'Following through with Algadi's wishes'

Interesting story, forwarded to me by an anonymous emailer who apparently didn't care for City Administrator Abraham Algadi and is glad he was canned by the city council last month.

finance-commerce.com/2011/01/is-elk-run-getting-a-‘free-ride/

This Twin Cities story quotes Deputy City Clerk Cindy Oelkers. FYI, I called Oelkers to get the campaign finance reports that we published in Wednesday's paper, regarding the city council race. For the record, here's an interesting detail that I didn't report in that story.

I emailed Oelkers and she faxed the reports to me.

After seeing that Novak and Diskerud had filed joint reports, which I had never seen before and was quite sure was not according to state campaign finance rules, I called Oelkers and asked if she had checked it out. She said yes, she had contacted Goodhue County officials and was told that as long as all the information is there that it was acceptable.

So I called the county controller and was told that that was not accurate. Two people in that office told me the county spent a fair amount of time on this issue late last year, checking with the Minnesota Secretary of State's office on how to deal with it. They were told the reports needed to be filed separately and that they had informed Pine Island city officials about this.

I didn't go back to Oelkers for a response and didn't get into that fine detail in the story, but I think it's curious.

Also for the record, the headline on Wednesday's story was "Reports show unusual spending in Pine Island races." I thought the word "unusual" was more accurate than "big" or a term of that kind, because obviously the money involved isn't big by Rochester or similar standards. But it was a lot for a Pine Island council race.

Here's the note from the anonymous emailer.

Check out the address above and you will learn one of the reasons why the former council got the ax last Nov.
It is time to get back to working for Pine Island, not council members personal agendas.
 
 
Also, check out the Nov 15 Special Council Minutes.  City Administrator Algadi talked one of the former council members
into making a motion starting the termination clause of his contract.  The motion died for a lack of a second. 
So, I guess the new council was just following through with Algadi's wishes.