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Serving Northern St. Louis County, Minnesota

Promotion issue heads to appeal

Case could be the last episode in long-running litigation over 2009 referendum

Tom Klein
Posted 8/20/15

REGIONAL – Can school districts use tax dollars to promote a referendum?

That’s the question at the heart of a new lawsuit filed with the Minnesota Court of Appeals against the St. Louis …

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Promotion issue heads to appeal

Case could be the last episode in long-running litigation over 2009 referendum

Posted

REGIONAL – Can school districts use tax dollars to promote a referendum?

That’s the question at the heart of a new lawsuit filed with the Minnesota Court of Appeals against the St. Louis County School District.

The new lawsuit has drawn the ire of school adminstrators, who assumed that their legal battles had ended with the Office of Administrative Hearings’ decision in May that the district had failed to file a complete campaign finance report. The district was fined $200 and ordered to submit a revised report before the end of August.

“We thought we were done,” Superintendent Steven Sallee told the board during a retreat last week.

But the OAH’s three-judge panel declined to rule on the broader question of whether districts can ever spend tax dollars to promote a ballot measure and that’s the impetus behind the new lawsuit, according to Timberjay publisher Marshall Helmberger, who has assisted complainants Tim Kotzian and Steve Abrahamson with the legal dispute.

The OAH judges acknowledged the question is ripe for appeal after ambiguous language in a previous OAH decision clouded the legal landscape.

“For years, it’s been accepted that school districts cannot legally use public funds to promote rerenda. But a 2014 decision by the OAH contained language that the state auditor has determined makes such expenditures legal, as long as school districts file campaign finance reports,” said Helmberger. “We think the auditor’s interpretation is in error, but there’s no doubt that the issue has been muddied by the OAH. We think that has to be clarified and that’s what we’re asking the Court of Appeals to do.”

Helmberger added that there’s a related issue that digs into the details of campaign financing requirements.

“The OAH, in the most recent case, determined that campaign services provided to the school district by Johnson Controls Inc., through a subcontractor, did not have to be reported if the district didn’t have to pay for them,” Helmberger said. “This is fundamentally at odds with campaign finance reporting law in Minnesota, which requires that all campaign services provided to a campaign must be reported at fair market value.”

“We think the OAH panel simply didn’t understand the issue in question,” continued Helmberger. “Their ruling, we believe, unwittingly opened up an enormous loophole in the campaign finance law and it will be up to the Court of Appeals to fix it.”

Helmberger said the district doesn’t really have a dog in this fight because they are all policy issues that don’t really relate to the school district’s actions.

But Sallee told the board on Friday that although complainants say the district doesn’t have a dog in the fight, “they still name us.”

Helmberger said that’s because the case can’t proceed to final resolution without naming the district.

“We’d like to minimize any expenditures on the part of the school district,” he said, adding that naming the district is “simply the nature of the legal process.”

Sallee declined to say how much the district was willing to spend on the case and issued no further comment on the matter when contacted by email by the Timberjay.

However, in his testimony at the OAH hearing that challenged the thoroughness of the district’s campaign finance report, Sallee acknowledged that in his training as a school administrator, he was always told that school districts can present neutral information to voters but cannot promote passage of ballot measures. He also agreed on the need to clarify the issue given the current uncertainty.

The Minnesota School Boards Association still recommends that districts not promote referenda and has stated that the current situation needs to be clarified.

The Court of Appeals has already ruled that school districts are not authorized to expend tax dollars to promote ballot measures. Should the court reaffirm that ruling and settle the question on campaign contributions in favor of the complainants, it could possibly increase the fine assessed to the district.

But Helmberger said, more importantly, it would establish a legal framework that “clearly establishes the rules of the road and gives citizens an affordable path to seek remedy if school districts violate these rules in the future.”