Give KEYC-TV credit for first investigating the Emmer campaign's reluctance to pay its bills for documents it requested for the recount. That was back on December 2.
The Friday, December 10, the Mankato Free Press revisited county election officials who still hadn't received checks.
Today, Carolyn Lange of the West Central Tribune reports in Emmer campaign stiffs Kandiyohi Co. out of $1,400 during recount:
Sam Modderman doesn’t know exactly how many hours he and his staff spent preparing a cache of documents requested by Tom Emmer during the governor’s recount. But he knows the county hasn’t been paid for the work.
“We completed all the requests, but no, we haven’t gotten paid for them all,” the Kandiyohi County Auditor said.
It’s a common story that’s been reported in other counties who rushed to prepare documents requested by the Emmer campaign but then didn’t get paid for the work.
Modderman said he spent more time at the office than with his family over Thanksgiving in order the meet the request for documents.
“They were a little demanding,” he said.
Lange writes that the Emmer campaign paid $58 for an initial request, but soon demanded far more documents.The documents were collated on a CD, but the Emmer campaign never paid and never picked up the CD, accordin to the article.
Other counties in West Central Minnesota handled the campaign's demand in other way. In Swift County:
Burned by the lack of payment two years ago during the Senate recount “when we did all that work and we made all those copies and never got paid a dime,” [Swift County Auditor Byron] Giese pretty much ignored the requests for documents he got this year from the gubernatorial candidates.
As a result, his county isn’t out any money.
He got the same nasty e-mails other county auditor’s did about providing documents by certain days, but Giese bluntly said he disregarded them. He said he was too busy providing election data to the state and preparing for the recount to deal with the candidates’ requests.
Meeker County was never paid by the Emmer campaign, though the Dayton committee paid its estimated bill (indeed the costs of the entire effort):
Even though Emmer requested the information, he never responded once the invoice was sent. Dayton requested his copies, however, and paid the $2,135 bill. Loch said she is reimbursing Dayton $450 because the actual cost was less than estimated.
Even though Dayton is covering the cost of the county’s research, Loch said Dayton was the only one who actually received the documents and therefore was the only one who should pay.
She’s happy the county’s costs were covered.
Loch said, however, Dayton’s representatives are now saying they only wanted copies of information that the county sent to Emmer and are questioning their payment of the full bill for all the county’s time to prepare the documents.
It's truly remarkable that a guy who campaigned on retooling government should so blatantly exploit cash-strapped rural counties by asking them to devote staff time gathering and copying election records--and then neglect to pick them up.
Next time a Republican complains about the election being stolen, ask how he or she would know that.
After all, it doesn't look like the Emmer campaign or Republican Party of Minnesota bothered to pick up the election documents Republicans requested, much less read them. Perhaps "stolen" is GOP code for "we lost."
Note: this is Bluestem's "Bleg" week. If you like reading posts visit Bleg: Like Bluestem's investigative blogging? Drop some coin in the tip jar to make a contribution.
Geez, is Arne Carlson the last Republican left who knows how to manage money? Or who doesn't spend all of his waking hours trying to find ways to stick other folks with the tab for his exploits?
Posted by: Phoenix Woman | Dec 15, 2010 at 09:46 AM