September 4-5, 2014
Sep 04 01:26 SCSU's budget lies? Sep 04 02:17 Dayton: let's raise taxes again Sep 04 02:48 Dayton admits MNsure was disaster Sep 04 04:31 ABM won't stop lying Sep 04 06:48 MNsure doublespeak continues Sep 04 10:55 ABM is "liberal-leaning"? Sep 05 06:12 Gov. Dayton's pathetic apology Sep 05 06:58 Pound a final nail in McCain-Feingold
Prior Months: Jan Feb Mar Apr May Jun Jul Aug
Prior Years: 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013
SCSU's budget lies?
Budget Lies?
by Silence Dogood
There is a wealth of information available on the web. The website for the Office of Finance and Administration contains the Annual Reports for SCSU going all the way back to FY02.
At the beginning of each Annual Report is a letter from the President submitting the Annual Report to the Chancellor and giving a brief summary. A portion of President Potter's letter to Chancellor Rosenstone for FY11 is reproduced below:
On page two of President Potter's letter is the following paragraph:
As part of the audit, there is a section on the "Financial Highlights."
FINANCIAL HIGHLIGHTS
So despite a 0.7% decrease in state appropriation revenue, the university still increased its net assets by $10.8 million (actually $10.88 million). The following summary table is also part of the audit report.
In FY10, the administration said that the university was facing a dire financial crisis and $14,000,000 needed to be cut from the budget during reorganization. Several times since then, the administration has cited that they had to cut $14,000,000 from the budget. The audit seems to show that if there was a growth in the net assets of $10,900,000 in FY11, then the administration perhaps actually only needed to cut $3,100,000 and not $14,000,000 to have a balanced budget!
At the beginning of the Annual Report for FY12 a portion of President Potter's letter to Chancellor Rosenstone is reproduced below.
On page two of President Potter's letter is the following paragraph:
The following summary table is also part of the audit report.
So the cuts to the budget in FY11 carried forward and, in fact, increased the total net assets by $23,900,000 in FY12. It certainly looks like the cuts made in FY11 were larger than necessary if the net profitability more than doubles from $10,900,000 to $23,900,000 - a growth of $13,000,000!
At the beginning of the Annual Report for FY13 a portion of President Potter's letter to Chancellor Rosenstone is reproduced below.
On page three of President Potter's letter is the following paragraph.
The following summary table is also part of the audit report.
The rate of net growth dropped for FY 13 from $23,900,000 to only $18,000,000! However, this still represents a ROI (Return on Investment) of over 10%!
The audit for FY14 has yet to be completed but last spring, the website for the Office of Finance and Administration showed SCSU's FY 2014 Budget, which is reproduced below.
This budget predicted that SCSU would finish FY14 with a balanced budget. This budget also shows that FY13 ended with a surplus of $4,556,769. It is important to note that this surplus occurred despite a drop in FYE for FY13 of 6.3% (13,928 to 13,053). The audit report shows an increase of $18,000,000 so there is a pretty large discrepancy between the two numbers - something on the order of $13,443,231.
Additionally, the administration predicted a balanced budget for FY14, despite a 5.0% drop in FYE enrollment (when they were only planning on a 4% drop). The audit will not be made public until late this fall but I would bet that the total net assets will be larger (or at worst only slightly smaller than in FY13).
Last March, Vice President for Finance and Administration Tammy McGee presented an enrollment projection to the Budget Advisory Committee for FY15, which called for a 3.2% drop in enrollment that required cutting $3,600,000 from the budget. In an email to the campus community from President Potter on Thursday, August 27, 2014, he announced: "As I write this, we anticipate a tuition revenue decrease with a projected decline in enrollment of between 4 and 5% this fall" resulting in a " shortfall in our FY '15 budget estimated between $8-$10 million." While I was certainly never a math wiz, it is hard to understand how increasing the enrollment drop from 3.2% to at worst 5% will increase the deficit from $3,600,000 to between $8,000,000-$10,000,000. Even using the $8,000,000 number this represents an increase in the deficit of 122% for, at worst, a 56% increase in the drop in enrollment. This should make sense and it just doesn't.
