NewsNight Minnesota; 4151; NewsNight Minnesota Episode from 05/21/1997; SD-Base

NEWSNIGHT Minnesota is a production of Katy CA where the stations of Minnesota Public Television. Tonight on NEWSNIGHT the governor flies around the state but we keep it grounded. Parents debate public money for private schools. And the angel of Grand Forks. The public's right to know versus a citizen's right to privacy. Plus the rights of women versus the rights of unborn one. It's NEWSNIGHT for Wednesday May 21st. Tonight's broadcast of NEWSNIGHT Minnesota is presented in part by Norwest banks contributing to the growth of the Twin Cities through support and community service. Good evening and welcome to NEWSNIGHT. I'm Kathy words or we've got those debates coming up in just a few minutes but first a look at what's happening around the state today. Ken Stone has that. Thanks Kathy the frustration continues to linger and is now growing for those living in Grand Forks. Much of it because of the political wrangling in Washington between President Clinton and congressional Republicans about 500 million dollars in flood aid is being held up by a partisan battle leaving the Red River Valley residents angry at a council

meeting on Monday night. Many complained of being left in the dark whether they will in fact get help in permanently relocating the complaints came from people like Linda Gustavsson wanting to know how much money she'll get and what she's supposed to do. And I would like some kind of an idea if I should go in there and do it. I need to know what kind of an opportunity it myself in my 30 other families that are my neighbors. We also member Tom hag Mrs. asking residents to try to be patient as local officials continue to press Congress for help. In a related story accusations from the Sierra Club that the flooding could have been prevented altogether if wetlands in the Red River Valley had not been destroyed. The Sierra Club along with several other environmental groups report that 75 percent of what lands in the Red River Watershed have been filled in. If they had been left intact. The groups say the Red River would have flooded very little or not at all. The conservationist also blame the U.S. Corps of

Engineers for approving 95 percent of all requests for filling in wetlands. The Corps of Engineers not available to comment. The threat of a strike by St. Paul city workers is over for now. Asked Me locals 25 hour wait in 1842 have tentatively settled with the city. Saint Paul officials say they are pleased with the deal but asked me Representative say they will not comment until after union rank and file vote. The deal is put together at 2:30 this morning just four hours before eleven hundred clerical and technical workers were set to walk off the job. More work on the Massai trail between Grand Rapids and Aly another 25 miles of it is going to be paved this summer when it's all done the trail will connect twenty two towns and be used by hikers bikers skiers and snowmobilers Mayo Health System is growing the Rochester based health group is building a 10 million dollar addition to its Austin Minnesota Medical Center. Work on the two storey building which will include a new emergency room and 25 more exam rooms will begin this summer. And finally tonight if you thought there were a lot more people riding around on bikes today you weren't imagining

things in fact you may have seen a lot more bikes blades and busses. It was bebop day. Now that's not the kind of music coming up here. And. Not this kind of music either. But it is the seventh annual bus bike or pool day. It's designed to get people out of their own cars and into more energy efficient types of transportation to and from work. I don't know how successful it was but the lunchtime crowd in Minneapolis had a pretty good reason to get outside and enjoy the sun cafe those are the headlines over to you. All right thanks again St.. Well now get a $2000 tax credit for sending your kids to private schools. That's the possibility and that's why the governor spent the day flying around the state drumming up support for the plan. That's why taxpayers will pay $10000 a day when lawmakers go back to a special session if they ever figure out how to compromise with the governor. But do education tax credits matter as much to parents as they do to some politicians. We have two parents of students from our Star Tribune NEWSNIGHT citizens forum with us. That's a joint effort which gets common folk

