NewsNight Minnesota; 3062; NewsNight Minnesota Episode from 12/20/1995; SD-Base

Coming up next on NEWSNIGHT we'll investigate charges that the Twin Cities community leader is a ripping off area Hispanics. We'll discuss whether a state law enables teachers unions to rip off school districts. We'll find out how you can rip off those extra pounds with a little help from the good book. And commentator Dominick Pappa Tolo feels ripped off by his shopping options in the loot. It's all next on NEWSNIGHT Minnesota. Tonight's broadcast of NEWSNIGHT Minnesota is presented in part by fakery and Benson providing legal services to established emerging and growing businesses and by Norwest going to the nth degree to serve our community. Good evening. Thanks for joining us. But let's not dilly dally around with formalities we have news to report and stones in the newsroom with that again. OK get out your pencils and score cards it's time once again to talk about ethics charges in the legislature. Yesterday we told you about the formal ethics complaint filed against Representative Bob Johnson. Today Senate Republicans filed charges against

senators Joe Bertram who was convicted of shoplifting. KEVIN CHANDLER convicted of domestic abuse. Sam Solon and Florian Sharma LESKIE who were both convicted of misusing state telephone accounts DFL Senate majority leader Roger Moe had asked for ethics hearings last week but did not file specific charges. Governor Carlson wants Twin Cities business leaders to come up with ideas for improving metro schools Carlson says businesses need well-trained workers and that test scores and graduation rates show. Inner city schools are failing to provide them. This is the red flag it's waving. And the question now becomes what is it you want to do about it. I personally never ever thought the day would come when I would have to report that any school district in Minnesota was anywhere close. To the low performance of a New York City or a Detroit or a Washington D.C. an urban school group says the governor is using faulty test results to smear Twin City schools.

The governor has appointed a business task force today and that task force is likely to back his call for private school vouchers. The federal government is in the midst of a crackdown on illegal aliens which has immigrants both legal and illegal. Scrambling for help to gain residency and citizenship here in the Twin Cities. Dozens of members of the Hispanic community have sought legal advice from one Roberto Gomez thinking they were getting the help they needed without having to deal with language and cultural barriers. Only problem the lawyer they thought they had hired isn't a lawyer at all. In fact according to one immigration attorney we talked to at least three people have been deported after receiving poor advice from Gomez. Tom Cushman has our report as part of a special collaborative effort between NEWSNIGHT and La Prensa Twin Cities Spanish language newspaper. Valera he is upset. He thinks he might be deported and that would mean leaving his son behind. We're going to look at them. Wouldn't you want that though there would have been my only concern is that you know he doesn't suffer I want to

make sure that he's taken care of and that he's been taken care of properly. And I just want to make sure that he's all right. So hilarity went to a lawyer to get help. Look at the guy. That he told me that yes this was an easy case that he could take care of it and that he needed a thousand dollars to cover the costs to start work on it. But it turns out the lawyer is not a lawyer. He's Roberto Gomez Hernandez. He is a notary public but he's not a lawyer. Valarie paid Gomez $2000 for his work or lack of it for $2000 that she paid. What did you get in return. What is the problem straightened out on that they were given and I received absolutely nothing. He would get angry at me because I would call him to try to find out about my cases. He would keep telling me to call back in two weeks. You keep putting me off. Finally I was able to reach him at all. Roberto Gomez Hernandez if the name sounds familiar it should. Gomez

first came to the Twin Cities claiming to be a victim of torture in El Salvador. Then with a half million dollars in loans including one hundred fifty thousand from the city of St. Paul. Gomez opened up this grocery store on the west side. And with a story like that he quickly became a media darling. We're going to have a day early in the night you know they even did a story on how this political refugee had put his life back together and was single handedly rejuvenating the Westside while he was up in the store. He had a person down there you know almost full time. Just doing paperwork for immigration. There's people that you know he's not an attorney even though that. He's not an attorney. Miguel Garza is an investigator for the Westside Justice Center. He's the one who discovered that Gomez isn't a lawyer. I mean some of this people of Possibly you are giving this man their life savings every although every penny that they have. With the hopes that they're going to get legal status in this country.

