the week ending January 17, up 159,000 from the previous week. That number doesn’t include 1.7 million receiving benefits under the extended unemployment comp — which brings the total number near 6.5 million. And, of course, it doesn’t include the people whose unemployment comp has run out, or who never qualified for it to begin with.

In better news, U.S. Rep. Jim Oberstar said MN could get 12,000 highway construction jobs by the end of June under the economic stimulus package, writes Bill Salisbury in the PiPress.

The jury is out Literally. The only federal RNC felony case that went to trial wound up on Thursday, and David McKay’s fate is now with the jury. They will decide whether to find him guilty of charges that he made and possessed Molotov cocktails, and that the devices violated federal firearms laws because they lacked serial numbers. The dry-sounding legal charges are almost lost in the rhetorical battle over the relative responsibility of McKay and the government informant, Brandon Darby. David Hanners in the PiPress reports on the closing statement by McKay’s attorney:

He said that while the FBI had asked Darby to be the bureau’s “eyes and ears” to monitor the small, loose-knit activist group in Austin that McKay belonged to, the informant went over the line and incited the group to break the law.

“He wasn’t the eyes and ears. He was the mouth — a violent, firebomb-obsessed mouth,” declared DeGree.

Want a really bad job? The Army Times reports that four suicides in the Houston Recruiting Battalion have led to an order for a one-day stand-down of all Army and Army Reserve recruiters nationwide on February 13, to provide “training on leadership, a review of the expectations of Recruiting Command’s leaders, suicide prevention and resiliency training, coping skills and recruiter wellness.” Among the stressors for recruiters:

[The] Houston battalion’s policy called for a maximum work day of 13 hours, and recruiters had to seek approval from their chain of command if they worked beyond that, Turner said. However, the 13-hour maximum was interpreted as the expected norm, and the policy could have been written more clearly, Turner said.

BBC reports that overall army suicides have set a record for the second year in a row.

Somalia in the news Somalian MPs are set to choose a new president from a field of at least 14 candidates, reports BBC. If you haven’t been keeping current on news from Somalia, this vote follows the resignation of President Abdullahi Yusuf Ahmed in December, the withdrawal of Ethiopian troops that had occupied parts of Somalia, and a continuing insurgency. Somalia has not had a functioning central government since 1991, and more than a million people have fled their homes because of continuing fighting. More than 40% of the population needs food aid.

Save money – eliminate elections In Minneapolis, city council member Paul Ostrow wants to eliminate two elected boards and centralize city government under a city manager in order to save money, reports Brandt Williams on MPR. (He’s joined in this proposal by Don Samuels and Ralph Remington.) Their three proposals:

1) replace the elected Park Board, which has actual decision-making authority, with an advisory board.
2) Eliminate the elected Board of Estimate and Taxation
3) Create a city administrator and change the supervision and reporting structure of city government so that departments all report to the new city manager rather than to city council committees.

MinnPost comes out pretty clearly in favor of the proposal, headlining it as an initiative to streamline Minneapolis operations and asking in the lead paragraph, “Can Minneapolis afford the antiquated bureaucracy that seems often to hang as an anvil around its neck?” (Steve Berg, who wrote the article, notes that he has long been an advocate of these changes.)

Ostrow argues that the mayor and council should set policy and then leave oversight and implementation to professionals. Samuels cited last year’s city/county library merger as a success story showing the need to centralize responsibility.

In the Minneapolis E-Democracy Forum, debate is already heated.

Tim the Ripper As expected, Governor Tim Pawlenty’s budget announcement slashed spending for health, education and welfare while offering tax breaks to businesses and leaning heavily on income he hopes will come from the federal economic stimulus. MPR’s Bob Collins offers the best shorthand list of who will suffer under the budget cuts. People who need health care, for a start: reduced eligibility for Medical Assistance would knock off many current recipients, hospitals and long-term care reimbursement will drop; many mentally-ill adults will lose MinnesotaCare. Local control also suffers as T-Paw abandons traditional conservative commitments to local control, eliminating 87 county human services programs and replacing them with 15 regional bodies. The list goes on and so does the excellent MPR coverage, with a general analysis here and a description of cuts in local government aid to cities and counties here. An analysis of health and human services budgeting says that while the proposed budget increases expenditures by 10 percent, expenses are projected to increase by 22 percent, meaning that “cuts to services are inevitable.”