On Friday, August 29, 2014 an article appeared in the St. Cloud Times entitled "St. Cloud State faces a potential 10M deficit." In the article, there is a quote (that is not in President Potter's email to the campus community) stating: "The university saw deficits of nearly $6 million in 2011 and $13 million in 2012, which led to program cuts and reductions in staff."
If you look at the annual reports reproduced above, in FY11 there was an increase of $10,900,000 and in FY12 an increase of $23,900,000. Clearly, some people can't read a balance sheet. One might assume that they either do not understand the complexity of financial reporting or distortion was their intent. You be the judge.
Posted Thursday, September 4, 2014 1:26 AM
Comment 1 by Bean Counter at 04-Sep-14 06:06 AM
SCSU "should" be a driving force of HONESTY, INTEGRITY and TRANSPARENCY...HIT
Sadly, as a bean counter, this continual exposure of "embellishment of facts" aka LIES along with the its partner in crime the St Cloud Times, is devastating not only to the City of St Cloud but to anyone who has just a little intelligence.
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Opening weekend at SCSU quote in the St Cloud Times regarding Move in Day arrests:
Not new, not alone
Finally, it bears repeating that such trouble during move-in weekend is not new here nor in other cities with big colleges.
For example, Mankato and Winona - Minnesota cities with state universities also holding move-in weekends - showed close to 50 calls involving loud parties, liquor violations and the like. And then there was Arizona State University in Tempe, where police made 392 arrests on Saturday night alone - 10 times as many as here.
Hey, wait, maybe there is a positive way to spin our numbers
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THESE IDIOTS EVEN TELL YOU THEY ARE SPINNING IT
HERE'S THE SPIN....
SCSU 17,000(maybe) STUDENTS= 223 ARRESTS
ASU (TEMPE AZ)HAS 60,000 STUDENTS= 392 ARRESTS
THE TIMES SAYS " TEN TIMES AS MANY ARRESTS IN TEMPE AT ASU"
THE MATH QUIZ CONTINUES.. WITH THE NEVER ENDING SPIN FROM THE TIMES THAT CONTINUES ITS ASSAULT ON:
HONESTY, INTEGRITY, TRANSPARENCY
And this is simply BACK TO THE BEGINNING (BASICS)
Can anyone wake the Public up to this nonsense?
Dayton: let's raise taxes again
According to Patrick Condon's article , Gov. Dayton stopped short of officially announcing more tax increases. Instead, he said that the Legacy Amendment might be an option he'd consider to pay for Minnesota's transportation needs:
The governor cited the 2008 Legacy Amendment, for which voters willingly approved a statewide sales tax increase to pay for spending on arts, outdoor recreation and water quality improvements, as potentially instructive to transportation boosters. 'It showed that people will dig into their pockets for things they consider priorities,' Dayton said.
That's Gov. Dayton's hint that he'll push for another tax increase instead of prioritizing existing transportation spending. Jeff Johnson took a more direct approach:
Johnson said he would redirect state money away from mass transit programs, including the planned Southwest light-rail line, which he said he would seek to cancel. Johnson said he also believes the state should do more borrowing to pay for transportation projects, and look for efficiencies at the state Department of Transportation.
We need more light rail like Minnesota's entrepreneurs need more tax increases and more regulations. Apparently, Gov. Dayton still frequently visits LaLaLand when not living in the Governor's Mansion:
Dayton criticized that last suggestion as 'just fanciful,' saying it would be impossible to come up with the kind of money that's needed.
Eliminating funding for the Southwest light rail project would free up tons of money that could be used to fill Minnesota's potholes and fix Minnesota's bridges. Spending a penny on the SWLRT is too much for that albatross.
That's a stinging indictment of Gov. Dayton's lack of priorities. He still hasn't figured out (or he doesn't care) that light rail is a waste of money. Gov. Dayton's 'let's just throw more money at it' approach to governing is what's wrong with this state. That mentality is causing growing businesses to move to or start in North Dakota, Utah and Texas instead of Minnesota.
