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BK for SOS News

Elect Me, Then Abolish Me

We don't need a Secretary of State

MCCL Not Fair To Minnesotans

Pro Lifers, Please Read This!

KIFFMEYER NOT ON THE LEVEL-AGAIN

Mary Kiffmeyer signs a contract that prohibits her from telling the truth, then refuses to admit her mistake.


GOODBYE MONEY!

HAVA--The Feds giveth and the Feds taketh away. (Voting equipment, today and tomorrow)


KIFFMEYER'S STRANGE PARTNERSHIP WITH A SHADY ORGANIZATION

Phony invoice sent by "non-profit" notary operation doesn't reflect well on our state government.

KIFFMEYER'S ENDORSEMENTS FROM THE SAME CHAIN

Four of the six newspapers she quotes on her website are editorially controlled by a man in Fargo, North Dakota


HELP ME!

Helping my campaign is easy, fun, surprising, and rewarding. See how by clicking here.


TAKE THE VOTER'S PLEDGE

Reduce the power of money in politics with an oath of good citizenship.


WHY REPUBLICANS SHOULD SUPPORT ME

A list of reasons

KIFFMEYER CELEBRATES WHILE TAXPAYERS SUFFER

The Help America Vote Act wastes millions of Minnesota dollars

KIFFMEYER SHOULD TELL MCCL...

...she's not in the legislature

KIFFMEYER SINKS TO NEW LOW

Exploits 77 year old man

KIFFMEYER'S ENDORSEMENTS FROM THE SAME CHAIN

Four of the six newspapers she quotes on her website are editorially controlled by a man in Fargo, North Dakota

KIFFMEYER NEVER STOPS TALKING

What I Should Have Said on "Almanac"

 

Kiffmeyer's Testimony on the Contract, November 29, 2005:

Without a doubt, in the regards to the contract that we were dealing with, going again back to the circumstances of that time which is very important to this situation, is that when we contracted with a vendor, built a software, and the contractor referring to here is a maintenance contract, in other words, this is typical when you do software that afterwards you will have a maintenance: there’ll be scope, changes, other things that you need to do in regards to that, so this is a maintenance contract, not the original one. In particular the issue was that in the middle of going through all of this, the Help America Vote Act was passed. When the Help America Vote Act was passed, it greatly changed the needs of our state voter registration system, so the system that was originally built for 250 people was now going to have to be used by, could be 3000 people with all the local government users required by the Help America Vote Act. That required at its very core a kind of system that could handle that. And so the disagreements with the vendor had to do with their idea of what would meet the needs of the State of Minnesota, and our idea. We felt that their ideas were unsatisfactory, would not meet the needs of our state in regards to the Help America Vote Act. And so the money that we paid indeed was for only that work which was satisfactory, and in matter of fact, this Senate in particular required that that system be kept running while we were implementing the new State Voter Registration System. They didn’t have comfort with the new SVRS, and required that this very one that we paid for which was built and for the satisfactory maintenance which was there, was required by the Senate body to be continuously running as a backup just in case the SVRS, the new system, wasn’t able to handle it. It did, and it worked well and worked fine, and we still have that original system, is kept in our legacy electronic record, so, and we are tied, every single voter is tied from that record and that system to the record in the SVRS system, so we can always go back and have a legacy, and a continuous point in making sure that all of those voters are accounted for. So that part of it which was paid was satisfactory. There are some issues in regards to some of the process, and certainly we take the advice of the auditor, and we have implemented in my office and a designated staff person who is responsible to add even more diligence and some checklists and some other things which we will supply to them in the next audit which will show an even greater diligence in regards to some of those procedural things.

KIFFMEYER NOT ON THE LEVEL--AGAIN

Apparently, Mary Kiffmeyer's philosophy is the ends justify the means.

Strange for someone who as Secretary of State of Minnesota is in charge of elections - which are all about means.

On August 12, 2005, she testified before the Senate Elections Committee. Senate hearing August 12, 2005 (Real Player) She basically said that it was OK that she put a blatant falsehood into an agreement canceling a service contract, because the end result was good for the citizens of Minnesota.

Not so sure it was. In January, 2002, she hired a company to do maintenance on the voter registration system. In March, 2003, the company sent a bill for $68,000. The SOS sent back a four page letter, saying that no payment would be made--the work was unsatisfactory. (Keep in mind that the terms of the contract allowed the SOS to cancel the contract at any time, with or without a reason. The contractor was required to provide the source code that was developed for no additional charge.)

Mary told the legislative auditor that she would meet with the Attorney General and Department of Administration to decide how to cancel this contract. But she never did. Maybe she didn't want AG Mike Hatch to know about this mess.

So she signed an agreement with the unsatisfactory contractor, paying them $48,130 of the $68,000 billed, and signing a statement as follows: "The State agrees that all personnel participants to this contract will not give either verbal or written statements to anyone as to the cancellation of this contract other than it was cancelled by reason of the State of Minnesota's budget cuts."

Everybody who signed that agreement knew it was not true. The budget cuts were not the sole, or even a primary, reason for the cancellation.

The literal meaning of this clause is that Mary Kiffmeyer would violate the agreement if she answered truthfully to the Legislative Auditor or to a Senate committee about this cancellation.

Crucial lie before the committee: Mary claims that the "unsatisfactory performance" referred to is simply that the system no longer met the needs of Minnesota. Refer once again to the four page letter: the complaint is clearly about bugs and errors in the software, not the overall system.

Mary never admitted that she agreed to something false. She said the agreement was necessary to quickly get the source code that the company had produced, even though the company was required to provide it to the state pursuant to the contract. She made it sound like she wanted to avoid litigation over that issue.

Litigation, or embarrassment?

Like most dishonesty, the consequence is not avoiding embarrassment, but delaying it.

As Minnesotans, we don't want our officials avoiding the use of their own attorneys. There are some people in Mary's office that happen to be lawyers. But the Secretary's lawyer is Mike Hatch. She should have sucked it up and contacted the AG as soon as there were problems with the contractor. I'm skeptical that this source code was worth $48,130 of the taxpayers' money. We may never know.

David Poliseno of the Legislative Audit Commission testified as follows: "Nothing that we found in the files indicated that [budget cuts were] the reason for them cancelling the contract, and most of the documentation centered on the fact that they were dissatisfied with the service. Regardless, the state had the option of cancelling the contract at any time with 30 days notice. And within that time, they would have been entitled to receive anything that had been developed by the contractor. So they could have avoided paying for further payment of the source code, and possibly they could have received it without having to go through the legal battle."

To download the full report as a PDF, go to http://www.auditor.leg.state.mn.us/fad/2005 and look at Pages 12-13 of the PDF, which are pages 8-9 of the report.

To see video of the Senate hearing, click below. You will need Real Player installed on your computer. The video starts with the Legislative Auditor. Then if you skip ahead to 40:30 you can hear her evasive answers to the senators' questions.

Senate hearing August 12, 2005

Another Senate hearing November 29, 2005. Mary Kiffmeyer twists the truth about her level of dissatisfaction with their services: "fast forward" to 21:16, discussion continues to 25:20. Or read the transcript to the left. Compare her version of dissatisfaction with the actual four page letter her office sent out.

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