together every now and then to put a real world spin on the issues of the day. Joy believe strongly in school choice. She's even appeared in ads for the idea Vic Thorston Scn does not do any ads he's an administrator in in the state House of Representatives. Well Vic let's start with you first MBA governor Carlson as you know says that his school tax credit plan would lead to more competition and improve public schools. How can you argue with that. Well I think there's a lot of things that the legislature did to try to meet the governor's demands on a lot of things. When we got together last February I think it was the governor presented his whole plan. There were lifting caps on charter schools the legislature did that there was seed money to help charter schools get started. They increased a formula for. People again it's only modestly I think in 76 dollars per kid. And I think the legislature pretty much put together most of what the governor wanted with the exception that he cracked it. And the legislature liked the

bill passed the House that was there. So hundred 15 to 18. But as a parent though you're talking as an administrator here for just a minute as a parent you know how can you argue with the governor's logic. Well I wouldn't. I have nothing as private education. But I can't see and as a matter of fact in our own case I'm a member of the hot new demographic in Minneapolis. We're parents of an eighth grader trying to get into South High. And our son did get in. But our second choice probably would have been high school which happens to be in our neighborhood. I went to Catholic schools myself. I would have a hard time asking my neighbors to help subsidize that decision. OK Joy. Vic brought up something kind of interesting in that the legislature in action Minnesota has school choice already. You're talking about charter schools and open enrollment in those sorts of programs. So why a tax credit plan like this if you already have school choice that could ostensibly help the kids that need those

that sort of help. Well Vic also mentioned that he would NASCAR's neighbor to subsidize his child going to deal a cell. But we parents that send our kids to private school do pay for public schools and. We are just asking for a small portion of that. Back. And the school choice etc. doesn't meet the needs that I have from the needs that many other parents may have if they choose to send their kids to a private religious school. That need would not be met by the open enrollment and so forth that we're talking $2000 per family and that's what the governor's plan calls for. But it seems to me that that's not going to really well that meet the needs of a child going to a private school if indeed the parent wants to send the child to a private school 2000 that might know it. Well actually the way I understand the program there is this credit some member

there are tax deductions. I myself probably would only fall into the tax deduction portion and maybe you would increase cash in my pocket. Oh maybe a couple of hundred dollars which doesn't sound like a whole lot of money but that could pay for school lunch for my kids for the whole school year. I myself happen to be a single parent and every penny counts and I make a lot of sacrifices in order to continue to send my kids to private school to Catholic school I'm sure a lot of other parents do too. Vic is a guy who works in the legislature. You have the see saw the DFL party toss more money to the per pupil student aid formula so the DFL wants to spend more money per student in the state of Minnesota. Well I think Republicans do too. And especially not statements sort of by Republicans some Republicans say look you're just throwing money at this problem and you still have inner city kids in Minneapolis and St. Paul feeling basic skills tests on that going to come here as an apologist for the public school system asking

that and well you know it might have been aspect it back at work you know. But the but I think. Public education has a lot of problems and they need to be addressed and I think one of the problems with this system that this proposal of the governors is that it's provides an incentive for people. Who could be out helping to reform the public school system to just quit and go into a private school system. Frankly the public school system with all its ills and I think there's plenty of them in especially in Minneapolis where I'm a parent is going to be reformed by the actions of angry parents. And you take those people out of the public schools bag pained them to leave the public schools they're going to do that and those problems are never going to be addressed. They're never going to be solved. And so I think there's even a danger in the governors governors plan. There's also currently some deductions for parents to send their kids to private schools that had $300 for an elementary student and $600

deduction for a secondary student. The governor is merely asking to triple that and then would extend it too. Why are peripherals like computers and software and things like that. I don't know if that's necessarily going to drive well and those peripherals that you mention can be used by all parents not just public school parents. And you talk about fixing the public school system and I'm a product of the public school system and I'm not saying we should you know trash the public school system and start again. But the my issue is I have two children who are in school now. I can't wait two years five years 10 years for this public school system to be fixed for them. They need a good education now today and I am meeting that need by sending them to Catholic school. This program the governor's proposal as he argues will give parents a choice give low income parents a choice as wealthy parents have a choice to send their child to a private school but really when you send your prime your child to private school your child might

