MPR’s Tim Pugmire reports: “All three branches of government will converge in a state Capitol courtroom Monday morning as lawyers argue over the constitutional powers of Minnesota’s governor. Gov. Mark Dayton is asking the Minnesota Supreme Court to overturn a lower court’s ruling that his line-item vetoes of funding for the House and Senate violated the separation of powers clause of the state constitution by preventing the Legislature from exercising its duties. Dayton zeroed out the funding for the House and Senate to try to lure Republican leaders back into negotiations on a handful of tax and policy items that he already signed into law. That led leaders to sue the governor, and they won the first round in Ramsey County District Court.”
Terrible story. John Reinan of the Strib writes: “Police on Sunday night said that they found and identified the body of Savanna Greywind, the 22-year-old Fargo woman who has been missing since Aug. 19. The announcement, by Fargo Police Chief David Todd, brought to an end a two-week search for Greywind, who was eight months pregnant. … Around the same time as the kayakers discovered the body, which Todd said was wrapped in plastic and hung up on a log, a search party found some suspicious material at a nearby farmstead. Todd said investigators believe that farmstead may be a crime scene.”
Harteau hangs out a shingle. MPR’s Peter Cox’ story on former Minneapolis Police Chief Janee Harteau’s next act says, “Former Minneapolis Chief Janee Harteau says she is focused on her future, a month after being forced to resign amid the scrutiny of the fatal shooting of Justine Ruszczyk. Harteau is advertising work as a consultant, a coach and a speaker on her new web site. But she said she’s not currently looking for a job as a chief.”
RIP Uncle Al: Longtime food writer, columnist, author, humorist and MinnPost contributor Al Sicherman died Sunday. Writes the Star Tribune’s Pat Pheifer: “Tens of thousands of Star Tribune readers laughed at his pithy, humorous and often self-deprecating columns about food, about his Milwaukee childhood, about his cars, about his dogs. Even more cried with him in November 1989 when he wrote on the front page about the death of his 18-year-old son, Joe, who was on LSD when he fell from his seventh-floor dorm room at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. It was a rare Sicherman column that wasn’t at all funny. … Sicherman, of Minneapolis, died early Sunday at Regions Hospital in St. Paul. He was 75 and was battling two rare blood diseases.”
Data central: The Strib’s Liz Sawyer reports: “The Chaska City Council has approved preliminary plans to build four additional data centers just north of the suburb’s small industrial park, which has become a draw for corporations seeking open land to store mountains of sensitive information. Dallas-based Stream Data Centers proposed four separate buildings along a 66-acre plot that’s zoned for rural farmland. The development would join four other data centers in the nearby West Creek Corporate Center, including a U.S. Bank data complex that will employ 18 workers when it’s completed next spring and two other buildings by Stream Data Centers. UnitedHealth Group also has a 251,000-square-foot data center in the same business park.”
Minnesota Red Cross volunteers are already in Texas. Jeff Wagner’s WCCO-TV story says, “Streets have become streams and neighborhoods into lakes along the Gulf Coast in Texas. Traveling into those Hurricane Harvey ravaged towns won’t be easy, but American Red Cross volunteers Karen and Rick Campion will find a way. … The Campions’ first night in Texas will be in Austin, a city a safe enough distance away from the gulf for volunteers. Monday, she anticipates they’ll be sent to Corpus Christi, one of the first areas to see significant damage when Harvey made landfall. It’s also roughly 1,300 miles from their Minnesota home.”
A metaphor of some kind. Eleanor Dearman of The Corpus Christi Caller Times reports, “Letters from the name on the Wells Fargo bank building were scattered around parts of downtown Sunday afternoon. Among them, an ‘O’ came to rest near a fountain on the corner of Lower Broadway and Peoples streets. Near there an ‘F’ sat, positioned by the downtown murals of children swimming underwater. An ‘L ‘was propped against a blue dumpster. By around 6:30 p.m. Sunday, the letters appeared to have been cleared and gathered in front of the Wells Fargo building, piled up and surrounded by caution tape.”