Under Gov. Dayton's 'leadership', every Minnesotan's taxes have increased, thanks to all of the regressive taxes passed in the Dayton-DFL tax bill. Despite increased LGA and "historic investments in education", Minnesotans' property taxes still went up. Significantly.
That's before talking about how the Dayton-DFL budget has hurt job creation in Minnesota. In fact, it isn't difficult to make the case that job creation has ground to a halt in Minnesota and that a Dayton-DFL-caused deficit is heading our direction in February.
The only bright spot during Gov. Dayton's term in office was when the Republican legislature balanced Minnesota's budget without raising taxes. That led to the most prolific job growth of the Dayton administration. As Gov. Dayton's term comes to a close, job growth is disappearing, taxes are going up and businesses are leaving Minnesota.
That's what all-DFL governance has bought us. God help us.
Posted Thursday, September 4, 2014 2:17 AM
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Dayton admits MNsure was disaster
Appearing at a convention in Alexandria, Gov. Dayton admitted what Minnesotans knew a year ago. Gov. Dayton admitted that MNsure's rollout was a disaster . Unfortunately, he didn't admit that it's still a mess:
Gov. Mark Dayton called the troubled rollout of the MNsure insurance exchange the low point of his first term in a campaign appearance Wednesday, but embraced the program's successes in extending insurance coverage to those who historically struggled to get it.
'I want to apologize for the excessive burdens it's placed on you, your budgets and your people,' Dayton told a gathering of county officials. 'The problems that have afflicted the inception of MNsure are my biggest disappointment in my term as governor. It's got better, and it will continue to get better, but it still has a ways to go.'
Gov. Dayton still hasn't admitted that MNsure is still a disaster, instead couching that fact in weasel words like "it will continue to get better" and "it still has a ways to go."
Let's be clear. MNsure doesn't "still have a ways to go." It's an unmitigated disaster that's essentially unworkable. To use an old poker phrase, the only right way to throw this hand is away. Gov. Dayton and the DFL legislature spent more than $160,000,000 on MNsure's website. It didn't work. What's worse is that they put manual workarounds in place. This week, we discovered that they aren't working either :
When a new baby arrives, parents want the infant quickly added to their health insurance. But for 78 new moms in Dakota County this year, the process bogged down for months because of a change to Minnesota's new MNsure health insurance exchange.
For five months, county workers said they couldn't use the new system to add babies to their mom's coverage in Medical Assistance, the state's primary safety net health insurance program.
It gets more insulting:
Then, when state officials unveiled in June a work-around process for adding babies, county workers found the process usually took an hour or more per baby. Before MNsure, the job usually took about five minutes.
That isn't the worst of it. This is:
The trouble with babies points to a broader problem with the MNsure system. It remains a slow and difficult process for state, county and health exchange workers to record 'life events' for people who have obtained coverage through the new online marketplace for insurance.
Moms need coverage for new babies. Husbands and wives sometimes need to add a spouse to their policy. People move, so they need to provide notice of a new address. Income can change in ways that impact eligibility for government programs.
The MNsure system needs to be able to record all of these life events and others. But the labor-intensive process for doing so has led to a backlog.
The MNsure rollout was a disaster. The continuing difficulties people are experiencing indicate that MNsure is still a bureaucratic mess that's still tormenting families and county workers.
Nothing says things are getting noticeably better about MNsure. Nothing. It's time for Gov. Dayton and the DFL to admit that it's a disaster. It's time to scrap MNsure and start over on something that works.
Posted Thursday, September 4, 2014 2:48 AM
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ABM won't stop lying
This video is just another example of how Education Minnesota and the Alliance for a Better Minnesota can't resist lying about Republicans:
The "cutting education to pay for tax breaks for big corporations" storyline was used against Tom Emmer in 2010. Back then, KTSP and FactCheck.org rated that ad as false. That's because they're polite. I'll just state that they're lying. It's been proven false. Further, they knew it was false when they said it. That makes it a lie.
Like the DFL, ABM doesn't have a positive agenda. Admittedly, they've lied about Minnesota's economy, saying that Minnesota "is working again." They said that despite the fact that Minnesota's job creation has ground to a screeching halt, creating a pathetic 2,900 jobs this year. That's right. This year, not this month. That isn't a typo.
