Acting Republican Party chair Kelly Fenton released the fully-digested list of Republican Party debts this morning.
From the email, which went to State Central Committee activists:
In addition, from the email, Fenton notes:
In addition to the amounts above, there are two major considerations that must be acknowledged. First, several law firms did considerable work in late 2010 on the Emmer-Dayton recount. These law firms claim they are owed approximately $719,000. The Party’s position has been that those obligations belong to a separate corporation set up in 2010 to fund the recount. At least some of the law firms are claiming the obligations belong to the Party. We are not acknowledging these bills as Party obligations, but are reviewing the claims with attorneys.
The other consideration is a request from the receiver in the Tom Petters receivership to recover funds contributed by Petters to the RPM in the amount of $75,000. Again, we are not acknowledging that as a Party obligation at this point pending legal review.
Although the last $800K of that debt is in question, expect the media to roll all of that into a nice, round “RPM owes $2 million” headline.
Yeah, that sounds like a lot of work – just in time for the State Central Committee meeting tomorrow in Saint Cloud.
My opinion – and I’m not a State Central delegate, so that’s all it is?
- The Executive Committee – the various heads of the Congressional District units – need to take a much more active role in overseeing the activities of the Chair, Deputy Chair and Treasurer.
- The State Central Committee needs to stop acting as a rubber-stamp body – even if it means asserting its means to do so at the meeting tomorrow. The operations of the MNGOP have tended – in my experience, anyway – to be exceptionally top-down, which is perhaps fitting for an organization whose last four chairs (Cooper, Eibensteiner, Carey and Sutton) have been business executives in their pre-party lives.