- [Narrator] Funding for this program is provided in part by the Minnesota Arts and Cultural Heritage Fund, and the citizens of Minnesota.

(upbeat Music) - Coming to you from Rochester, Minnesota.

♪ Strong like a tree ♪ R-Town.

♪ There's roots where I stand.

♪ Ever wonder who the state auditor is?

Well, we're here with our very own state auditor, Julie Blaha.

Welcome to R-Town, Julie.

- Oh, I'm so excited to be here.

Thanks for having me.

- So I think everyone has this question.

Probably some of our viewers might have this question.

But could you tell us a little bit about what a state auditor does, and what your primary responsibilities are?

- It's a great question.

And if you're listening and saying, "I don't remember learning about what that is," don't feel bad, it is different in every single state.

So in Minnesota, the state auditor oversees over $40 billion in local government spending.

And then this year, we're also adding the oversight of about $20 billion in federal spending that's done by the state.

So we basically take examinations like audits and investigations, we provide direct support to local government officials, training, software, and then we also do data analysis.

We pull all this information together, so that local leaders can make a fact-based decisions.

'Cause ultimately, the point of all of this is so that we protect the solutions that people come up with close to home.

Right now in these divided times, there's nothing more, I think, unifying than solving something together with your neighbors.

And so where we can do that often is in local government.

So we're really proud to protect that.

Something so important in these divided times.

- Fantastic.

I'm sure some people have been hearing a little bit about your work, as it refers to the forfeiture laws.

So changes to the Minnesota forfeiture laws have been a topic of a lot of conversation recently.

So can you talk to us a little bit about what asset forfeitures are, and what kind of property are we talking about when we're talking about that?

- Right.

As a forfeiture, we collect data on the situations where law enforcement may seize property, that may eventually be subject to forfeiture.

So it's usually other use or sale.

And so we track the forfeitures that happen that are connected to state laws.

So in Minnesota, what we find out is that most of the forfeitures in Minnesota, like 76%, are small forfeitures.

And by smaller forfeitures, we mean $15 or under.

And the whole point of forfeiture is to remove the instrumentality of crime.

And I think we'd all agree that, "Hey somebody's committing a crime, you wanna take away the tools to do that."

An extra challenge with forfeiture is that this is a seizure that happens before you've had your day in court.

And so we have to be really careful, what are you going to take away from somebody before they've had their day in court?

If it really does prevent crime, I think you can make a case for that.

But I think in the case of small forfeitures, somebody taking $100 car that maybe their only mode of transportation, is that really limiting crime?

We do know that these small forfeitures really impact low-income people disproportionately.

I mean, you think about it.

If you had...

The average size of small forfeiture's around $450.

If you've lost $450, if you're in poverty, shoot, that can be the difference between making rent or not.

That car could be the difference between you getting to work or not.

And so, yes, remove the instrumentality of crime, but I don't think anybody wants us to be assessing homelessness or joblessness before someone's day in court.

So when we looked at the numbers, we saw this opportunity to reform law enforcement in a way that protects people who are in poverty, at the same time, it doesn't really rattle the system.

These small forfeitures only add up to just fractions of a percent of a public safety budget.

So you got a place where, losing a small forfeiture isn't going to necessarily change somebody's budget by much, but it could really impact someone's day-to-day life.

That's a great place to look at reform.

- That's fantastic.

I mean, I think when people are maybe looking at this on paper, they're not thinking this is actually an equity issue in need of reform.

And so that's wonderful that that's the path that you all have taken.

And we're gonna take a quick break, but I wanted to get us started a little bit on the annual report, and some of the key takeaways that your office had released around this, and how it supported the newly passed legislation.

- Oh, you bet.

One of the things we saw this year was a group of people coming together around forfeiture reform.

And we're talking everybody from the ACLU to Sheriffs.

This is a group that isn't always all on the same page, but they were able to find some real agreement around particularly small forfeitures.

And so we were really excited to be able to lend our data, to help that effort.

And so what they were saying is, "Okay, so is there a place for reform?"

