Legal theory

I managed to gimp around for four hours today passing out my campaign package. It was tough hilly terrain with lots of steps to reach homes perched up high. There is little doubt that I will all but finish passing out the 13,000 pieces I had printed. Others are passing out my snow sculpture trading cards and other items I’ve cobbled together.

One of my allies told me he met his first Harry Welty hater of the Summer and Fall who told him none of my allies would get his vote. A heated debate has been waged on Facebook in which one person claimed to have the “illegal” campaign fundraising letter I’d sent out. That resulted in my own text message banter about my illegal yard signs which don’t explain what I’m running for. They just say I’m for “honesty.” I assured my fellow banterer that I was pretty certain the Supreme Court would back me up on my freedom to extol “honesty.”

Donations are trickling in from several letters I sent out illegal or otherwise. A few mailings have been a complete bust but even my “campaign packet” contains an envelope to be mailed back to me with donations should the recipients be so moved. About a dozen have come back that way and while they will not allow me to repay the “loans” I made as the piggy bank for this campaign I think they will make it unnecessary to spend any more of my resources on this election. The person with my “illegal campaign” letter also said she read my blog and understood what I was doing. Yup. I’m Mr. transparent and maybe even Mr. Moneybags but its still tough competing with an entire political party.

In my four hour gimp along the hillside I stopped to have several long conversations with residents. These are helpful because they help crystallize the thoughts that I’m still putting together. The line I’ve used about our trading 200 teachers for new schools came from such a conversation. Its a great distillation of a very troubling truth. I mull over these conversations long afterwards. Just a few minutes ago a very interesting idea popped into my mind from the last and longest conversation of my door to door today. What if we could legally stop paying off all or some significant portion of the $28 million we are tossing to big mutual funds every year? Oh, this is an interesting idea.

The last conversation was with a fellow who worked with big money finance and who I discovered had spoken with me before. He told me all the things I tell my readers and added that we are so screwed in Duluth due to the Red Plan’s financing…..(my words not his but his were equally blunt). He suggested doing something I’ve thought about before – playing New York City or Detroit and declaring bankruptcy to stop paying the bonds. I don’t quite buy his suggestion but it just occurred to me that there might be a legal justification. What if the bonds were imposed upon the taxpayers of Duluth illegally or through fraud or through negligence? This is the beginning of my legal theory. The attorney we hired to challenge the Red Plan explained it to me. As in science a theory imagines how the courts will interpret the law under circumstances that have yet to be tested.

I recall from my Father’s contract law class that contracts that were entered into because of fraud can be abrogated. How about bonds?

There are several possible ways in which it could be argued that the Red Plan was problematic.

First, there is the issue I always wished we had pursued in court, the refusal of the School Board to allow voters to make the decision by referendum. In fact, this is not a perfect complaint. The state legislature of recent decades has given school boards more authority to bond for buildings under certain situations like to make buildings safe for children. But these laws only covered a portion of the $315 million buildings of the Red Plan. Could we persuade a court that by preventing voters from having a say the bonds set up to fund the plan can not be fully enforced? I wonder. I wonder.

And then there is the issue our attorney pursued. His theory suggested that previous Minnesota court decisions (not statutory law) required a real bid before any public body would be permitted to authorize a building plan. He alleged that no bids on the Red Plan had ever been taken. This issue was never tested in court because the powerhouse lawyers of Johnson Controls and the District got Let Duluth Vote’s attorney pulled off the case leaving us without capable counsel to proceed to court. When that happened LDV had to scramble not to lose the $100,000 bond raised by its small time donors that the court required we raise before proceeding to court. The Court imposed the bond on the plaintiffs so that if we lost the District and JCI would not incur costs for the delay in starting construction. To get the money back for our donors the five plaintiffs, including me, had to promise never to raise the issue again in court.

Well, Harry Welty the citizen might not be able to raise the issue in court again but the Duluth School Board could and it could afford a much more potent battery of attorneys to take the case to court. (Damn it, but Rosie and her crew squandered $200 grand in court trying to undo the election that put my fellow plaintiff, Art Johnston, on the School Board) Another challenge to repaying the bonds would be that it was the duty of the lenders to fully research the conditions under which the Red Plan proceeded. We could argue that they should have known it was risky to lend money to a District that was ignoring the required public vote on a building project.

Dana Krivogorsky has suggested some kind of finance committee to make our school district’s dealings more transparent. I’ve had much the same thought for a couple years. I’ve even made up in my head a list of half a dozen people I’d like to sit on it to examine our District’s financial options. I took down the name and phone number of the fellow I talked to tonight. He’d be a good addition to the mix. He wants the Mutual Funds that loaned us money to take the hit.

It will be a lot colder tomorrow when I go out. Who knows what other interesting ideas I’ll pick up?

I’ll edit this tomorrow morning before putting my illegal contributions into my semi-transparent campaign finance report – (I don’t have to report who gave me donations of $99.99 or less.) That’s a secret…….Shhhhhhhhhhhhh!

About the author