"Sweetheart, Get Me Re-Write. They've Indicted the Donut Dunker."
Black, Eric
"Sweetheart, Get Me Re- Write. They've Indicted the Donut Dunker." by Eric Black America, to paraphrase a report I wrote in the fourth grade about Mexico, is a land of many contrasts. People in...
...Big, smelly scandals, and plenty of them...
...The indictments, which were handed down in October 1981, received front-page play in the Minneapolis Tribune...
...After the wedding the young man suddenly was promoted to the $34,000-a-year job as general manager of maintenance at O'Hare airport...
...They were dismissed three months later, but not before both politicians had been arraigned, booked and fingerprinted, had their mugshots taken, and spent an afternoon in the Hennepin county jail...
...But others, whose cynicism runs deep and who know I never kid around, believe they see an explanation...
...Roti's kin, as of last November, had annual salaries totaling $350,992...
...Later he decided to have all of the employees at the agency in question take tests to determine whether they were qualified for their jobs...
...He replied: "He's my soninlaw...
...The background and details of Petty's alleged false statement are awfully convoluted, so I will spare you from them...
...Suffice it to say that if it wasn't quite as minor a misstatement as the one that resulted in Carpenter's indictment, it was close...
...They're doing a day's work for a day's pay...
...This "false campaign statement" constituted the first count 'of her indictment...
...Deputy Police Chief Leonard Brucciani, when confronted with the facts, admitted that he had told the officers working the game not to tag or tow the alderman's car...
...But Minnesota is suffering from a long-standing scandal shortage that shows no sign of easing...
...Another big Minnesota story broke in November 1980...
...An improper campaign inducements rap is also a grocs misdemeanor...
...And more than once some of the elected officials had lent their passes to friends, who brought their own guests to play on the courses...
...An outraged neighbor tipped off the press, the story made page one, and the next thing anyone knew Nimmerfroh's shocking abuse of office was the subject of this denunciation by Alderman Mark Kaplan: "He makes city government look crooked and that reflects on everybody in city government...
...For investigative reporters, March in Minnesota was a washout...
...The grand jurors nailed Petty for one false statement and one count of divulging that Carpenter was under investigation by the state Ethical Practices Board, a misdemeanor...
...Paul...
...So widespread was the graft and incompetence that when the tavern operators/journalists found one honest cop who not only wasn't on the take but attempted to perform an honest inspection, it was page one news...
...He paid for the extra water, about $ 55 worth...
...In the next month, however, two events occurred that will give you an idea of the sort of thing that inspires outrage around Minneapolis and St...
...A state senator who received a full-time salary from the Associated General Contractors, used his position to further all the pro-management, pro-construction bills he could and to defeat most of the pro-labor legislation that came along...
...It is illegal in Minnesota to offer voters anything of value in exchange for political support...
...When I tell the story of Elsa Carpenter's indictment to friends from other cities, some of them just laugh and assume I am kidding around...
...He's doing a good job...
...We try harder...
...The sum kicked back to Musto and his co-defendant was over $700,000...
...To really thrive, this group needs political scandals...
...At the beginning of the month, New Jersey's senior U.S...
...That's an answer you would neverget in Minnesota...
...The park board voted unanimously to appoint a subcommittee to recommend a way to revise the policy in order to stop this abuse...
...The deputy police chief who allowed the alderman to park illegally acknowledged the seriousness of his transgression and begged for forgiveness...
...Low prices, high volume...
...But in brazen defiance of the law, Carpenter allowed some of her supporters to give a party, at which things of value such as coffee, tea, and actual ROLLS were profligately d istributed to the public in a bald-faced attempt to buy votes...
...In the middle of March, William Musto, a 36year veteran of the New Jersey legislature, was convicted of racketeering, extortion, and wire fraud...
...Actually, in a 1979 special election, a woman had been elected to serve out the unexpired term of her late husband, who had been a state senator from northeast Minneapolis...
...An official of the governor's manpower office alleged that two people, both of them members of the governor's DFL party, were hired for state jobs after being recommended by the governor's office and that the two were hired even though, in this official's opinion, there were more qualified applicants available...
