According to this StarTribune article, a political flyer (PDF) just like are appearing in mailboxes and stuffed in door frames all over the metro hit Burnsville last week and apparently sent Mayor Elizabeth Kautz into a frenzy. Instead of admitting her faults which have ranged from threatening the city’s bond rating she has so proudly proclaimed as her biggest value-add to the city by pushing forward with the Burnsville Performing Arts Center and owning up to the fact that there is now an unnecessary and virtually unused traffic light outside her condo, she has taken the low road and whined that this flyer is illegal instead while utilizing already strained city resources to benefit her campaign.
From the article:
The four-sided flyer that landed in mailboxes all over Burnsville last week criticizes Kautz for supporting the Burnsville Performing Arts Center, for supposedly getting a stoplight placed in front of her downtown condo, for having a business conflict of interest and more. It bears the name of the “Coalition of Better Business in Burnsville,” but the group cannot be found on the Internet and the mailing does not include an address or other identification.
[...]
Kautz asked Burnsville City Clerk Macheal Brooks to investigate the mailing for a possible violation of state campaign laws. Brooks said she had determined that the group that sent the mailing would have to register their spending with her at the city within 14 days of spending $750 or more.
While no one at all appreciates any sort of junk mail in their mailboxes or otherwise littering their towns, doorsteps, cars, sides of the road, etc, to attempt to entirely ignore the claims and instead utilize already strained city staff members in a last ditch effort to fight the accusation made in the flyer is disappointing.
As a Burnsville taxpayer and potential vote for Mayor Kautz, do you think she should be wasting her time, the time of the City Clerk and just about everyone else to get to the bottom of something like this? She’s likely to win anyway being that people don’t realize she has been lying since the BPAC opened trying to cover the fact that her precious Arts Center can’t even book a nationally recognizable act like Candlebox when a new bar in a strip mall behind a Cub Foods can do exactly that? Do you believe the cries of Kautz that this was an act christened by Willenburg as a last ditch effort to dethrone the queen? Are you a conspiracy theorist and believe this is an act of Kautz to try and discredit Willenburg because she fears (probably wrongly being that it’s quite unlikely) that he may win this one and damage whatever kickbacks she enjoys as mayor? Do you agree with Kautz that this type of flyer is, “political bullying and malicious,” and shouldn’t be allowed?
Whatever you have to say about this one go ahead and comment on as I’d love to hear your thoughts.
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November 5th, 2012 at 8:06 am
I can’t explain why, but every time I read a story about Mayor Mary, I think she’d be a perfect Scooby Doo villain.
November 5th, 2012 at 8:23 am
I live in bville and did wonder who sent it. I don’t believe Willenburg was behind it. There are plenty of other people who want to see her gone…
November 5th, 2012 at 8:28 am
dsw, I don’t know all that much about Willenburg but based on the content, the design of the flyer, and the late-in-the-game sending, I just can’t imagine he’d waste his time considering how far behind he probably is.
November 5th, 2012 at 10:04 am
Regardless of the candidates involved, if the flyer doesn’t meet the legal requirements by identifying who is responsible for it, then it should be investigated. Maybe not necessarily today or tomorrow, but soon.
November 5th, 2012 at 10:48 am
Mole,
Definitely.
Do you believe the Mayor’s campaign should have done the research on the law themselves, found out there was a 14-day waiting period, and waited for that time to pass before leveraging City Staff to do what they needed to do on their end instead of using them as research assistants from the get go?
November 5th, 2012 at 11:39 am
I think it will be a closer race than expected, lots of people given the School Board and the continuing PAC issue are in an anti incumbent mood in local elections.
Kautz has the same right as any candidate to file a complaint or objection if there is a violation of the law, I do not know if the correct procedure is to ask the city clerk , or who paid for that , the city or Kautz’s campaign?
It’s good to know Willenberg has disclaimed it as well.
I dislike campaign ads and mailers from either political side which have murky origins, or financed by organizations with no details of who is behind them, but our Supreme Court seems to have made that the law? should be interesting to see if any filing for the cost of this mailer comes out in the 14 day period!
