Should Minneapolis City Council Sign NDAs to Discuss Mystery Event?

Welcome back to The Flyover, your daily digest of important, overlooked, and/or interesting Minnesota news stories.

Major Events May Require Minneapolis City Council to Sign NDAs

According to Andrew Ballard, Minneapolis's enterprise events manager, the organizers of an event that could potentially have an economic impact of $250 million is considering Minneapolis. But before pitch meetings are held and applications are sent in, City Council members may need to be willing to sign an NDA. “Being able to do this would allow us to compete at a different level,” he noted at Monday’s Administration & Enterprise Oversight Committee meeting. It would also allow for quicker turnaround in the application process. 

City Council members, however, were skeptical. "The reason these organizations want NDAs is so they can play jurisdictions off each other to maximize what they get out of it," said Council President Elliott Payne. “They’re not choosing the city because of our demographics or economic vitality. They’re choosing the city because they’re getting the most tax breaks or some other incentive to come.” 

As Kyle Stokes writes over at Axios, incentives can include things like free hotel rooms and police escorts. In the case of the 2018 Super Bowl, that also meant allotting 35,000 free parking spaces and installing preferred NFL ATMs onsite. Sure, it’s not as ominous as, say, city reps signing NDAs to negotiate with data centers that want to come to town, but it’s still a hindrance to government transparency. While the NDA motion didn’t make it past the council, it has been referred to back to staff, meaning the item could come up again in a modified form. 

Advocates Believe DHS Trading Fraud for Neglect

We’ve got housing, childhood nutrition, and autism services fraud here in Minnesota. Now lawyers and human rights advocates are saying we’ve got yet another problem: denying aid as a form of fraud prevention. In October, the Department of Human Services suspended payments to Integrated Community Support providers, halting many programs immediately. “There was no real transition; they just stopped providing the services,” Chad Wilson, an attorney for the Minnesota Disability Law Center, tells Alyssa Chen for Minnesota Reformer.

ICS services help disabled folks live independently. That might mean things like driving people to appointments, helping them navigate finances and bills, or reporting slumlords for violations. 

In the meantime, Chen notes that MN DHS has set up a “‘Medicaid program integrity’ website, which offers various charts and statements such as ‘We strive for transparency, but sometimes the work requires secrecy.’”

Pillowman Probably Running for Governor, Will Decide Later

MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell filed the paperwork today that would allow him to officially run for Minnesota governor in next year’s race. However, he still not all the way onboard. “I’m 98 percent sure I’m going to,” he tells Peter Cox for MPR. He’s told multiple news sources that he plans on deciding and making an announcement on December 11.

“His entrance into the race is a bitter pill-ow for Minnesota Republicans to swallow,” Democratic Governors Association spokesperson Izzi Levy wrote in a statement. 

Cities 97 Plays 4-Second Harmonica Loop—for Hours

The #1 radio station for dentist offices appears to have suffered a glitch Tuesday, playing a few seconds of Max McNown's "A Lot More Free" on loop for over two hours.  

Of course, this led to people flocking to the station for a laugh, and Dustin Nelson has compiled a funny collection of Bluesky posts about the snafu over at Bring Me the News.

In case you’re curious and just want to hear the loop, check out this post below.