The Free Press, Mankato, MN

Local News

December 10, 2010

Bills are coming due for recount

By Tim Krohn The Free Press

MANKATO — Area counties are waiting for thousands of dollars in compensation from the Tom Emmer camp for added costs associated with the governor’s race recount.

While the state provides a small payment based on the number of ballots county officials had to recount, larger bills are pending for Emmer’s camp, which requested a mass of paperwork from election officials.

Days after the election, Emmer representatives requested from all counties copies of polling place rosters, election day registration cards, voter applications, information about all election judges and more. The Dayton camp then requested that many counties also provide them copies.

“They just insisted they had to have the machine tapes right away,” said Patty O’Connor, Blue Earth County elections director.

“I sent bills for $800, of which Dayton paid and Emmer did not. I have requested at least three times, where’s my payment, and they’ve responded to nothing.”

Recently, Emmer’s recount attorney, Tony Trimble, has told counties to send the bills to the Republican Party for payment, O’Connor said.

“We spent a lot of hours getting them together. Probably 70-80 hours,” said Brown County Auditor Marlin Helget of the documents requested.

 Helget sent a bill for $1,441 to Emmer for reimbursement of time and copying costs.

“I certainly expect to get paid.”

County officials had to go through all the documents and black out any information that is by law confidential. “It hasn’t been any fun,” Helget said.

Watonwan County Auditor Don Kuhlman is the only area official that already got paid by Emmer’s campaign. Kuhlman called ahead to say he would deliver the documents the next day if they handed him a check. They did.

Kuhlman made two sets of 2,200 copies of documents. “We only had 4,282 voters, so we got more documents than we had voters.” The county spent about $1,700 on staff cost and copying charges.     

Some counties, including Le Sueur, held off on starting to collect or copy the documents until they got a pre-payment.

“We never sent any documents because we never got anything from the Emmer campaign,” said Carol Blaschko, elections administrator.

Martin County Auditor Jim Forshee said they started pulling documents together, but then stopped when it became unclear whether the documents would still be wanted or paid for. He said the county spent about $700 on the process.  

Waseca County spend about $2,000 on finding and copying documents.

All counties receive a 3-cent per ballot payment from the secretary of state to offset some of the ballot recounting costs. The amount from the state ranges from $128 in Watonwan County to $676 in Blue Earth County.

Kuhlman said the recount results should be reassuring for voters.

“I think the public can be confident in the system; the recount showed that. The machines are accurate,” Kuhlman said.

Helget said he resented party officials who tried to suggest major problems with how counties handled elections.

“The part that grinds me. They’re telling everyone that we election officials are incompetent and making all kinds of mistakes.”   

Forshee is just glad the process is over.

“Now I’m just waiting word (from the state) that we can take all the ballots and stuff sitting in my office and put them in storage.”

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