Say Anything Blog

Rob and I have decided that we must get more proactive on the Alerus Commission.  To that end we are making a complaint about the obvious violation of the law that the Alerus Commission committed when they met in secret to waive provisions of the city’s contract with Venuworks, the company that mismanages the Alerus.

Here’s our letter that is in the mail today.

Attorney General Wayne Stenejhem:

I want to call to your attention a clear violation of the North Dakota open meetings statute by the Grand Forks Alerus Commission that was reported in the Grand Forks Herald on October 31st.

The story reported members of the commission admitting that they went into an informal “executive session” to decide to let a city contractor, Venuworks Management company, out of part of their contract with the city.  Since this agreement was unrecorded and kept secret the public was relying on the terms of the contract while the contractor and Alerus Commission were operating on their own.

Under North Dakota law a government panel can only go into executive session for a very few reasons.  They have to go about it in a very specific manner.  Specifically they have to make a motion during an announced open meeting to go into executive session.  The motion must cite the specific law excepting that topic from the scrutiny of the public.  They have to tape record (or video tape) the meeting so that the Attorney General may review it to ensure that they didn’t break the law.

The Alerus Commission (or parts thereof) did none of this.

It was reported that the Alerus Commission claimed that they thought they could hold a meeting like that when they had less than a quorum.  But the entire commission must have delegated powers to the smaller group to make decisions.  Apparently that group did make a decision, specifically they changed a major portion of the contract, with the blessing of the rest of the commission.  This quote from the Herald Story says it all:

In other words, commissioners could well have decided to take risks worth well into the six figures without a public notification or the formal approval of the entire commission.

What’s especially troubling is that the Commission Chair is also a member of the Grand Forks City Council.  Reading the reporting makes one suspect that holding informal, unrecorded meetings is commonplace in the Grand Forks city government, not just the Alerus Commission.  The Grand Forks Herald Reporter seems to suggest that it happens somewhat often in this blog post.

In our opinion this is a very serious matter.  At stake is $175,000 that under the terms of the contract the public was relying on is owed to the city.  The Alerus Commission supposedly waived that requirement in a secret, unrecorded meeting.  The Alerus commission addressed the issue in a public matter addressed the issue after the money was clearly owed to the city.  Apparently they quickly voted to ratify the changes to the terms of the contract with no particular debate.  That’s because the decision was already made, only in secret.

The Herald story suggested that the Alerus Commission wanted to go back and formally change the written contract retroactively to again ratify the results of the secret meeting.  This seems to me to be a major conflict of interests because if members of the Alerus Commission made guarantees they were not legally authorized to make they may be liable for significant damages to the Alerus contractor.

In August a new five year contract with Venuworks was announced by the Alerus Commission.  This was a major surprise to the public leading us to think that the Alerus failed to perform their open meeting obligations in this case as well.

A great deal of damage has been done by the Alerus Commission’s arrogance to ignore North Dakota’s strict open meeting laws.  We are asking that the Attorney General thoroughly investigate the matter and if warranted issue as severe sanctions as legally possible.

The public has a right to expect that the government will follow a published contract and not make secret backroom deals that modify the contract contingent on certain events.

The city attorney of Grand Forks has already looked into this matter somewhat.  Perhaps it may help your investigation by getting the information he already has.

This seems to be an open and shut case for the Attorney General.  The city attorney has already stated his opinion that they were in violation of the state’s open meeting laws.  But the city attorney’s opinion is just that an opinion.  The Attorney General has the force of law and they would be opening themselves up personally to fines if they continue to act in secret.

What really makes me furious is that the Alerus gang wants to go back and ratify their secret agreement.  That’s nothing except a rip off of the people of Grand Forks.  From the fragmented bits of information that they’ve released it seems that VenuWorks already owed us the money before the city made the decision on the Neil Diamond concert. 

It’s sad that the watchdog newspaper has turned into a lapdog for the Alerus Commission.  The reporter that was aware of these meetings all along is over on his blog making excuses for why the Alerus Commission had these illegal meetings. 

All of these decisions and promises that were made in illegal off the record meetings are null and void as far as I’m concerned.  How deep does this go?