Do you have any idea of how many clients have had problems with this guy how many people you've come across. I have had no and I say in total we've heard of about 20 normal and we're going to use a lawyer for office you know they go. She tries to straighten out the messes Gomez makes in the case of one client of mine they're deported. And I know of three cases that's happened in other cases they spent money and nothing happens. So they come to us sometimes we can fix the mistake sometimes we can't. And the other problem is that. How can you get. Somebody To Go. In court against you if these people are deported they're no longer here. So the people that would be filing the charges against him when they find out he's not an attorney are not here to file the charges anymore they're not. It's a great scam. It's a hit is it is if you ask me I mean it's an easy way to make money. We wanted to see if Gomez really does try to pass himself off as a lawyer. We sent someone with an undercover camera to his home office and about the first thing Gomez said was you know we're going to have that but that's

not what he used to tell people and he said that he was a lawyer. In fact officer you know look I got so frustrated they sent out this letter. In part it says The Gomez quote claims to be an attorney but that he is not an attorney and that Gomez has caused considerable damage to a number of clients. There is an air of desperation out bear and our concern is we don't want people benefiting from our people exposing themselves to to more of a risk. So why the sudden change. We tried to talk with Gomez but he wouldn't return our phone calls. And when we went to his house with the reporter from La Prensa Gomez wouldn't answer the door even though the TV was on the Christmas tree lights were burning and his car was in the driveway. But he did tell our undercover reporter that he knows about the letter and that he wants to work for new immigrants but he can't. Gomez says Central eagle is quote making it impossible for me to help people in the community

but the community isn't buying it. I mean this is our people this is you're hurting somebody. You think you know. Basically you could be taking everything up. And just send it back to where they come from with nothing. Which is exactly what might happen to polarity. Two thousand dollars is a lot for me to pay but the love of my child is much more important and I'll do what I have to do it to resolve my problem. By the way that grocery store Gomez used to own one bankrupt this summer. Gomez still owns the city one hundred twenty six thousand dollars and a lot more to a lot of other people on the city now has to decide whether to spend more money to try and collect on the loan which will be difficult at best. Or to simply write off the loss column to thaw is here she's a lawyer with centrally and St Paul going to clear up a couple of questions first of all some confusion over. He's a notary public. Yes well in in the United States notary public does not have the same powers as a

licensed attorney does. However confusion can be particularly from people for people from Latin countries where a notary public can prepare legal documents in the United States a notary cannot and they say they see the official stamp and they think I mean is it possible that this guy isn't really hasn't gone out and lied to people but he just let them think he's a lawyer. In my opinion no I mean he signs I've seen documents that he signed and he signs it with the L. I see which is the sense though which in many countries in Latin America that is considered you can use as you are an attorney when you have after your name and people understand that in particular you're speaking to them in Spanish and that's all their understanding and they don't understand the laws here where you have to be not only an attorney but you have to be admitted into practice in the state or in front of the court where you're going to practice as this guy has been misrepresenting himself as an attorney that's a crime in this country why hasn't there been some. Why haven't the community reported him to the county authorities.

I believe just like Mike Garcia said that the reason is because many of the people he's representing get themselves in a situation with immigration where they either end up being deported or in a situation that is basically just too sticky for them to go forward. And he's misleading a lot of people. People who. You know would not have been. Maybe not have been deported had a different or alternative remedy but the cases been handled in a manner that this person now has no other remedy now and may not be here and people have more than just immigration problems but immigration law is an awful lot of it and it's especially not too many people do it. You're not making a lot of money. You're in a minimum wage job you're having trouble with the language. Who do you go to if you need legal help. Well there are several nonprofit organizations first off of course overseeing the leg Allen center leg out on the west side in St. Paul. There's also the International Institute and the Minnesota advocates has a wonderful project for a person seeking asylum. And do you think the community has called the letters gone out and do you think the

buzz is now around the community. Definitely definitely one of the one with the letter which was were sent a lot of these showing them to you a publication from an organization legal rights organization in California talking specifically about people who use their notary label to do legal representation where they are really not allowed to do the right policy Thanks for coming by. If you want to read more about the story pick up a look tomorrow their cover story on Roberto Gomez and I by the way would also like to say a special thanks to Katie CA's Diana Rodriguez Susan rogue Rick and Butch Bowering for their extra assistance on our story. How would you like to wake up one morning and find a casino in your backyard while a St. Paul man by the name of Al LaFountain has purchased an abandoned drive inside in the western suburb of them died a few days ago and now he plans to put a casino there. See Mr. LaFountain is a Native American and he says that an ancestor signed a treaty with the U.S. government which gives him the right to declare a reservation on any land he owns that would

in turn give him the right to open a casino. Residents of a nearby housing development along with the end on a city council are a bit mystified and they're still trying to figure out whether all of this could really happen. State Senator John also. Is that any new casino has to be approved by the governor of the federal interior department and neighboring native tribes but LaFountain says that this treaty rights are recognized by the U.S. Constitution and supersede any other state or federal laws. You can bet we're going to be following this one to see how it develops. All right thank you very much Ken. You know hardly an autumn goes by when we don't hear desperate pleas from school districts for additional funding through Levy referenda or legislative action. Lately though some lawmakers have been wondering just how school districts get themselves into these financial bind year after year. Well here's one theory. There is a state law on the books this says school districts have to settle contracts with their teaching staffs by mid January. In a district that misses the deadline gets penalize to $25 per student which can add up to a hefty chunk of change.