Under the governor’s plan 84,000 adults will lose their state-subsidized health coverage. These people are primarily enrolled in MinnesotaCare. The governor also cuts millions of dollars in payments to hospitals and long-term care providers and eliminates dental coverage for all but pregnant women and children.

Long-term care providers, hospitals, and nursing homes also take substantial hits under the proposed budget. (And a little shameless self-promotion: TC Daily Planet has a roundup of Minnesotans weighing on the budget.)

MN Job Watch Target is cutting 1500 jobs, and Best Buy is also planning cuts, reports the PiPress. Both are national chains headquartered in the Twin Cities. That means cutting deep here at home, as 1000 of Target’s cuts (600 layoffs and 400 vacant positions eliminated) fall in the Twin Cities, with 500 more jobs eliminated in closing an Arkansas distribution center. Best Buy has already gotten 500 workers at its Richfield HQ to agree to buyouts, but says that’s not enough, and an as-yet-unannounced number of layoffs will come on February 19.

“The steady stream of layoff notices leaves everyone else beginning to wonder if their firm isn’t the next to lay off more people and that causes consumers to pull back on their spending even more and save a little more in case that comes,” said Minnesota state economist Tom Stinson.

“This is all part of the vicious self-reinforcement cycle that causes recessions to spiral downward for a while.”

According to one laid-off employee quoted by MPR, most of Target’s cuts are coming in finance, property development and information technology departments, and they include workers who had been with Target for more than 20 years.

Price-point puzzle for homeowners Twin Cities home prices dropped 16 percent in November 2008, compared to 2007, according to a national study cited in the PiPress. But wait a minute — a number of Minneapolis homeowners report that their assessed valuations are showing no decline in home prices, with a few saying their assessed valuation has even risen, unrealistically in their opinions. What’s up? What’s down? Why? Only the assessor can say for sure.

Getting back to hard numbers, the best way to spin the TC home price drop, says the PiPress, is that home prices dropped only 2.1 percent from October, which is less than the 3.3 percent September to October decline. Overall, however, prices remain low. The Minneapolis Area Association of Realtors says that there were fewer “lender mediated” (read foreclosed or near foreclosure) homes on the market in the final quarter of 2008. The drop is small — there were still more than 8,000 homes on the list on January 1, and seems to be focused on the hardest-hit central city areas while more prosperous city neighborhoods and suburban areas show growth in foreclosed properties.

Adding injury to insult Despite recent subzero temps, which many of us associate not only with frostbite but also with crisp, clean air, the MPCA advises that the southern two-thirds of the state is under an air pollution health advisory through Thursday.

About that economic stimulus Congressional Republicans continue to push for tax cuts rather than spending. The president’s plan allocates a lot of money to tax cuts, but, notes the NYT, the plan would “shower the nation’s school districts, child care centers and university campuses with $150 billion in new federal spending, a vast two-year investment that would more than double the Department of Education’s current budget,” and “amount to the largest increase in federal aid since Washington began to spend significantly on education after World War II.” The federal aid comes as state and local government funding for education is decreasing, and includes $20 billion for school renovation and modernization as well as increasing spending on Pell Grants to $27 billion from about $19 billion this year.

Licenses for Velociraptors! In order to stop attacks by marauding velociraptors, or at least to assign responsibility to their owners when velociraptors consume cats, chickens and small children, MN GOP legislators want to require licenses and photo IDs for all velociraptors kept within or in transit through Minnesota. Rep. Tom Emmer, R-Delano, said, “You show an ID to cash a check… (and) to get through security at the airport. If you have to do that for the most basic activities in our daily life, why wouldn’t you… want to do that for one of the most important activities that we exercise …”

Oh. Never mind. He doesn’t want photo IDs for velociraptors, but for voters. To prevent voter cheating. A problem that’s almost as common in MN as … velociraptors.