I wrote here that Gov. Dayton admitted that the MNsure rollout was a disaster, though he insists that it's improving with each day. I wrote this article to highlight the fact that MNsure will be a major headache for years to come. That isn't just my opinion. That's the conclusion DeLoitte reached in their investigation.
Yes, Jeff Johnson voted for some unpopular things. He didn't vote for "tax breaks for big corporations," though. That's part of ABM's web of lies. If they were forced to tell the truth, 90% of their content for their ads would disappear. The best way to determine if ABM is lying is to determine if their lips are moving. If their spinmeister's lips are moving, then it's almost a certainty that they're lying.
This is how bad MNsure still is:
During the assessment, 47 of the 73 sub-functions addressed were found either to be absent or not functioning as expected.
Two-thirds of the vital sub-functions either don't exist or don't work.
Gov. Dayton and the DFL can't stand up to ABM, either. That's because the DFL is funded by the same special interests that fund ABM. Specifically, the DFL is funded by Alida Messinger and the public employee unions. That's who funds ABM, too.
That means Gov. Dayton and the DFL can't call ABM out even if they wanted to. Then again, Gov. Dayton and the DFL don't want to because the only thing they care about is winning at all costs.
If that means breaking the law, the DFL is fine with that. In fact, the DFL has broken the law, after which Ken Martin, the chair of the DFL, insisted that breaking the law was " a distraction ":
DFL lawmakers disagreed with the board's ruling said that they are glad to put the matter to rest.
'Ultimately, it is best to set this distraction aside and allow our members to focus on governing,' DFL Party Chairman Ken Martin said.
It's worth noting that Ken Martin was an integral part of ABM before Alida Messinger announced that she'd picked him as the next DFL chairman after she pushed Brian Melendez out the door.
The best way to deal with ABM is to vote for the party with a pro-growth, positive agenda. Voting for the people ABM targets won't shut ABM up. It'll just tell them that ABM is wrong for Minnesota.
If you want government of, by and for the special interests that raise your taxes and spend money foolishly, vote for ABM-approved candidates. If you prefer a prosperous Minnesota that works for families and the small businesses found on Main Street, then vote against ABM-approved candidates.
Posted Thursday, September 4, 2014 4:31 AM
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MNsure doublespeak continues
This KSTP article includes this precious quote from Scott Leitz, MNsure's CEO:
"The one thing that we know is that the system will be better this fall than it was last fall," he said. "Progress has been made on the system, but I think anyone who will be signing on will also say the system isn't quite a perfect one."
Anyone using MNsure "will also say the system isn't quite a perfect one." That's understatement. Here's what DeLoitte's report said about MNsure's 'capabilities':
During the assessment, 47 of the 73 sub-functions addressed were found either to be absent or not functioning as expected.
That's just the tip of the iceberg:
The remaining 41 sub-functions need to be provided for the 2015 Open Enrollment either through changes/enhancements to the systems or through contingent means.
Here's how well those " contingent means " work:
Then, when state officials unveiled in June a work-around process for adding babies, county workers found the process usually took an hour or more per baby. Before MNsure, the job usually took about five minutes.
In other words, MNsure's "contingent means" are essentially worthless.
When Dayton ran for governor, he said he wanted to be known as 'the jobs governor'. He's failed at that. I'd argue that he's the 'incompetent governor' because everything he's touched has turned to manure.
We had a world class health insurance system. Thanks to the Dayton-DFL disaster, aka MNsure, it now takes months to do what used to take minutes to do.
"The system isn't quite a perfect one."
That's what Scott Leitz's gravestone should say, though it isn't difficult to picture Gov. Dayton saying something that ridiculous.
Meanwhile, Leitz says he's confident the whole MNsure enrollment process will be smoother than last year's rocky rollout.
Promising that things will be smoother than last fall's disaster isn't promising much. That just isn't that difficult.
What's needed is a governor that isn't afraid to tell President Obama Obamacare is a disaster. What we don't need is a wimpy governor that does whatever President Obama wants him to do. Thus far, Gov. Dayton has bought into Obamacare lock, stock and barrel. As a result, we've got MNsure, which is a total disaster.
