The Who? What? Where?
By Mitch Berg
Joe Doakes from Como Park writes:
Somebody got fired from a government panel that nobody knows existed, let alone what they do, and naturally it’s the Republicans’ fault.
Proof that we have too much government.
Joe Doakes
Como Park
Naturally.
And when King Banaian’s Sunset Commission goes into effect, the Strib will refer to all of the sunsetted boards and bodies “layoffs”. Mark my words.
January 6th, 2012 at 9:25 am
I honestly don’t know how I will survive without the Legislative-Citizen Commission on Minnesota Resources. I mean, they are resources. From Minnesota. If this shit keeps up, next thing you know we’ll be building a new electric power plant. Makes my skin crawl.
January 6th, 2012 at 10:44 am
“next thing you know we’ll be building a new electric power plant”
That runs on electricity because coal is so dirty! 😉
January 6th, 2012 at 11:50 am
Electricity running on electricity is a new “green” initiative. In theory it works and produces no by-products. All we need is a commitment – for the children, of course.
January 6th, 2012 at 11:55 am
As far as I can tell this Thornton person was a staffer and not a citizen member of the commission. If you read between the lines, say, here — http://www.conservationminnesota.org/news/headlines/keeping-the-lccmr-pure/
— the commission was labeled “non-partisan” but was so in name only. In fact it existed to hand out money to environmental groups favored by the DFL constituents. Since the GOP took over, the Commission has attempted to change the way this money pipeline works, and has met with resistance from the “non-partisan” staffer.
January 6th, 2012 at 12:02 pm
IANAEL but I did read the statute governing the makeup of the Legislative-Citizen Commission on Minnesota Resources which you can find here:
https://www.revisor.mn.gov/statutes/?id=116P.05. Hopefully I can shed some light on the relevant legal issues.
In a nutshell what it says is this – the seventeen member commission includes seven citizen members, five appointed by the governor, one appointed by the Senate Subcommittee on Committees of the Committee on Rules and Administration, and one appointed by the speaker of the house. It appears those who appoint their respective citizen members (the governor, Senate Subcommittee on Committees of the Committee on Rules and Administration, and the Speaker of the House) are each the “appointing authority” for their respective appointees. Each citizen members serves a two-year term but they can be removed by their appointing authority for cause but the statute doesn’t define the process beyond that.
The article doesn’t say who the appointing authority was for Susan Thorton but looking at the list of current members, she appears to have been replaced by Jeff Broberg (based on the timing of the start of his two-year term) so I think it’s safe to assume that she was appointed by the Speaker of the House.
http://www.lccmr.leg.mn/Members/members.html
My reading of this then is that the Speaker would be the appointing authority for Susan Thorton and have the power under the statute to fire her but only for cause. Reading this clause in relation to the rest of governing statute, it appears that the board is expected to maintain a certain level of independence (e.g. the citizen members are first vetted based on qualifications laid out in the statute by a separate group who recommends candidates to the respective appointing authority rather than the appointing authority being able to come up with their own candidates) so Zellers would need to have a reason to fire her and I don’t think that policy disagreements alone would be sufficient to meet the “for cause” requirement.
If there is someone more familiar with employment law in Minnesota or who knows of another statute that may also affect this, I’ll be happy to revise my opinion accordingly.
January 6th, 2012 at 12:14 pm
I just realized that I may have misunderstood a detail in the story. I thought that Nancy Thornton was a citizen member of the commission (which my analysis was based on) but it appears she was an employee who worked for the commission in which case the above analysis is probably not applicable. The statute doesn’t really say who can fire employees or the process and I’ll defer to my colleagues who are more familiar with employment law on that score.
My apologies for any confusion I may have created.
January 6th, 2012 at 12:53 pm
The Legislative Citizen Commission on Minnesota Resources is reviewing the 2nd law of thermodynamics to see if it needs to be modified or perhaps eliminated altogether to allow the LCCMR meet its legislatively mandated goals.
January 6th, 2012 at 3:17 pm
“one appointed by the Senate Subcommittee on Committees of the Committee on Rules and Administration”
You can’t make up such a thing as that. I dare you to try.