News & Articles

Two weeks ago, I wrote about the superintendent’s wife screening school board candidates for the Duluth Federation of Teachers endorsement. While writing that story, I visited DFT offices on Central Entrance and asked DFT President Bernie Burnham for a copy of their conflict of interest policy. First she said she didn’t know if they had one, and then she said she would get back to me.

After a week passed without Burnham getting back to me, I called her and left a message reiterating my request for the conflict of interest policy.
Four more days passed. I heard nothing. On August 25, I drove back up to the DFT offices. When I rang the doorbell (their offices are locked), Bernie Burnham answered. I repeated my request for the conflict of interest policy. Burnham disappeared and after some delay returned with a sheet of paper that she had printed out from the IRS’s website entitled, “Purpose of Conflict of Interest Policy.” The paper advised nonprofit organizations that they should have a conflict of interest policy. I already knew that. That was why I wanted to see the DFT’s. But apparently this was all I was going to get.

I told Burnham that I also wanted to see the DFT’s federal 990 forms for 2014, 2015, and 2016, as well as their tax exempt filing documents. The IRS requires nonprofits to provide these documents “immediately” to any citizen who requests them in person.
“You know, you shouldn’t just show up,” Burnham told me.
I laughed. “I can certainly just show up. That’s what you’re supposed to do.” It would be a little hard to request documents in person if you weren’t allowed to go to where the documents were.
“I’m not getting them right now, but I’ll see if I can get them.” Burnham held the door open and indicated that I should leave, and so I did. The Duluth Federation of Teachers really didn’t seem to be taking the law very seriously at all.

DFT uses third-party website to find DFT documents

But wait! Less than two hours later, Bernie Burnham emailed copies of the DFT’s 990 forms for 2013, 2014, and 2015 to the Reader. “2016 is not available yet,” she wrote. Nor could she provide me with the tax exempt filing documents. “Our organization was formed in 1945,” she wrote. “Therefore, I do not have a copy...easily available. Perhaps you would like to go directly to the IRS and attain it from them.”
Perhaps. Or perhaps I would have liked for the DFT to look a little harder and supply it to me, as the law prescribed.
In reading the email string accompanying Burnham’s message, I was struck by the unusual process she had used to locate the 990s. It appeared that she had called somebody right after I left, and this person had logged onto a commercial third-party service called Guidestar to find them. This was unusual because...well, because they were the DFT’s 990s. Even if they didn’t have another scrap of paperwork in the place, you’d think they would have their own 990s.

Burnham went on to suggest that I myself should start using Guidestar to get 990s. As it turns out, I do use Guidestar. I also use another website, the Foundation Center. In fact, I found the DFT’s 990s two weeks ago on the Foundation Center, when I wrote my first article. I requested the same forms from the DFT directly because I wanted to see if the two versions matched, as they don’t always. Not that I should have to explain myself.

So, final score. The DFT gave me their 990s, but not immediately. Being generous, we’ll call that request met. They did not provide their tax-exempt filing documents and apparently never intend to. They did not provide their conflict of interest policy and apparently never intend to. We’ll call those two requests unmet.

The most frustrating thing, as I noted in my last column, is that on the DFT’s 990 forms they themselves state they will provide these documents to the public “upon request.” The 990 form further states: “The organization regularly and consistently monitors and enforces compliance with the conflict of interest policy by an annual review by the executive board.” Really? It does? So why is it so hard for me to get a copy?

In their continued noncompliance with the law, the DFT leads me to believe that they have never read their own tax documents and do not understand their own policies.

The Corning Museum of Glass, Corning, New York

Death of Gunnar Birkerts

On August 15, famed Modernist architect Gunnar Birkerts passed away in his Massachusetts home at the age of 92. In a career spanning more than 60 years, Birkerts designed dozens of buildings around the world, including the distinctive ore-boat-shaped Duluth Public Library, which received a brief mention in his New York Times obituary.
Birkerts’s Duluth library was controversial from the beginning. He designed it in the late 1960s, but more than a decade passed before construction began. Various factions in the city fought it for years, objecting to its strange appearance and the way it blocked the view of the historic Union Depot, but in the end Birkerts’s supporters prevailed. The library opened for business in 1980. Even today, there are plenty of people who dislike it, to the point that some of them seem to take its very existence as a personal insult to their eyeballs. (There are also people who like it, but they don’t seem to be quite as vocal.)