November 5th, 2012 at 1:40 pm
I got attacked by one of these illegal mailers in my own race. While I understand that you may have reasonable qualms about the Mayor’s policies and I don’t want to wade into Burnsville politics, every mailer should clearly identify its source along with an address. Voters deserve to know what axe the sender has to grind. They have a right to that small amount of information.
I thought that particular campaign finance law was so well-known that any elected official would not need more research than a ten minute search on Google.
November 5th, 2012 at 1:55 pm
Frankly, I am surprised that document doesn’t have “Copyright: Lazy Lighting” on the bottom.
Colin Lee,
I am not sure it is a good idea to tell people that you have been endorsed by Jesse The Body Ventura if you want them to vote for you.
November 5th, 2012 at 2:11 pm
lefty, I’m sure that was the Mayor’s first thought and then she realized the grammar and artwork obviously didn’t come from someone who is an anal-retentive, obsessive, control freak, and decided to use it as a way to attack her opponent instead.
November 5th, 2012 at 2:35 pm
Does it really cost $360,000.00 to install traffic lights from scratch on a intersection as this flyer indicates?
If so, I guess I’m in the wrong business!
November 5th, 2012 at 4:37 pm
I’m a Burnsville resident and I don’t think we received this in the mail, though it’s possible my wife threw it out without passing it along. Here are my thoughts in no particular order.
1. It’s a terrible mailer. The grammar and design are awful.
2. I highly doubt this was sent by Willenburg or anyone involved with his campaign. There are plenty of people who dislike Kautz who have nothing to do with Willenburg.
3. Kautz needs to denounce this without denouncing Willenburg at the same time. I think she’ll skate through this election anyway. She won the last one and I thought Willenburg ran a much stronger campaign last time. The BPAC is no longer the issue it once was. She has no need to drag Willenburg through the mud.
4. Deflecting attention from the content of the mailer does not help Kautz. I don’t think many people will sympathize with a 17-year incumbent in an issue like this. I could be wrong. The mailer certainly appears to be illegal without further information. But the content is no less important to address.
I have trouble imagining this affecting the election too much regardless.
November 5th, 2012 at 5:25 pm
There is certainly an important question raised in this discussion. Namely, how is Candlebox still around?
November 5th, 2012 at 5:55 pm
Two votes in our household for the opposition. I doubt she will be dethroned, but she really needs to go. Or I need to move to the HOC so I can at least benefit from her continuing as Mayor, as that seems to be the only part of town that she realizes exists.
November 5th, 2012 at 6:48 pm
Tim, I’m going to see them. For $13 it’s a no-brainer. If they were playing at the BPAC it would be $43 to cover all the shitty unknowns they put on stage.
November 5th, 2012 at 7:33 pm
So if they spent less than $750, no one gets to know who they were? Brilliant!
November 5th, 2012 at 7:47 pm
As a Burnsville voter, I would rather see Elizabeth Kautz respond to the assertations than publicly whine. While the mailer was poorly executed, it did raise several valid points she’s staying silent on.
I agree that *her* stoplight was a self-serving drain of significant money. I doubt Willenburg was part of it though. As Joey said, “There are plenty of people who dislike Kautz who have nothing to do with Willenburg.”
November 5th, 2012 at 10:53 pm
“Do you agree with Kautz that this type of flyer is, “political bullying and malicious?” HECK NO! That is my response after looking at the published definitions of bullying and malicious. This is what she gets for telling the big lie and covering it up for five years by inventing her own accounting and financial reporting standards. She got by with her antics this long because journalists printed the crap they were hand fed and ignored audited financial statements that contradicted the crap they were hand fed.
Generally Accepted Accounting Principles (GAAP) published by the Government Accounting Standards Board (GASB) needs to permeate the financial function at all units of local government. Had this been the case in Burnsville in 2007 and subsequent, the PAC would have a different look and we would have had the accountability that has been missing. In other words, GAAP is not just for the CAFR report!
Maybe Burnsville’s Mayor and Council need to review the CAFR reports for Grand Forks, ND and see they have two CPAs employed by the city and they both sign the CAFR report. These folks would lose their livelihoods if they pulled the crap that prevails at the Burnsville City Hall.