As Bill Salisbury writes in the PiPress, “Democrats have argued for years that thousands of Minnesotans lack government-issued photo IDs, and such a law would disenfranchise the people least likely to have drivers’ licenses: the poor, the disabled and the elderly. Those people also are more likely to vote for Democrats.”

Emmer said he didn’t know if anyone had been accused of voting illegally in the last election. One guy was, as I recall. A former felon up in Warroad who had not yet served all of his supervised release time cast a ballot, and later was jailed for his offense. He says he voted for McCain and Coleman. (P.S. The photo ID law wouldn’t have stopped him from voting.)

Rabbit-ear Reprieve? The senate approved a four-month delay in DTV transition, as recommended by President Obama, and House approval seems imminent, reports the Washington Post. The DTV transition scheduled for February 17 would leave 6.5 million households with blank screens, according to Nielsen. The federal agency giving out $40 coupons to help pay for the converter boxes (which cost more than $40), has run out of money, with more than 3 million people on the waiting list.

The biggest minority? While Latinos now outnumber all other minority groups nationwide, African Americans are still the largest minority in Minnesota. That will change by 2015 years, according to the state demographer’s office. Projections by the office estimate the black, non-Latino population at 314,100 in 2015 and the Latino population at 324,400.

In a January 22 report, the office projected growth in MN’s total “nonwhite or Latino” population from 14 percent in 2005 to 25 percent in 2035, with all parts of the state becoming more ethnically diverse than they are now.

Bills for schools MN schools could find a way to fund their billion-dollar-plus retirement benefit obligations (mostly for health care) under a new legislative proposal, report Megan Boldt and Maricella Miranda in the PiPress. The new law would allow a local property tax, with money going into interest-bearing trust accounts, instead of the current pay-as-you-go from operating budgets. Some 34 of MN’s 360 districts already have MN DOE authorization for levies or bonding to pay for retirement trusts. In recent years, school districts have reduced retirement benefits, but they still have obligations under prior contracts.

This is one of dozens of proposals on education introduced so far this session, reports Tom Weber on MPR. Among other proposals: starting school before Labor Day, early childhood education for at-risk four-year-olds, a new Minnesota Miracle, opting out of No Child Left Behind.

RNC trial starts David McKay, accused of assembling Molotov cocktails with another Texan, is on trial in federal court, reports Laura Yuen on MPR. His attorney says that FBI informant Brandon Darby provoked the acts. The second defendant, Bradley Crowder, pled guilty earlier this month.

Remington out, Bicking in Ralph Remington announced he would leave the Minneapolis City Council, joining Paul Ostrow and Scott Benson in departing at the end of this term, reported the Strib. In a press release, Dave Bicking became the latest candidate to declare, as the field for city council races continues to fill up.

MN Job Watch Not clear how many of the jobs lost are in Minnesota, but large companies around the world announced 62,000 job cuts Monday–22,000 at Caterpillar, 8,000 at Sprint Nextel, 7,000 at Home Depot, 2,000 at General Motors plants in Michigan and Ohio, 3,400 at Texas Instruments, 8,000 at the soon-to-be-merged Pfizer and Wyeth drug companies, 6,000 at Philips electronics company, 3,500 at steel maker Corus, and 7,000 at ING banking and insurance group. The New York Times quotes Brian Bethune, chief U.S. financial economist at IHS Global Insight, as saying, “We’re now in the danger zone.” You think? The NYT goes on to recall that “first-time unemployment claims had risen to 589,000 for the week ending Jan. 17, tying a record high set in December.” This week’s announcements follow last week’s cuts b Microsoft (5,000 over the next 18 months), Sony in Japan (5,000), Ericcson in Sweden (5,000), and Harley-Davidson (1,000).

Closer to home, the Hennepin County Medical Center announced layoffs of 20 people in response to the governor’s cuts in health and human services funding in December, reports Toni Randolph at MPR. HCMC will also eliminate 80 positions that are not currently filled, and HCMC CEO Lynn Abrahamson says she is “very nervous” about what might come next. The PiPress report notes that Allina, North Memorial and Park Nicollet have also announced job cuts in recent weeks, as more uninsured Minnesotans are unable to afford health care.