not be accepted. You know if you're a private school don't have to accept everybody. This is true in the upper grades for Catholic school anyway I can only speak for Catholic schools in the lower grades almost every child would be accepted unless they had a special need that just was not able to be met in the classrooms that they have in the upper grades. Yes I think they do have some testing and so forth. So your point is correct but it still would give people more choice when it came to two grades one through eight which are the most important grades because that's where the groundwork is laid. It's interesting to listen to both of you because obviously the lawmakers will be taking up this very same if you get in special session so see if they can come to an agreement. Thank you very much appreciate your time. Thank you. Well now on to get another debate. President Clinton and Congress are once again butting heads over abortion. Yesterday the U.S. Senate voted in favor of a bill that would outlaw a certain late term abortion procedure.

The president vetoed a similar bill last year and seems likely to veto this one. Now it has occurred to us that most of the time when the press reports on abortion it is about the latest political battle or legal fight. Well tonight Ken Stone rectifies that we're going to try. Usually we hear from the politicians a lawyers an activist a lot but rarely from pregnant women or the people who help those women day in and day out. And there are thousands of such people in Minnesota both pro-life and pro-choice. Tonight we meet three women on the pro-life side. This is how Kathy Alstrom fights abortion two Tuesdays a month she volunteers at the St. Paul office of Birthright a pro-life crisis pregnancy center. The part that everyone sees is the political activism but that's not what we do here in the birthright office and that's not what I'm comfortable with. Birthright is an international organization based in Canada. It does not do political lobbying. It doesn't file legal briefs. It doesn't pick it. The sole focus is providing

counseling and support for pregnant women and their children should they carry to term. Virtually everyone in St. Paul and other offices around the state are volunteers. Some like Cathy L. Strom come in several times a month to counsel women and girls about unplanned pregnancies. Help strong has been a volunteer for 25 years. Bernie Scroggins is another longtime volunteer. Like many people on both sides of the issue she got involved after the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision when it came down that we were going to be able to do abortions. So I thought not many would take that option. That's how I was. But I did not think it would change the numbers that much. And then when I watch the numbers climb. And the younger the young women were I I feel there's got to be a place for me to do something.

You know Bernie spends a lot of our time driving around the state helping to train other birthright volunteers but she does something that most other volunteers never do. She invites pregnant women who have nowhere else to go to live with her. Well as you can see there were two little guys. This is what Bernie calls her family tree filled with pictures of not only her children and grandchildren but the children of some of the women who have stayed with her. This is Carol. And that's Heather's little girl. Carol is now a year and a half old. Bernie calls her one of birthrights success stories. Her mother Heather is now married to the child's father and she has a good job as a chemist. But when Heather got pregnant two years ago she was single and living at home with her parents. She had just finished college the first in her family to do so and her parents wanted her to have an abortion. A boy the baby you know just put on the rug and get on with your life. That was. The way it wasn't even. Why don't you have an abortion it was a boy. The baby you will do this you will do that and it'll be over there and done with and

then you'll get your life back on schedule like it's supposed to be. I couldn't do it. When I went in for my first prenatal visit they do an ultrasound. This is big as a big chain. I still have the ultrasounds. Now that I think about I still have the ultrasound she's about that big little lima bean. I was going to kill her. So she moved out and after some frantic phone calls she ended up at Bernie Scroggins house. To be sure Heather was better off than many young women are with unplanned pregnancies. For one she had that college degree and she was older and more mature than most teen mothers. But Heather says she still needed help. OK this is how. It normally normally happens OK she gets pregnant. His parents are going to take her out of the house. The father is probably going to say it's not his.