...After a lengthy undercover investigation, using hidden cameras and surveillance vehicles, the special WCCO-TV 1-Team showed Minneapolis housing inspectors taking long lunch and coffee breaks, padding their mileage claims, doing personal errands on city time, and generally NOT WORKING HARD AT ALL...
...In mid-month, the paper broke another scandal wide open...
...The reaction: "This waste of taxpayer's dollars on persons of this caliber is fantastic and bewildering," said a letter to the editor of the Star capturing the general sense of public outrage...
...Therefore, Carpenter's statement that, if elected, she would be the the first woman state senator from Minneapolis, was (gasp) incorrect...
...But one sub-species for which the so-called good life in Minnesota is not so good is the investigative reporter...
...Back to Chicago in January 1978: After three months of operating a tavern called the Mirage with the help of hidden cameras and secret identities, a team of investigative reporters from the Chicago Sun-Times published photos and accounts of bribes solicited and accepted by the vast majority of the inspectors sent in to check out the place...
...Those are circumstances that readily lend themselves to political abuse...
...minutes before his colleagues would have expelled him for his conviction of bribery charges arising from the FBI's Abscam probe...
...People in all parts of the country may watch the same TV shows and eat the same fastfood hamburgers, but some aspects of regional identities are too deeply rooted for even the combined power of the Ewing family and Big Macs to overcome...
...But when I would breathlessly call my editors to describe the story, they'd reply, "So what...
...The horrid truth was that at the time of the mailing, Carpenter's campaign chest held more than $2,375...
...Those who didn't solicit bribes simply overlooked blatant code violations because they didn't take the time to do even a cursory inspection...
...Even the slimiest, most festering of scandals get old when they are coming down the pike at a rate of three a month...
...The Minnesota investigative reporter has the advantage of writing for a readership with an astonishingly low threshold for indignation...
...I'll guarantee you, it isn't going to happen again...
...For example, as soon as the golf pass story broke, the Star and Tribune's editorial cartoonist weighed in with a cartoon of a greedy, leering elected official and his golf clubs being carried on a throne by four overburdened taxpayers...
...The Star editorial noted that the jobs "are unclassified, which means that no civil service tests are required and no specific qualifications must be met to be employed...
...Accounts differ as to whether Nimmerfroh or the men actually hooked the hose up to a nearby hydrant, but without question, the chief did use the hose to fill the pond...
...The charges stemmed from Musto's habit of accepting kickbacks from contractors who received building contracts from Musto in his capacity as mayor of Union City, New Jersey...
...When asked about the propriety of his son-inlaw's rapid ascension through the ranks, Roti did not offer to have his protege take a test to prove he was qualified for the job...
...The grand jurors decided that there was probable cause to believe that Bontempo, 81, had been paid $115,000 over the period 1974-1981 for his services as chief of security for the city water supply and that Bontempo had lived in Florida during most of that period...
...Consider the following juicy episodes that occurred during March alone...
...But to no avail...
...The fire, plumbing, building, electrical, ventilation, and liquor inspectors, plus one city clerk, took bribes ranging from $10 to $150 to overlook fire and health hazards at the Mirage...
...The merest whiff of impropriety and the press, public, and prosecuters swarm over the miscreant like flies on organic fertilizer...
...He's qualified...
...That dread word appeared in news story after news story and put Perpich on the defensive...
...The highest-paid Roti relative on the city payroll was a son-in-law who had been a municipal painter before marrying Roti's daughter...
...Minnesota journalists are a cursed lot, doomed to inhabit a state in which tax dollars stand a pretty decent chance of being spent for the purpose for which they are intended, elections have a high likelihood of being won by the candidates who get the most votes, and public employees, more often than not, show up at the office on workdays...
...Plainly stung by the allegations, Perpich appointed a three-member panel to investigate...
...In fact, before the end of August, she needs $2,375 for brochures and lawn signs...
...We read enviously about chicanery in other states...
...Making a false campaign statement is a gross misdemeanor, punishable by up to a year in prison and a $1,000 fine...
