Welcome back to The Flyover, your daily digest of important, overlooked, and/or interesting Minnesota news stories.
Stay in touch
Sign up for The Flyover newsletter
Food Fraud Ringleader Attempts Last-Minute Image Rehab
Aimee Bock, executive director of Feeding Our Future, has already lost in the court of law; last year a federal jury found her guilty of wire fraud, bribery, and stealing $1.9 million in funds for herself.
But there’s still another court to woo: the court of public opinion. In several recent interviews Bock seems to be trying to reframe herself as a whistleblower and a scapegoat.
“I remain the only person in this state that identified fraud and said, ‘You know what? These invoices are fake. These claims are fraudulent.’ And I was ignored,” she tells Joey Peters of Sahan Journal. “Each and every person that committed fraud did so knowing they were committing fraud. To blame me for their choices is unfair.”
It’s unclear what kind of tip-giving she was responsible for as the founder of the nonprofit enabling the crime, but she tells Jeffrey Meitrodt at the Star Tribune that prosecutors found all kinds of evidence for their case when they raided her home—hey, that is not how whistleblowing works!
“It’s interesting to me that it has only been the Somali community that has been indicted,” she tells Peters, after placing blame on two Somali employees who worked under her. “I think it’s interesting that I’m the only white person.”
Welp! Bock will face sentencing Thursday. While her lawyers are angling for three years in prison, prosecutors are asking for 50.
We’re Horrible Losers! Twin Cities Parks Fail to Win Gold.
Trust for Public Land’s 2026 city park rankings are out, and Minneapolis and St. Paul both did pretty well, ranking third and fourth respectively. That’s not bad! But it’s also not No. 1.
The data compiled for the ranking is pretty interesting. In both of the Twin Cities 99% of residents live within a 10-minute walk to a park. Both spend over twice the national average of $154 per person on parks, and both score A's for offering amenities like basketball hoops, splash pads, and bathrooms.
But ultimately Washington, D.C., and Irvine, California, outranked us. Where did we fail? Equity. “In Minneapolis, residents in neighborhoods of color have access to 28% less park space per person than the city’s average neighborhood and 59% less than those in white neighborhoods,” the report reads. In St. Paul those numbers aren’t great either: 32% and 42%.
Still, Minneapolis has made some major improvements recently, and we may score higher in the future. TFPL admits its scoring isn't perfect, either. “ParkScore calculates the equity score by using the geographical distribution of parkland and fails to account for how much money is spent on different parks or the quality of the programming,” Susan Du at the Star Tribune points out. That means neither the $50 million spent transforming North Commons Park nor does the soon-to-open North Side mega music venue, Upper Harbor Terminal, count toward Minneapolis’s score.
E-ZPass Is E-Z to Take Advantage Of
Almost half the the cars using E-ZPass lanes aren’t authorized to do so, a new report from MnDOT reveals. In the good ol’ days, people would keep mannequins in their cars in order to appear like they were correctly using the carpool lane, but in our current era people are just cruising on through without a pass or a fake rider. “In 2024, an estimated 11,000 violators used the lanes every day,” Kyle Stoke writes for Axios Twin Cities.
Using data from MnDOT’s most recent report, Stokes did some interesting number crunching, revealing that I-35W (Minneapolis to Burnsville) has the most illegally used lane at 52.6%. The most legit lane? The one on I-394 (Minneapolis to Wayzata) at 32.3%. Overall, 46% of E-ZPass lane users are not supposed to be there. Watch out for state troopers, you suburban rebels!
Borough Is Out, Revival Is... Revived!
After 13 years in the North Loop, Borough is leaving its Minneapolis space at 730 N. Washington Ave., reports Joy Summers for the Star Tribune (thankfully Parlour, the basement bar with the bangin’ smash burger, is staying). Its last day will be June 28.
But wait, there’s more! According to Summers, southern fried chicken folks Revival are moving in. Jester Concepts, which owns and operates the space, purchased the original recipes from Revival founders Nick Rancone and Thomas Boemer last year. “[Revival] is Southern comfort food and cocktails. Parlour is cocktails, the burger, and there’s a chicken sandwich, too. It’s synergistic,” says Jester co-owner and chef Mike DeCamp.
The synergy is reported to begin by the end of the year.
