Aaron Klemz wrote:
Pat Anderson is not an attorney for the State, nor is she charged with speaking to the legality of campaign literature. Even if she were, she is not in a position to adjudicate the legality of ANYTHING, she is only offering her opinion, for what it is worth. In my opinion, it is worth very, very little.
Carol Becker writes:
I'm not an attorney either but a plain reading of the law seems pretty obvious. State law helps clarify where the line is in what is a simple communication from a government to a citizen and what is government-financed campaign materials. I've clipped the relevant portion of law below. The law says that literature is illegal when it "tend(s) to attribute the publication to an individual or groups of individuals instead of the political subdivision." In looking at the piece done by Rybak, it has two pictures of him on the front page and a graphical header that says "Minneapolis News from Mayor RT Rybak" with RT Rybak in capital letters and a Rybak signature which leads you to believe that it is coming from him personally. It doesn't take three years of law school to figure out this one. Now I don't think Rybak was sitting there twiddling his Snidley Whiplash moustache but it is clearly way over the line legally. For political junkies, this was the same violation that Jesse Ventura had with the unclaimed propety debacle back in 1999.
And as my sister the cop has pointed out to me in a very loud voice repeatedly, the amount of money that was spent on this piece would have paid the salary of one cop for a year. At a time when all we have heard is that Rybak's hands have been tied because of budget difficulties, it seems a very poor choice of expenditures.
Carol Becker Longfellow
471.68 Distribution of publications by any county or city.
Subd. 3. Pictures prohibited. When a statutory or home rule charter city, county, town, school district, metropolitan or regional agency, or other political subdivision of this state, issues a report or other publication for public distribution to inform the general public of the activities of the political subdivision, the report or publication must not include pictures of elected officials nor any other pictorial or graphic device that would tend to attribute the publication to an individual or groups of individuals instead of the political subdivision. Directories of public services provided by the political subdivision are exempt from this subdivision.
HIST: 1949 c 438 s 1,2; 1973 c 123 art 5 s 7; 1992 c 592 s 11
Copyright 2004 by the Office of Revisor of Statutes, State of Minnesota.
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