And most of our friends are going to make him feel like that she brought this on herself so basically in a matter of 24 hours after finding out she's pregnant she's lost everyone just lost everything. She needs help. Whether she decides to abort or have the baby she needs help immediate help. That's what I mean. Birthright relies completely on private donations of clothing supplies and money and most of all it relies on volunteers and there are hundreds of people in Minnesota like Kathy Drummond Bernie Scroggins who are often overshadowed by the people fighting the political and legal battles both parties are guilty of and the pro-choice and the pro-life say these people they argue and they argue and they argue and they forget. About what they're arguing over. What the issue is. It's like we have a woman here. Carrying a child. And schlimm plan about it she doesn't give a damn about your arguments. She needs some direction some guidance as to what to do.

Very often they expect that but that birthright is the opposition to the abortion group and we're nobody's opposition we're just down here because we want to help the opposition to the board. The abortion groups is probably I'm CCL and that's an important job that NCCL is doing but that's not the job that we're doing. I think it leaves the young women out of that. It's nothing but this political fight and in between is the girl trying to make a decision not knowing what the resources are to help her. I am pro-life. I don't like the idea of abortion. I I don't like the idea of abortion at all. However I think people need to what I just told you about the arguing and forgetting about what all this is really about. And the focus needs to be on. The mommy or the

pregnant mother. She needs she needs a lot of. Practice. She needs a lot of practical help. That was our look at everyday people on the pro-life side of the abortion issue next week. A report on women who choose to have abortions and the people who help them. Well should the identity of the angel of Grand Forks have been released. How about the blood alcohol level of the five well known a student who skidded off the road and drowned in that awful accident last winter. And did the public have a right to know that local author Michael Dorris was under investigation but not charged with child sexual abuse when he committed suicide. And these are questions that give journalists a lot of second thoughts. Paul Hannah as a seasoned media attorney Don gambling as Director of Information Analysis for the state of Minnesota I'm going to start with the angel Grand Fork and start with you Paul Hanna there didn't seem to be

anything legally that would stop a news organization from reporting that. But what are the guidelines. Well in most in some states not Minnesota and some states if you were to publish a fact about someone that was a private fact you might be responsible for that you could even pay damages if the facts were embarrassing. Here of course is the identity of the angel wouldn't be something embarrassing it's obviously a fact that the angel did not wish to have communicated. So there really is no legal impediment to doing that a lot in a deal that the angel made with the news media it was a delisting intimate with city officials Doesn't that make that a little bit different. Sure short as I mean those officials were trying their best I think to shield him her if in fact we've actually found out the identity of the Angel. But that doesn't mean that news organizations are going to be held to the same to the same deal and here they weren't. There was a tremendous public backlash in Grand Forks are people really angry that the media was so high and mighty that you know what she wanted her privacy wanted to respect that

there's there's one more issue. You know you hear from the people a lot of people did from the people who are who are angry who thought that her wishes should ultimately have been given some power there but there were a lot of people who really wanted to know because she'd had an incredible impact on their lives. And that was the counterargument and of course for the journalist you don't want to pick one side or the other if you have the information you know it's truthful. You've not done anything wrong to get it. Now you're asking yourself do not two people deserve it but do people want to know it and if a significant enough number of people want to your decision is made and that was I think the basis for that. If you were the publisher would you have gone with it. You think. Oh if I were a publisher Absolutely yeah. And this is one of those kind of strange situations where. The law is a different on either side of the river. OK in part because of the arrangement with the city officials. If someone had made a request to the

city officials in East Grand Forks under our state data Practices Act that information assuming it existed in the city in some kind of tangible form was probably public information. And I kind of wondered as this thing went on why nobody ever did that. Now part of the problem may be it's hard to find the City Hall and poor old East Grand Forks these days. And up until recently it was a 200 mile drive from Grand Forks to Grand Forks So we're probably a physical impediment. Well let's move on to Michael Doris. Now obviously someone who's a public figure is the author award winning author. He was being investigated for possible abuse sexual abuse of children not charged. The case was closed the details of that cases were closed at the request of his wife should have it been closed. Is is can could channel 2 or some other media challenge that. Well they did I mean they tried to challenge that went to court and a judge in Hennepin County ruled that a part of the data Practices Act dealing with what the rights of to