So what we'll find is like, "Well we talked about 76% of our forfeitures are under $1,500."

And this was of course in 2020.

That adds about $1.2 million.

But again, across the state, that's maybe four tenths of a percent of the budget.

So here, you've got a situation where you have big individual impact, but really small system impact.

What a great place to come together.

- Blaha, we are gonna take a quick break, and we will continue the conversation right after, when we come back.

Thank you for joining us, and we'll see you in a few minutes.

(upbeat music) Be sure to stick around, we have much more coming your way on R-Town.

We continue our discussion with the state auditor, and we learn all about the upcoming Med City Arts Festival.

But at first, we meet an asylee from Cameroon, who came to the United States seeking not just a better life, but a way to survive, in this week's our culture segment.

(gentle music) - My name is Christian Nchindo Ngong.

I'm a Cameroonian.

I've been in the United States since January 8th, 2020.

That's when I was granted asylum.

I am a human rights activist, I am a political analyst, I am the founder and chief executive officer of a humanitarian organization, The Voice of the Voiceless, in Cameroon, that has to be helping the needy orphans, refugees, internally displaced persons.

Cameroon is a country in Sub-Saharan Africa that was colonized by the British and the French.

Is a bilingual country, because of its history of colonialism.

So it's been split into two countries, which is the British Southern Cameroon and the French Cameroon.

And up until today we have a long history of fighting, a long history of wars in Cameroon.

The president of the Republic of Cameroon has been in power for over 36 years, and he is a French speaker.

The second person in government is a French speaker, and all the ministers, they are French speakers.

So growing up as an Anglophone or as an English speaker in Cameroon is hell on its own.

You live in a country where your education means nothing.

You live in a country where carrying and identification document as an English speaker means nothing.

So we were practically foreigners in our own country.

When the Anglophone crisis started in 2016, we called on the government to resolve the crisis.

And because we are in a dictatorship, any person that call on the government to perform its duty automatically becomes an opponent of the government.

And because I was involved, I was one of those people who was calling on the government of Cameroon to find a credible solution to the crisis that has killed more than 8,000 people, burned down more than 250 villages in Cameroon, displaced millions of people, created orphans, internally displaced persons.

The government saw me as a threat, so I decided to run away from Cameroon to save my life and to save these people, which I continue to fight for them today, even as I'm in the United States.

I left Cameroon, and I had to move through high sea to Nigeria, which is the neighboring country, Cameroon, because I could not cross any borders, I could not move across the bus to the airport.

And I had to use the high sea, because there was no security.

I got to Nigeria, and from there, I was able to secure a flight to South America, where I landed in Ecuador.

From Ecuador, I had to grapple with the police all along, moving through Columbia, walking across the Darien Gap for two weeks day and night without food.

And I had to move through Panama, Costa Rica, Nicaragua, Honduras, Guatemala, right up to Mexico, where I was able to get myself across.

I was able to cross the borders to the United States of America.

So from there, I was put under immigration custody for seven months, until I was taken to court and acquitted.

Defining myself as a refugee, I believe that the United States has been a home, it's been made home for me right now, because that is the only home I have.

I can't call Cameroon a home, when I'm not able to move back there.

I will tell you that there is hope, because there is always hope, and you will always win where there is hope.

I believe that it's just a matter of time, and someday somehow our lives will be back to normal.

- [Narrator] For more information about this story and other R-Town features, connect with us on Facebook, twitter @KSM#R-Town or ksmq.org/RTown.

(gentle music) - Hi, I'm Danielle Teal, your moderator for R-Town, the Spotlight.

It is a segment that really focuses on organizations, events, and happenings across Rochester.

Today, I have two guests from the Med City Art Fest, and they're gonna share a little bit about themselves, as well as how they got involved.

- Hi, I'm Julie Johns.

- And I am Yvette Martinez.

- And we started Med City Art Festival in 2019.

Yvette has been my partner in crime for a couple of years with this and a bunch of other projects that we're doing.

And we thought Rochester needs some art festivals, and some more events to activate downtown.

