Gary Gross, writing in the maddeningly inscrutable “Examiner”, recounts a trip to a Stearns County Commission (St. Cloud) meeting last May by Secretary of State Mark Ritchie.

At that meeting, Ritchie handed out an op-ed whose chase was cut to with this money quote:

“Minnesota’s counties currently do an excellent job of administering fair and open elections across a state with significant geographic challenges. The lack of any significant voter irregularity for decades supports this assertion.”

Clearly, the purpose of the piece was to campaign against the Voter ID Amendment.

Which is great – provided that Ritchie was working on his campaign time. Not his SOS time.

But according to a Data Practices request on the subject, the trip was paid for as part of his SOS gig:

A Data Practices Act request was sent to Ritchie’s office asking whether Secretary Ritchie had been reimbursed by taxpayers for the trip. Bert Black gathered the information and responded to the Data Practices Act request. Here’s his response:

 

Thank you for your follow-up message. The staff person in our Fiscal Division who has these records was out yesterday, so I had to wait until today to get the information you requested.

 

Since the trip of May 15, 2012 to Waite Park, Minnesota was part of the Secretary’s official duties, Secretary Ritchie was reimbursed for mileage. The reimbursement was for 148 miles at the standard rate of $0.555 per mile, for a total of $82.14.

 

Best regards,

 

Bert Black

 

Office of the Secretary of State

 

And that is just plain unethical, if not illegal. (And when I say “if not illegal”, I’m really saying “I don’t know that it’s not illegal”).