seed and sort of governed a more general press provision that said Anytime a Croat criminal investigation is in active all the material in there becomes public and she ruled that because of his status or lack of status because he was now dead. Lots of that information would be kept private. How rare is this how unusual for the records to be sealed. Oh. Well it's. Part of what's going to happen here is we're going to get hung up on terminology. The ceiling is the thing that judges do. This is a situation in which the real discussion is what does our state data Practices Act say about this kind of situation. And in theory the judges is limited in what they can do to what the statute says. Paul and a number of other media attorneys litigated an issue a few years ago about the relationship between a judge's authority to seal records and requirements of the data practices act in

situations where criminal investigations are no longer active. Normally the rule there with some exceptions is that the data associated with the investigation all becomes public. Well in the case the Paul had a few years ago this was a case involving some hockey players charged with allegations of criminal sexual conduct. There was a determination they were going to be prosecuted. Normally the data would become public at that point. Well they went into court to get an injunction and they asked the judge to seal that actually to expunge those records not just seal them but destroy them. And that case went all the way to the Minnesota Supreme Court and the Supreme Court said no judge can't do that because the data Practices Act requires those records to be public information and at least the data Practices Act gives you a. A standard to go by may not be specific in the case you're looking at but it gives you some guidance. I guess the question is Who are you trying to protect whom are you trying to protect Are you trying to protect Michael Dorris his reputation or possibly the kids.

Well you know the problem we have with protection is this if you think about this philosophically. I mean anybody who's got data that they don't want to have made almost anybody who's in the system if they had their druthers would just assume that whatever they're doing in the system be they a criminal defendant or a plaintiff or or a defendant in a case they just soon do it privately. I mean no one wants publicity. If you if you let the decision be whatever the parties want is OK you're never going to find out what goes on in the process so there's the data practices act for government information to try to get data from the government. There are a whole series of cases and rules about what data in courts everybody should see and alternately the philosophy my philosophy maybe or the way I read the law is you know if people are powerful or they're involved in the process the more we know the better off we are. If people who are powerful can shield the process and make it secret the better off they are.

Very quickly let's talk about those well known to kids. A lot of people are arguing that information whether they were drunk or not should not have been sealed should not be hidden because we need to educate the public about drunken driving and if the kids were drunk that the lesson public right to know. Part of what might apartment does my commissioner. We have the authority to issue what are called advisory opinions about issues that come up under the Data Practices Act. Now the commissioner was asked to issue an advisory opinion about the want to conduct one on a case actually two advisory opinions and those are issued today. And the commissioner's conclusion is that the information both the toxicology results about the kids and other information that have not yet been released to the public some of the details of the investigation are indeed public information how are we going to see that. I think so. OK. Yeah. The city attorney who asked us for that opinion about the balance of things indicated I think and what he said to us that he would go along with the commissioner's opinion. All right Don Paul of runtime thank you very much. Thank you. Let us know what you think about full

disclosure or the story about birthright or anything else on tonight's show. Here are the numbers that you need to give us your feedback. The final item on the agenda tonight the weather forecast for tomorrow you can expect partly sunny skies across southern and central Minnesota highs in the lower 70s at least in the southwest I'm going golfing. However in the north thunderstorms are possible a high temperature in the upper 50s. Remember that is all according to the National Weather Service. Thanks for watching NEWSNIGHT this evening will be back tomorrow night. Told then God give us give us a look see. Yes said so West Side Story it's returning again to next week at the Ordway back down oh. Yeah. NEWSNIGHT Minnesota is made possible by the contributors to the power of two campaigns

program funded with major grants from the Blendon Foundation and the McKnight foundation. Tonight's broadcast of NEWSNIGHT Minnesota is presented in part by Norwest banks contributing to the growth of the Twin Cities to support and community service.