And we'll be downtown again on September 18th this year, at 1st and 3rd, same place as Thursdays on 1st, and 10:00 AM to 10:00 PM.

- Perfect.

So when people walk up, what are they gonna see?

And what's gonna be offered?

- We offer vendors, we offer practice classes are there, the art classes.

We offer competition between artists, amateur and children.

We have money price, (indistinct) award, $500.

So we offer a lot of different things.

We have a stage where we have different cultural presentations of dances and music.

The diversity is present all the time, and we have a music stage.

- Right.

And we have some great musicians coming from the Twin Cities and elsewhere.

We have three bands starting at 6:00, and we've got great interactive art.

We're gonna have an opportunity to participate in a string sculpture, we have an abstract paint off, plain art competition, and beer and food.

- And beer and food!

(laughs) - We're all good.

- That's perfect.

So how has the pandemic impacted your planning?

And do you anticipate a lot of engagement in the community with this event?

- We are very much promoting mask wearing.

We're doing that on all of our social media.

The city is also promoting how to be safe during these events.

So our booths will be six feet apart, our vendors are gonna have hand sanitizer available.

They'll be monitoring overcrowding at their booths.

We're gonna have some truck art, six feet apart, so everybody is reminded of social distance.

We'll put our chairs to the stage six feet apart, and we're just gonna try and have a safe as event as we can.

- It's great.

And where can people find details about this event?

- Well, you can check our website out at medcityartfestival.org, or you can visit our Facebook page.

(gentle music) - Hi everyone, this is Michael BoJack, with your art town rundown, coming to you once again from my COVID-19 Delta variant home studio.

RPU recently announced that rates next year are projected to go up at two and a half percent for both water and electric.

I was able to spend a few years on the board of directors for RPU, and actually realized that over the last 20 years, the rate of increases in the utilities have been well below that of inflation.

That's a little bit offset by the imposition of a customer charge, which is that flat rate that you're seeing on the bill.

What not a lot of people realize is RPU does the water and electric utilities, but we have additional utilities in the city of Rochester, that being storm water and sewer, for example.

And those charges have actually gone up at a more substantial rate.

But overall, when you compare us to neighboring cities, the quality of our public utility enterprise and our rates are quite competitive with those around us.

So I do appreciate all the work those in RPU are doing on our behalf.

Dr. Fauci, the Dr. Fauci will be giving the address to Mayo Clinic biomedical school here shortly.

Now, it's going to be a virtual address, so you will not have that opportunity to introduce Dr. Fauci to your uncle who saw that YouTube video that shows why he's so wrong, but still what an incredible honor for our community in that graduating class.

Thursdays on first, will be ending on September 9th.

That will be the last one of the season.

It's a fantastic event in Rochester, something that celebrates our beautiful downtown.

If you haven't seen that new finished First Avenue, please go take a look.

Fall Fest, a fixture at Quarry Hill every fall will be going on September 11th from 10:00 to 5:00.

Now, what's different this year is you actually have to pre-register in advance, and there's timed entry.

Don't miss out on this, it's a great way to celebrate one of our great regional parks here in the city of Rochester.

Labor day weekend is coming up, very much everyone enjoy the long weekend, be safe, and thank you to those in the labor movement who helped have this holiday, and make working conditions what they are today.

(gentle music) - Hi, I'm Danielle Teal from R-Town Walkabout, and we're talking to our wonderful guests, Nora.

She is remote at the Neon Green studio pop-up art carts, at the Peace Plaza in Rochester.

Whoa!

- Hello.

- We are excited to have you Nora, so can you go ahead and share a little bit about yourself, and the concept behind the pop-up art cart?

- Absolutely.

So Neon Green studio is a business that we opened in 2019 at the castle.

So we had a studio, it's an art bar, people come in, select a project that work with all of our materials.

We provide everything including instruction, if needed for artists, really of all ages, creative abilities.

We wanna just get people in that creative mindset.

You're welcome to sit down and do some painting.

Absolutely, yeah.

(laughs) - You've got a customer right there!