"I think anyone who will be signing on will also say the system isn't quite a perfect one."
Posted Thursday, September 4, 2014 6:48 AM
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ABM is "liberal-leaning"?
According to this article , the Alliance for a Better Minnesota, aka ABM, is a "liberal leaning group." To be fair to the article, though, they took some pretty substantive swipes at ABM's attacks against Jeff Johnson:
"Tea Party Republican Jeff Johnson voted to cut education, so he could give millions in tax breaks to big corporations," the ad claims.
Contrary to what the ad claims, Johnson voted for an increase in K-12 education when he served in the Minnesota House, not a cut, according to final appropriations.
"I voted to increase education funding," Johnson said. "We do this in government all the time when the increase isn't as big as they wanted they say it was a cut."
Here's part of what Alisa Von Hagel, a professor of political science at the University of Wisconsin Superior, said about ABM's ad:
The attack ad in its entirety is not grossly misleading or horribly inaccurate when compared to other television advertisements voters are being inundated with this election cycle.
That isn't the same as saying it's a true ad. It doesn't even reach the point of being misleading. It's like saying 'Yeah, it's dishonest but it isn't as worthless as some of the vile crap that's out there.'
Here's something else that Dr. Von Hagel said about ABM's ad:
"The most egregious part of the ad is this connection between education cuts and tax breaks for corporations which is not necessarily a claim there is any factual basis to make," Von Hagel said.
Here's the filthy part of the ad. Jeff Johnson didn't cut K-12 spending. He voted to increase K-12 spending. He just didn't increase K-12 spending as much as Education Minnesota wanted.
Gov. Dayton and the DFL tripped over themselves to increase spending on K-12 to the level that Education Minnesota asked for. That isn't responsible government. That's government of, by and for the special interests that fund DFL campaigns.
Bill Glahn is onto something about the ad, too (H/T: Mitch Berg ):
Apparently the pejorative 'Tea Party Republican' must test particularly well with low information voters. Or, perhaps its use in the ad is a sign the Democrats are concerned about turning out their base in an off-year election.
Ms. Livermore makes the dubious claim that Johnson 'cut education by over $500 million' back in 2003, and then gave that money to corporations in 2005. Keep in mind that a similar ABM ad was judged 'Misleading' by Minnesota Public Radio (of all places) for making those exact same claims. [The bill Johnson voted for in 2003 actually increased (rather than cut) public school spending.]
No, the real lie in the ad comes from the 'appeal to authority' of having an ordinary 'classroom teacher' attack Johnson's education policy. According to her LinkedIn profile, Ms. Livermore served on the governing board of the teachers' union Education Minnesota from 2004 to 2007. [By the way, she spells the word 'education' incorrectly on her profile.]
Bill should cut Ms. Livermore some slack on the spelling. Chances are she attended a public school so what can you expect?
The point of the ad is to depict Ms. Livermore as just a concerned teacher. She definitely doesn't fit that description after serving on Education Minnesota's governing board.
This is just another bit of proof that ABM, which is the DFL's messaging center, isn't interested in informing voters. Their mission is to win voters over with whatever means are available. If that means lying or intentionally misleading, then that's what ABM will do.
Posted Thursday, September 4, 2014 10:55 AM
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Gov. Dayton's pathetic apology
Each afternoon, I receive a google alert to news involving Gov. Dayton. This afternoon's alert is filled with articles talking about Gov. Dayton apologizing for MNsure's failed rollout. The Miami Herald , the Kansas City Star and the Hilton Head Island Packet all ran with the AP article.
Here's what he told county workers gathered in Alexandria:
"I want to thank you for the tremendous assistance you and your county staffs provided to MNsure, and I want to apologize for the excessive burdens it's placed on you, your budgets and your people," Dayton said. Calling MNsure's rocky start his biggest disappointment so far, Dayton said, "It's got better, and it will continue to get better, but it still has a ways to go."
Without question, it's polite to apologize for that crisis. Unfortunately, that doesn't help families get health insurance in a timely fashion.