November 5th, 2012 at 11:28 pm
“Okay, I’ll admit it. I sent the flyers.”
-Cliff
November 5th, 2012 at 11:51 pm
Not so Joey! I would have used the audited numbers and put my name on it.
November 6th, 2012 at 2:14 am
Who, then?
November 6th, 2012 at 2:16 am
Maybe the Devil!
November 6th, 2012 at 9:04 am
Guess I’m the only one who thought the flyer looked exactly like something Cliff would say. And yes, it was a joke.
Hey lefty, you’re welcome. Someone has more dislikes on a comment thread than you!
November 6th, 2012 at 9:06 am
Nah, I thought it was Cliff too, my only doubt was that the flyer didn’t specify “CAFR” 50x.
November 6th, 2012 at 11:29 am
I’m as curious as you about the author’s identity. The author is not an accountant because an accountant would not add debt service to the operating loss and call the total a loss. An accountant would subtract the depreciation from the operating loss and then add debt service to get to the impact on cash flow but not call the result a loss. Look for people with a history of this error.
I tried to get the information from the Burnsville Post Office and learned I needed to contact a facility that accepts bulk mailings and that is where I found people with soft female voices and foreign accents and I gave up. Yes, my hearing is as bad as my spelling, grammar and composition.
Any of you have any ideas that you care to share on finding the author’s identity?
November 6th, 2012 at 11:31 am
Cliff,
1. Congrats on comment #100.
2. Give us the number of the facility and we can call and do the work you apparently cannot.
November 6th, 2012 at 11:58 am
Is that “comment #100″ or the 100th version of essentially comment #1?
November 6th, 2012 at 12:28 pm
I started out with 1-800-275-8777 and then 952-308-7376
November 7th, 2012 at 8:08 am
I guess our Mayor’s whining really didn’t matter after all…crap another 4 years with this woman.
November 7th, 2012 at 8:14 am
If it weren’t for her stupidity, I would have less to talk about ;)
November 7th, 2012 at 10:20 am
I suspect with Suzanne Nguyen on the Council, we’ll have some good fodder. To me, she appears to be a total parrot of Mayor Kautz’s talking point memos (aka our local press articles). Read this…isn’t this word-for-word the EXACT fluff constantly crammed in our pie holes (start at Why am I Running for Office)?
http://suzannenguyen.com/About_Me.html
This was the icing on the cake:
Barf.
November 7th, 2012 at 11:21 am
I am wondering if newly elected Mayor of Lakeville Matt Little is secretly planning his own Heart of the City/Lakeville Performing Arts Center projects now that hes has all kinds of awesome power. I mean, look at how well it worked for Kautzy. She keeps getting reelected every year on the backs of that.
November 7th, 2012 at 11:28 am
Lefty, I’m quite sure Matt isn’t looking to copy that. We already have a wonderful arts center and a better Heart of the City because we actually have good, surviving businesses on our old main street, Holyoke.
As for the old Ventura endorsement, I can’t say how that plays for everyone. His handling of the media was really bad and his conspiracy show didn’t help at all, but his governorship was actually pretty reasonable. Barkley did a respectable job as U.S. Senator, too, but no one remembers him actually being in office.
November 7th, 2012 at 11:33 am
When you’re only in office for 60 days, it’s easy to forget.
November 7th, 2012 at 12:14 pm
I wish Kautz was only in office for 60 days.*
*As opposed to 4 years
November 21st, 2012 at 4:49 pm
Waiting for the apology, Kautz: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Thisweeklivecom/~3/bj9OZoULoec/
November 21st, 2012 at 6:32 pm
Guess this takes me off the hook!
December 9th, 2012 at 9:41 am
I never thought Willenburg had anything do to with this in the first place. He was certainly vindicated nonetheless. Everyone else involved looks like a tool, though.
The mailer was disingenuous about the Costco/Grossman situation, though. Grossman went away because of GM’s business decision, rightfully or wrongfully — nothing the City of Burnsville would have done would have made a difference. Costco just saw an opening and capitalized on it.