{"id":41200,"date":"2014-01-20T07:00:20","date_gmt":"2014-01-20T13:00:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=41200"},"modified":"2014-01-19T16:37:04","modified_gmt":"2014-01-19T22:37:04","slug":"dayton-administration-rules-are-for-peasants","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=41200","title":{"rendered":"Dayton Administration: “Rules Are For Peasants!”"},"content":{"rendered":"

The State Auditor confirmed <\/a>what this blog pointed out a year and change ago; Governor Dayton’s use of a state plane to haul campaign staff on junkets that either mixed official and campaign business, or involved no state business whatsoever, violated the law:<\/p>\n

At issue were three separate trips Dayton took using a Minnesota Department of Transportation (MnDOT) airplane. During the fall of 2012, in the run-up to that year\u2019s election, Dayton flew out of St. Paul for appearances in Willmar, Brainerd and Bemidji. On each trip, Dayton combined official state business with political events; a subsequent flight from Bemidji to International Falls was made for purely political purposes. On that flight, Dayton\u2019s travel companions on the plane included Julie Hottinger, a campaign staffer who is not employed by the state.<\/p>\n

Using the plane to transport Dayton and Hottinger for a political event was determined to be a violation of both state statute and MnDOT policy. According to the code of ethics for executive branch employees, state funds, resources or property cannot be deployed for \u201cany \u2026 use not in the interest of the state.\u201d The audit report spells out certain exceptions to that law, including security detail personnel, who will travel with the governor regardless of the nature of an event.<\/p>\n

In this instance, Dayton\u2019s staff argued that the use of the official plane was a matter of security, telling OLA investigators that the MnDOT aircraft gives the administration staff greater control over equipment and choice of pilots.<\/p>\n

The report recommendations find that the state-issued plane should not be used if the governor is traveling only for a political reason, or is bringing political staffers. But, for cases when a governor plans to attend both official and political functions, the current law lacks clarity, and the OLA recommends that the Legislature take up the issue to spell out its legality.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn the meantime,\u201d the report states, \u201cwe recommend that Governor Dayton encourage his office staff and campaign staff to schedule his travel in ways that strictly limit the use of a state airplane to attend political events.\u201d<\/p>\n

In an official response penned on behalf of Dayton, chief of staff Tina Smith said the state\u2019s paying for Hottinger\u2019s travel resulted from \u201can error and will not happen again.\u201d Smith also points out that the Dayton campaign had intended all along to split costs for the trips that combined both public and political activities, and reimbursed the state fully for the trip from Bemidji to International Falls.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

As always with the DFL – with the damage long done, Governor Dayton apologized.\u00a0<\/p>\n

How many passes will the DFL get when it comes to cheating on state campaign laws?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The State Auditor confirmed what this blog pointed out a year and change ago; Governor Dayton’s use of a state plane to haul campaign staff on junkets that either mixed official and campaign business, or involved no state business whatsoever, violated the law: At issue were three separate trips Dayton took using a Minnesota Department […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[119,2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-41200","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-election-integrity","category-minnesota-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41200","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=41200"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41200\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":41210,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41200\/revisions\/41210"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=41200"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=41200"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=41200"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}