They don't need apologies. They need the old system back. When I say that, I'm not talking about health insurance companies denying people with pre-existing conditions coverage. I'm talking about the programs Minnesota had in place that worked beautifully.
There's no polite way of putting it. The Affordable Care Act, aka the ACA or Obamacare, was a major step backwards for Minnesotans. Possibly, it represents multiple steps backward from the pre-ACA standards. What's taking months in the Dayton/DFL/MNsure regime, it took minutes in the Pawlenty/pre-MNsure regime.
This highlights something important worthy of the voters' consideration. The number of things that are outright disasters during the Dayton administration dwarfs the number of things that were mismanaged during Gov. Pawlenty's 2 terms in office.
Whatever you thought of Gov. Pawlenty's policies, there's no debating whether the policies that were implemented were executed properly.
Comparatively speaking, on any given day, Gov. Dayton might be seriously uninformed on major issues. For instance, when he signed the budget that ended the government shutdown in 2011, Gov. Dayton said that he didn't know that Republicans had removed 2 provisions that he objected to. That means he could've signed the omnibus budget bills during the regular session and avoided the government shutdown.
Gov. Dayton claimed he didn't know that the Vikings stadium bill that he personally negotiated contained a provision that allowed the Vikings to make money by selling PSLs, aka Personal Seat Licenses, to season ticket holders. Every stadium that's been built over the last 15 years has that provision in it.
When Gov. Dayton visited FarmFest, he told farmers that he didn't know that the Tax Bill that he personally negotiated included a new farm equipment repair sales tax.
Gov. Dayton said that he didn't know MNsure had so many problems that were hurting Minnesotans. At what point do we say that Minnesota needs a governor who actually knows what's going on in his own administration? Gov. Dayton's ineptitude is frightening and it's unacceptable.
Mothers attempting to get insurance for their newborn children deserve better than what Gov. Dayton's been delivering.
Posted Friday, September 5, 2014 6:12 AM
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Pound a final nail in McCain-Feingold
Yesterday, I got an email alert about a lawsuit filed by the Center for Competitive Politics challenging the constitutionality of another provision of McCain-Feingold. Here's the heart of the matter:
The Independence Institute wishes to run two ads: one asking Colorado Senators Mark Udall and Michael Bennett to support a federal sentencing reform bill, and one asking citizens to contact Colorado Governor John Hickenlooper and urge him to initiate an audit of the Colorado Health Benefit Exchange. The McCain-Feingold law, along with a similar state statute, effectively prevents the group from raising money for the ads.
"This situation shows the damage to free speech caused by carelessly written campaign finance laws," said David Keating, president of CCP. "Instead of advocacy on an important public issue, there will be silence. That's unacceptable under the First Amendment, and is the reason why we filed this lawsuit."
Prior to the passage of Obamacare, McCain-Feingold was the worst legislation in the last half century. I can't even say that the intent behind McCain-Feingold was good. Its effect was to protect incumbents while limiting political speech.
There's nothing honorable about either thing.
Here's what McCain-Feingold does to issue advocacy:
Colorado and federal law treat speech about public issues as campaign speech whenever a candidate is mentioned in a broadcast ad within 60 days of the general election. Groups must either file public reports with personal details about donors who have provided funds for the ads, or refrain from speaking. The result is what First Amendment advocates call a "chilling" effect on advocacy, depriving the public of important speech about issues of public importance.
Here's why disclosure in these instances is frightening:
Donors and speakers have many reasons to protect their privacy. Some fear retaliation from government officials who disagree with them. Others fear physical harm or threats to themselves and their families, vandalism to their property, loss of jobs, or boycotts of their business if they support unpopular views.
Over half a century ago, the Supreme Court ruled in NAACP v. Alabama that not disclosing donors to issue advocacy groups was constitutionally protected. Imagine the fury that the KKK would've visited upon the people supporting the NAACP.
While the threats are different today, the threats are just as real. Instead of fearing the KKK, these days, issue advocacy groups have to worry about the Justice Department, the IRS and other agents representing weaponized government.
It's time to eliminate another disgusting part of McCain-Feingold. The sooner it's eliminated, the better.
Posted Friday, September 5, 2014 6:58 AM
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