- We've got one right there, yeah.

We applied for a grant through the Rochester Downtown Alliance, to offer this pop-up activation throughout the downtown area.

And so this is one of several little spots that we stopped.

A lot of people think this is just for kids, and it's not.

It's really for everybody.

- So Nora, can you take a little tour of the carts, so we can see what it looks like?

- Absolutely.

So we've got a couple of kiddos here, working on some different paintings.

Another gentleman over here working on that.

Then here's what we've got as our set up today.

So a little canvases, some pretty cards, watercolor.

We've had... Actually my daughter teaching how to do different styles of friendship bracelets, and we've had a couple of regulars coming to get actually lessons from her on that.

(laughs) - That's great.

- You know, the goal for us has always been not to worry about exactly what you're making, but just that you're making something.

- Thank you so much for hosting that.

This is Danielle Teal with R-Town Walkabout.

♪ Will you find me?

♪ ♪ Hope you find me ♪ - Welcome back everyone, we are here talking to auditor Blaha, all about what the auditor does, and the key legislation that was just passed.

At the top of the show, we were talking a little bit about that legislation, and auditor Blaha, I wanted to know from you what role the findings from your office played in facilitating that legislation?

- One of the best things that we do out of our office, is we offer the kind of data that gets us all back on (indistinct).

And it's particularly important in these issues, like we talk about policing.

There is intense emotion around policing.

It's a really, really high stakes, hot topic.

And we're able to bring our numbers, and help calm the debate and say, "All right, can we find something in the numbers where we can all agree?"

And what I think our numbers were able to show was that they were on the right track, this coalition, when they were talking about small forfeitures.

We're able to say, "You're right.

You're on the right track.

This is something that is significant enough to make an impact, but it's still not gonna rattle our systems."

So it's a safe place to start that discussion.

So when you find those really magical places of big individual impact, but easy absorption by the system, it gives you a place to start.

And hopefully that leads to even further reform that continues to improve our relationships, improve public safety in good ways.

So we're really proud that we can be that kind of calming thing force that the numbers can be.

- I love that.

The calming force of the numbers.

That's a great role.

- Instead of saying it's boring, right?

And so when people hear about auditing, they think...

It's the idea that it's calming and it's focusing, and you can pull some of that emotion away, and just have a good conversation.

And I'll tell you, in times like these, that we're in right now, who doesn't want a little bit of a boring conversation?

We're here to help you provide that.

- Fantastic.

Switching gears a little bit here, word around town is that you are a very talented crop artist.

What made you start doing that?

- Oh my goodness, I have to say I'm a huge state fair fan, so I'm way into it.

I've always loved looking at the crop art.

And I saw a video about how to do it, and it basically involves blue and seeds in a board, and I thought I could pull that off.

And we talked about the idea of like the great Minnesota get together, pulling people together.

Some of my favorite parts of the fairs, when you pull different groups together, and crop art pulls together crafters like me, weekend crafters like me, we have legitimate full-time artists.

I mean, there are some amazing artists here, and here's a place where we get to show side by side, and I get to have a conversation, and we're still pulling beans to a board.

It's a humble activity.

You can't take yourself too seriously, when you're trying to talk about what's the best millet to make a good background.

It's just a wonderful fun event of just unity, and also not take yourself too seriously.

- I love that.

You've had some very funny and punny pieces.

I was really intrigued by the 2018 piece that you had when you were campaigning.

Can you tell me how many beans you used in that piece?

- Oh, yes I can, because I took my campaign sign, and I wrote bean counter literally.

And as I'm putting the beans on literally, I thought, "Oh no, I'm gonna count this?"

(laughs) So I did, I literally counted.

There were 10,041 beans in that.

Now, that one had some smaller beans than this year's piece, I have a piece in this year, and if you go to our website, osa.state.mn.US, just I've been Minnesota state auditor, and you can enter your guess for how many beans are in this piece.

And you know, it's a way to kind of help people see connect with the auditor's office and connect with our data.

