…doesn’t make it right!
I’ve described the laws used to give the District the power to steamroll the Red Plan as being a loophole. It might be more accurate to describe them as an accident. Certainly no legislator ever voted for a law intended to give Duluth the power to put the Red Plan into effect without a vote. Thus the law could be construed as legal even if it violates the spirit and intent of the legislature. Fighting this in court could be difficult and expensive because determining legislative intent is tricky.
We know Rep. Mike Jaros, a long time Duluth DFLer, feels a law he passed was abused to devise the Red Plan. Here’s a story from 19 years ago about a Republican legislator that worked vigorously to prevent the Duluth School District from pulling of a much smaller version of a no vote building plan.
This all reminds me of a horrific law I heard about on Sixty Minutes a number of years ago about cash strapped California. That state gave professional scavengers a piece of any unclaimed property they turned up while using the rest to fund the state. They permitted these scoundrels to open bank deposit boxes that had not been visited for three years. (I’ve only been to my bank box two or three times in the last ten years) Anything these scavengers found they would have to advertise in obscure legal notices (the kind I never read). When no one responds they get to keep “their share” of the loot. It adds up to hundreds of millions of dollars a year.
Evidently this law has not been reformed because a google search turned up this story.
Johnson Controls reminds me of these professional scavengers ripping off the unsuspecting. It just happens that in Duluth they got caught with their fingers in the till. Too many of our local elected officials, just like the legislators in California, are giving JCI cover for this act of legalized theft.