Representative Leroy Koppen Dreier of Princeton wants the law changed and he's here with us tonight to talk about it. Also joining us is Judy Shabaka. She's president of the Minnesota Education Association one of the two major teachers unions in the state. Welcome to both of you. Representative You've been quoted as saying that this law plays into the hands of the teachers unions that it favors the teachers. Explain that a little bit. Well Kathy since I've been in the legislature school board members and even before I was in the legislature are school board members are saying to me look. Our hands are tied to playing floor isn't level we can't negotiate a good settlement with the money that we have to work with. After I got in the legislature and working obviously with the laws that pertain to education I find that first of all we're we're having a deadline date of January 15th which is right in the middle of the school year which disrupts the school year if there is a strike disrupts the community and everybody schedule the kids as planned

school year. But not only that like you said we're saying to the school board if you don't settle we're going to penalize you twenty five dollars per student. So we negotiate up to a point. The school boards don't want to strike don't want all this disruption. We get just about to worry we can settle and then the teachers can sell you their unit and say Well give us the $25 and we'll settle in. There goes the money. Well what do you think of this. Well first of all I think it's important to understand that the system that we have now in place is working well and it's working in a fair manner. The January 15th deadline was put in in 1909 actually by legislators it was not something that was proposed by us. But I think it was in reaction to the fact that some districts weren't settling year after year. In the end going this very extended. And so they they in their great wisdom put in the January 15th deadline I think we all wondered what that

would mean. The reality is that that has helped to pick up the pace of settlements for example this year we have 150 settlements in right now. Last year at this time we had less than half of that in the year before even less. So we're beginning to see steady progress towards earlier settlements which were encouraging. And part of that is due to our attempt I think to encourage teachers and school board members to engage in a more collaborative approach to bargaining rather than just an adversarial approach. Now Representative I know that the past few sessions you have had bills in the hopper that would move back this contract deadline to say August correct and they've not passed obviously. Why not. Is that kind of a workable situation it would use when I hear this whole thing entirely. No you can't get rid of it entirely I mean you have a labor bargaining unit that you have to work with but it doesn't have a deadline. It just makes sense to me that

if if we're going to have an impasse and if there's going to be a strike it would make a lot more sense to have that strike before school started have that strike declared to give the school board an opportunity to if they want if they could to hire substitutes to go on with the school year. Well I mean that's you know let me let me just let me just lay out the picture a little as Judy was alluding to the settlements now this is by any and we gave the school budget basically 1.2 billion dollars more to work with about 400 million of that is on the table for negotiation for teachers salaries so to speak and administrators salaries. At the rate we're going no we're going to spend eight hundred million dollars instead so 400 million is coming right out of kids programs right out of class size clothes and I'm going to resign. OK well for one thing I think we all acknowledge that education is a labor intensive industry and that teachers and other instructional people make up the bulk of what the costs are. Now let's look at what the facts are. Fund balances in the

state and an audited account as of this past June 30th actually grew by 40 million dollars. The settlements are less than the new revenue that's available. Average teacher's salary has gone down it's now 20 first in the country it was seventh in 86 and it's steadily gone down every year in the average teacher's salary about thirty nine thousand dollars for about nine months it worked thirty five thousand nine hundred dollars. That's the most recent figure for the average teacher. We are running out of time I need to ask. I do when I was just respond to this middle ground in this January 15th question in the September going to be would you be comfortable if they were to move it back to say here's the here's the dilemma is the legislature going to be able to approve the funding bill early enough so that school districts and teachers have the information they need to be able to decide what is the revenue available representative. Interestingly enough for the last year I was the chief author of the first education funding bill. And by February I was already being told by the

unions that if this funding bill passes we'll have to cut this many teachers will have to increase class size this much this much and they had all the numbers there was February before the bill even passed. So it's kind of disingenuous to argue that we won't know by the following till the following January 15th what we can do when we're predicting in February already know the specific numbers. We don't know if there will be tankers in the way the schools are funded if there is class size reduction Monday if there is a change in the weighting of the pupil units there are a lot of calculation is almost like Student Education has this affect students. So if we can get it out of the middle of the school year it would affect students a lot less. But the but the negotiations that are being settled now definitely affect students because class sizes are going to grow. All right programs are going to get cut because there's too much when obviously we're going to have to talk about this at another time. Thank you very much. Deal with this that I can. Tell you this. And I can take the tiniest little bite from Ed's.