So maybe you come there to make a guess on my beans to show off your bean counting ability, but maybe you stay there and take a look at the audit from your community.

Or maybe you look at one of our reports, and start to say, "Oh, hey..." Maybe this inspires you to help solve a problem in your community.

So ultimately, all of this is really about making a connection.

And I do the crop art so that you can be connected to our office and feel welcomed to come on in and start digging through our numbers.

- At the top of the show, you're talking about the importance of local government.

You were talking about the importance of connecting at that level.

And that's fantastic, and being able to use...

I mean, as we're talking here, just pulling back the layers of the auditor, I think people definitely they think... (laughs) "The auditor?

What is that?

Actually, audits just don't sound like something I wanna know about."

- Please, don't audit me.

I audit local government, I audit government.

(laughs) You're safe.

So when you walk up and you walk to somebody's door and say, "Hi, I'm your state auditor."

They're not always as excited to see you as you'd hope.

So you really have to explain, "Hi, I'm your state auditor, I don't audit you."

And then you can have a conversation.

My job is to give you the data, to be involved in your community, and come up with a fact-based decision, and then we can have a conversation.

- Fore sure.

You're highly visible as well.

You go to the Farmfest.

Can you tell us a little bit about why you attend that event?

- You know, I had that question a lot.

Why is the auditor at Farmfest?

And again it's like, "We're accounting our money."

It's like, "You're fine, you're fine."

But I thought that Gary Wertish of the farmers union, president of the farmer's union explained it really well.

He said, "Farm bills, for instance, legislative federal farm bills..." A farm bill is basically a rural economic development bill.

Now, one of the groups we oversee, set of groups we oversee are economic development authorities.

And so these are partnerships between local government and agriculture, are really important to help your community thrive.

So if you care about local economies, you care about local agriculture.

And so Farmfest is a great place to really connect with people who are on the front lines of agriculture, who are actual farmers, who are actual producers, and talk about, "Okay, what do you need to know your community to make good decisions?"

So I go there to see, "What numbers are you talking about?

What data do you wish you had?"

And then our job is to take that information back to say, "All right, is there a way we can pull some numbers together, so that we can help raise the economic development of our rural communities?"

So it's a perfect place the state auditor.

- Yeah.

Certainly sounds like (crosstalk drowns out speaker) - They've also got a funnel cake.

(laughs) As you're talking about economic development, I think here in Rochester, oftentimes when we talk about economic development, we're talking about us as a city, as an urban area, and I just loved what you said about the rural communities, and agriculture being a central part of economic development in those areas.

So this economic development ecosystem that we're a part of, I think is really important.

'Cause I myself am guilty of this, being here in a smaller city, where economic development is all about urban growth and things like that.

- That urban growth is so important, because one of the things that I think is best about local government, is when we have a big idea that we wanna attempt, it's hard to say, "Okay, we're gonna do something nationally."

No, we can test it out city by city.

For instance, I think the minimum wage is one example of that.

You have a lot of people who tested out, raising the minimum wage to $15 city by city.

We're still getting data back.

And I think that because we are able to see what that has done for the cities.

And I would say on average, we're seeing that it's helped their economic development.

Now, I can understand why people say, "I don't know if I want a national $15 an hour minimum wage just to start."

But you know what?

A city trying it, I think that makes a lot of sense.

So cities and towns and counties can be an incubator or our test kitchen for our best public policy recipes.

So that's one of the best things about local government, we get to try out new ideas, and anything that works and we can actually spread that across the country.

- Well, that's a fantastic note to end on.

Thank you so much auditor Blaha for joining us.

It was great to connect with you, and learn more about what you do.

And I'll definitely be paying more attention.

Thanks a lot.

- Thank you.

- And thank you for joining us today on R-Town, the show about Rochester.

We will be back next week for more on the show, in the meantime, be well and stay safe.

I'm Nicole Nfonoyim, for R-Town, the show about Rochester.

(upbeat music) - [Narrator] Funding for this program is provided in part by the Minnesota Arts and Cultural Heritage Fund, and the citizens of Minnesota.