...That's good for the reporter—and what's more important, it's good for the citizens, too...
...Chicago, the New Jersey of municipalities, offers an interesting contrast...
...While the scandals may be minor and sometimes exaggerated, at least they're not ignored...
...Last August, as Minneapolis fire chief Clarence Nimmerfroh was planning a big lawn party at his home, he realized that the water level was down in the artificial pond he owns jointly with some neighbors...
...The grand jurors or the prosecutor must have been fierce backers of the Democratic Farmer Labor Party (the DFL is sort of Minnesota's version of Democrats, only more so...
...Two weeks later, two of the inspectors spotlighted in the I-Team investigation were fired, and eight others were suspended...
...The system is debased when government starts to become an employment agency for friends and friends of friends," the Minneapolis Star editorialized...
...The second count of the indictment, also an alleged false campaign statement, was based on another Carpenter mailing that stated: "But in order for Elsa to represent us, she needs money immediately...
...In the bloom of my idealistic youth, when I was a reporter in Arkansas, I frequently happened upon what I thought were great conflict-of-interest stories...
...So, after checking with the city water department, Nimmerfroh had some of his men bring a city fire hose to his house...
...As March was ending, a grand jury indicted Newark Mayor Kenneth Gibson, Newark City Council President Earl Harris, and former Councilman Michael Bontempo on 141 counts of conspiracy, fraud, misconduct in office, and theft by deception...
...The allegations can be summarized roughly as follows: The Republican candidate, Elsa Carpenter, sent out a letter that said: "Don't miss the opportunity to elect Elsa Carpenter the first woman to represent Minneapolis in the State Senate...
...This is part of the secret of the state's antiseptic politics...
...A Minneapolis alderman attending a sports event had been allowed to park his personal car in a no-parking zone...
...There were absolutely no scandals of any kind...
...The city's payroll boasts 16 relatives of Alderman Fred B. Roti...
...senator, the formerly Honorable Harrison Williams, resigned in disgrace scant Eric Black is a reporter for the Minneapolis Star and Tribune...
...A state official accused the governor's office of the sin of "cronyism...
...The third count alleged that Carpenter had offered "improper campaign inducements...
...That's one of the things about Chicago graft," said Zay Smith, one of the reporters who worked on the story...
...My adopted home state of Minnesota, for example, offers a lifestyle for cross-country skiers, Lutherans, grain-dealers, and indoor baseball fans that's hard to match...
...This suggests one reason why the Chicagos and New Jerseys of this world are not always heaven for the investigative reporter: virtue becomes the news because sin is so familiar...
...Partisanship, they say...
...We protect our sources, follow up leads, ask the tough questions...
...In early April, the Minneapolis Star and Tribune revealed that a city park board policy allowing a small number of elected officials and their guests to buy discount season passes for the use of municipal golf courses had been abused...
...The chairman of the House Banking Committee accepted a "consulting" job with a Little Rock bank, and so on...
...The next week, the head of the inspections department was suspended because, according to the city coordinator, he should have known about the abuses...
...New Jersey, for example, seems to offer what amounts to an affirmative action program for investigative journalists...
...When asked by reporters if he could defend this, Roti did not suggest that an independent panel investigate...
...or "That's been going on for years and everybody already knows it...
...What was the root of the problem...
...The jobs in question paid $16,558 and $14,700 annually...
...But if that were true, how can they explain the fact that Carpenter's victorious DFL opponent, Eric Petty, was indicted by the same grand jury...
...In late summer of 1977, a scandal rocked the administration of then-Governor Rudy Perpich...
...Before being incarcerated, Carpenter's belt was confiscated, presumably so she wouldn't hang herself...
...Instead, he replied: "What's there to defend...
...Petty, who had a cold, was not allowed to keep his handkerchief...
...Another example of high crimes and misdemeanors in the Gopher State: After a hotly contested 1980 race for a state senate seat from Minneapolis, both candidates were indicted by a Hennepin County grand jury for alleged violations of Minnesota's Fair Campaign Practices Act...
Vol. 14 • June 1982 • No. 4