And. Ask around about favorite Christmas traditions and you're likely to get a variety of answers. Gifts. Spiritual renewal cookies candy glazed ham a few more of those cookies maybe seconds on that hymn. OK you're getting the picture I know it's not the best time of year for those of us lacking in self discipline but someone out there is watching out for you. Usenet's melody Gilbert introduces us to a group that fights the battle of the bulge with some help from the soldiers of Christ. Did you know that even pigs even though they are genetically coded into big beings can stop when they are full. They're genetically coded in so that we can have bacon. But that actually leaves some SWAPO behind this. That's going Shamblin founder of the way down workshop. And these are some of her followers. And we ask that you will bless those who are here tonight and discuss the way down workshop and the successes and maybe failures that we've had through this week.

We were 12 weeks in around $100 these dieters are taking a spiritual approach to a physical problem or a video. I guess I'm going to play devil's advocate here and be a little skeptical. There's Weight Watchers Jenny Craig bears you name it everybody's tried all different kinds of things and know your program is saying lose weight with the LURD berries right. Yes absolutely. You know help us in every area of our lives and if we are focused on him and stay in His Word. And there are so many verses that can help us. Romans Romans Chapter 7. So the Bible is the key to this battle of the Bulge. The Bible talks about gluttony as being a sin. And so unfortunately in Christian circles overeating is the acceptable sin vs. drinking smoking those kinds of things. And I needed to face up to that. There's the workbook. You do you do your homework as you say but you also have

daily devotions and a place in the Workbook for confession has shoved a cookie in your mouth about thank and yet you just confess and an important part of the meeting is watching a different video each week. I got so skilled with this that I can. Tell you this. And I can tell you the tiniest little bites on the head. And. Cutting back on is all well and good but is the program healthy for you. Basically the workshop philosophy is we don't count calories we don't count fat grams. We can have real butter real cream. I can eat pizza for I want to. It's so different from what the world is trying to push down our throats because so you eat what you want in small amounts. And then you pray. Help us all to have a good week to focus on you to be aware of you always. And what about exercise. One question we get a lot is do they recommend exercise and when Shamblin the founder of weight watch works that chops is the

best exercise you can get is to get down on your knees in prayer. Debbie Dillon says all of this worked for her. She lost five pounds in less than a month. An addiction for me. I could not eat lunch without having a bag of potato chips. Now I can look at those chips and the Lord brings to my mind you know the Scriptures that he that he does not do the tempting that Satan does the tempting. I've been looking for a way of besides diet him for losing weight and this is the most successful one I've been on it's trusting relationship with God and sort of a relationship with food and it's been wonderful. Any Dyna. I'm Melody Gilbert for Newsnight Minnesota. Way down workshops are no small fad they exist in 600 churches across the United States and Europe. If you haven't finished your Christmas shopping now's just about the time when you might be thinking about picking up that suit of armor for yourself to help battle the crowds. But in Duluth all they want for Christmas is another place to shop. High atop a Christmas list that lots of blue fans is something that's a little too big for Santa

to squeeze down the chimney. A brand new date in the store when you are a Midwestern city with a kind of municipal inferiority complex that the loop has in spades. We come to think that not having a Dayton denies you some sort of fundamental retailing birthright. I mean after all Rochester has a Dayton's Auclair has a Dayton's Bismark has a Dayton's for Pete's sake what's wrong with us. The disgruntled Bluefield might wonder well this year we collectively have been very good boys and girls because Melvin Simon associates the nice people who brought the megamall to Bloomington are talking about taking the bait was that they didn't put there and pointing it down here in our very own Miller hill mall. Listen closely and you can hear the yuppies on the money terms of northern Minnesota salivating. Finally Frango mints the. The beta gns bridal registry. Now there

are some environmentalists who are trying to put the kybosh on this deal or alternatively trying to gather enough signatures to put the expansion of the mall to a public referendum. Needless to say if this were to actually happen it would confront every progressive thinking Duluth man with a horrendous conundrum. I mean do we support preserving the city's green spaces or easy return policies over development is a big buzzword up here right now. And I know a lot of people who are dead set against adding one more square foot of additional retail space to the miller Hill corridor. After the date was finished. Now as for me I'll take what comes. But I did grow up in Minneapolis so I'm ready. Dominic Capitoline shops until he drops and then he crawls on over to his job at the Duluth News Tribune so he can cover his credit cards. Well no matter where you shop you won't have any problems getting there. For those last minute

purchases at least not with the weather and we don't make any guarantees about the traffic though. You want a concise forecast will give you a concise forecast tomorrow same as today. How's that for concise. Thanks for tuning in we'll see you again tomorrow night. Take care. NEWSNIGHT Minnesota is made possible by the contributors to the power of two campaigns

program fund with major grants from the Blendon Foundation and the McKnight foundation. Tonight's broadcast of NEWSNIGHT Minnesota is presented in part by figuring in Benson providing legal services to established emerging and growing businesses and buying more west going to the nth degree to serve our community.