I interviewed Mr. Birkerts in 2015, when the city was considering tearing the library down. For a 90-year-old man, he sounded lively and alert. Just one year before, he had finished the final building of his career: a massive national library in his native Latvia, nicknamed the Castle of Light. My phone call was the first he had heard about anyone wanting to destroy the Duluth library. He was disappointed. 

“I would say that’s a little bit their loss, because my buildings have become collector’s items around the country,” he told me. “That’s one of my favorites, too, the Duluth Library, because it has the metaphor and symbolism and all these things that I like to work with, and so it’s sort of an expression of time and also my thinking at the time. So I’m sorry….If you live long, you see your buildings go, disappear before you do. It’s terrible!” He laughed.

I asked him how he had developed his idea for the library. “The metaphor was understood that since Duluth is really on the lake there, that this was sort of a metaphor of the ore boat that you have anchored, running on the lake. It was a metaphorical presentation, and also it was a building that was expressive in terms of direction. Duluth is a stretched-out city, and the city extends way out. And so that curve on the front suggested dynamics, you know, that it really is kind of relating to the rest of the city.” 

After my article appeared, Birkerts mailed me a postcard of the Corning Museum of Glass in Corning, New York, which he had designed. “John!” he wrote in a spiky scrawl. “Enjoyed your writing! Could be the first step to PULITZER.” That seems unlikely, but receiving a compliment from one of the last great names in Modernist architecture made my day. I’m glad I had a chance to speak with him.

As for the library…

So what is going on with the library? Ever since the Ness Administration shelved their plans for a new one, everything has been in a holding pattern. The city continues to make fixes as necessary to keep the building functional, but everything continues to age. All of the building’s major systems—electrical, mechanical and ventilation—are suffering from decades of deferred maintenance, and all of them need to be replaced. The last estimate I heard for how much this would cost was $20 million—half the price of a new library, but a huge amount of money nonetheless.

The Larson administration, at this point, has said little about their plans for the library. The mayor has given no indication that she wants to tear it down, but neither has she said much about renovating it. The city has set aside no money in anticipation of future work at the library, so anything that is done will undoubtedly require the city to bond for the money.

On August 22, Director of Public Administration Jim Filby Williams told the library board of directors that the city’s ability to fund a library renovation would hinge, in large part, on the outcome of the mayor’s proposal to institute a half-percent local sales tax dedicated for streets. If voters approve the sales tax increase, the city will be able to generate upwards of $7 million annually for streets; if voters do not approve it, the city will have to find money for streets in other parts of an already lean budget, and things like library renovations will undoubtedly be deferred again.

The mysterious resignation of Katie Bobich

When 24-year-old Katie Bobich was hired as the city administrator of Chisholm back in February, it had to be a great thrill for her. Recently graduated from college and with only a little practical experience in city administration, she suddenly found herself making $75,000 a year on the economically depressed Iron Range. Of course, working in Chisholm meant she would have to put up with the likes of City Councilor Kevin Scaia (I’ve written about him stalking people on Facebook) and his brother, Mayor Todd Scaia (I’ve written about his vindictive treatment of critics), but for that kind of money you could put up with a lot. 

Well, for six months, anyway. On August 9, 2017, with no warning, Katie Bobich resigned from the city of Chisholm. A letter from her attorney that was mailed to the mayor and city council stated that Bobich was resigning immediately and “In the circumstance, a 90-day notice period is not applicable.” With her resignation, Bobich became the sixth city administrator to cycle through Chisholm in three years.

So what is this mysterious “circumstance” that drove Bobich to quit a dream job in Chisholm? Nobody’s talking on the record. As of press time, phone messages and emails that I left for Bobich, her attorney, and Mayor Scaia were not returned. Stay tuned on this one. It could get ugly.