My old school

Let's start with a little music.

Oleanders growing outside her door
Soon they're gonna be in bloom
Up in Annandale

In Mark Dayton's Minnesota, you need to choose your friends wisely. Apparently the folks in Annandale didn't make the right choice. Strib reporter Ricardo Lopez picks up the story:

Annandale was not the only casualty of a governor’s veto following the regular legislative session, but city officials there say their wound may have been politically motivated.

A small but growing city about an hour northwest of Minneapolis, Annandale has been desperate to upgrade its creaky Internet service, with connectivity so antiquated and unreliable that it goes dark up to five times a month for hours at a time, leaving local retailers unable to process credit card transactions.

Sounds like a problem, all right. Apparently, to get broadband, the folks in Annandale needed to hire a lobbyist to represent their interests.

Tried to warn you
About Chino and Daddy Gee
But I can't seem to get to you
Through the U.S. Mail

That's where it went wrong:

City officials met with Dayton’s chief of staff, Jaime Tincher, to plead their case. In a notarized letter obtained by the Star Tribune, Mayor Dwight Gunnarson and City Administrator Kelly Hinnenkamp wrote that the governor’s staff said they did not like earmarks.

But at one point in the meeting, city officials said, Tincher’s tone changed. According to the letter, Tincher looked at Dan Dorman, a former House Republican-turned lobbyist who was working with Annandale, and said, “Don’t forget, your firm spent an awful lot of time beating up on Democrats.”

An awkward pause followed. Dorman later said he was taken aback and told Tincher, “I don’t know how to respond to that.”

I'll bet. As an aside, Tincher is not just Dayton's chief of staff. She's also the wife of Adam Duinnick, Dayton's handpicked chairman of the Met Council. So let's just say she's got a little clout. Back to Lopez:

After the meeting, Gunnarson said in the letter that he asked Dorman about the remark. Dorman told the mayor that he thought it was rooted in a bonding analysis his firm, Flaherty and Hood, prepared that showed the bonding proposal favored the metro area. Flaherty and Hood represents a number of outstate jurisdictions.

“I asked if the citizens of Annandale were being punished because of this,” Gunnarson said in the letter, and Dorman replied that he thought so.

On Tuesday, Tincher acknowledged that she made the comment, but in a statement said: “It is completely false to suggest that opposition to Annandale’s earmark was politically motivated.” She added: “Our administration believes in a competitive process to distribute this funding and that it is wrong to allow one community to jump in front of others, simply because they have secured favor with a particular lawmaker.”

It's also worth remembering that the reason the Minnesota House is in Republican hands is that many parts of the state outside of the metro area sent Republicans to St. Paul. The source of DFL power is mostly in the metro area and, not surprisingly, the DFL pays attention to its clients.

So, does Annandale need the help? Back to Lopez:

In recent years, officials from Annandale have worked to improve their broadband network, which they describe as old and decaying.

Hinnenkamp said a local bus company recently tried to upload a document to send to a St. Cloud printing business, but “the upload speed was so slow it would be faster for them to drive the file there.”

Sounds quaint. Back to Lopez:

Annandale officials said they had applied for a grant through the state’s broadband office but heard in February that they were not awarded the funds. They were among 40 applicants for funding last year. Only 17 received funding. They met with officials from the state’s Department of Employment and Economic Development, the agency that administers the grants, to learn more about why they missed out on the funding. After two years of working the process with no success, they hired a lobbying firm to make their case directly to lawmakers.

“We need to do something for our community as soon as we possibly can,” Gunnarson said. “That’s the reason we went for the earmark.”

It's good to be the governor's chief of staff. It's also fun to pick winners and losers. Governments love doing that sort of thing. You hear politicians talk about rural broadband access from time to time, Back to Lopez:

Danna MacKenzie, executive director of the Office of Broadband Development, said her office opposed the earmark because many communities are in need of broadband development.

“We have met with this group many times and expressed support for the needs of their community,” she said. “We all understand their community does have problems with service … [but] so do many, many dozens of other communities in the state. Each one has a unique set of variables, and Annandale was one of those.”

So will Annandale get the support they need from the Office of Broadband Development, especially after making this particular exchange public? Just a guess:

California tumbles into the sea
That'll be the day I go
Back to Annandale