Posted 1/13/14 by Edie Grossfield, egrossfield@postbulletin.com
Vague language in the Destination Medical Center law has a couple of elected officials concerned about whether the six board members of the newly created DMC Economic Development Agency meet the law's criteria.
State Rep. Kim Norton, DFL-Rochester, inquired with the House Research Department in November, about a week after Mayo Clinic announced the EDA appointees. And Rochester City Council member Michael Wojcik said he is in the process of checking with the same research department because some of his constituents have asked about the matter.
For Norton, one of the author's of the legislation, the issue centers around the fact that none of the board members are city or county representatives, which she said was the intent of the DMC law.
"That was my intent and the House's desire, but others are interpreting it differently, including the Senate, Tina Smith (chairwoman of the DMC Corporation Board of Directors) and Mayo," Norton said.
Under the DMC law, Mayo was required to create the private, nonprofit EDA, which is to provide expertise for developing and marketing the DMC initiative. The EDA must serve the DMCC board by developing a master plan and providing expertise as projects come forward.
The part of the law that calls for its creation, however, simply states that its members "must be comprised of members of the medical community, city and county."
After talking with someone from the Senate Research Department, Smith and EDA board Chairwoman Dr. Patricia Simmons, Norton found out that to them, "city" and "county" simply means residents of Rochester or Olmsted County, not city and county employees or elected officials.
"But I can tell you as a member of the House, we were concerned that someone from the city or county be on the board … The language may be nebulous enough that it can be interpreted differently. I had hoped it would not be," Norton said.
Joel Michael, a House Research representative, responded to Norton's inquiry, saying that although Mayo Clinic interprets city and county only to mean a resident, the term "member" in legislation typically is not used to refer to residents.
"The typical use of "member" or "membership" in the context of cities, counties or other municipal corporations is to refer to members of the governing bodies of those organizations," Michael wrote in an email to Norton.
Norton said she spoke to Simmons shortly after the last DMCC board meeting Nov. 8 and asked if the EDA board would appoint another member, ideally somebody from the Rochester-Olmsted Planning Department. Nothing in the law limits the number of members.
At that time, she said, Simmons said the board wasn't interested in doing that.
"But there's still time for them to add someone, and I'm hoping they will do the right thing," Norton said, adding that having somebody knowledgeable about the city and county land-use plans on the board would prevent conflicts as DMC projects move forward.
On Friday, Simmons said "the EDA board is not complete," and that it will add members in the future. She said the current group was put together rapidly to get the ball rolling toward developing the DMC master plan.
When asked whether she's open to adding somebody from city-county planning, she said, "Absolutely."
Simmons said the EDA already has worked with city and county planners, administrators and elected officials to put together its request-for-proposal process to find and select consultants to develop the DMC master plan. Those selections are expected to be made at the next DMCC board meeting Jan. 30.
"We're working together to be efficient, to make great decisions and to make great, coordinated, integrated decisions," Simmons said. "We want the DMC plan and the city and county plans to match up beautifully because they're going to support each other."
Interpreting 'medical community'
Questions from Wojcik's constituents recently led him to make a call to the state House Research Department, inquiring whether all of the members on the EDA board meet the law's criteria. He interprets "members of the medical community, city, and county" to mean that any member should either have some connection to the medical field or be a Rochester or Olmsted County resident.
"I understand if they're only one of the three, but I don't understand how you could have people on there who are zero of the three. … "We're under the microscope on (the DMC), and if any of this stuff comes up, I'm going to ask the questions," Wojcik said.
However, Norton said she and the House never intended that all of the EDA board members have medical field backgrounds; rather, the intent was to have at least one or more people on the board with that background, she said.
Link to story: http://www.postbulletin.com/news/local/vague-language-leads-to-inquiries-into-dmc-agency/article_3a28f05f-87d1-59f2-aa6a-9260395955ca.html