(KNSI) — The Chief Justice of the Minnesota Supreme Court has tossed out a recall request for St. Cloud area Representative Dan Wolgamott and 28 other Democratic House Members for their three week boycott of the legislative session.
Proposed petitions for the recalls were presented to the Office of the Secretary of State for “serious malfeasance or nonfeasance during the term of office in the performance of the duties of the the office”. Democrats and Republicans were set to start with a 67-67 tie, but a Democratic representative from District 40B was denied his seat because he lied about where he actually lived and his address was not in that district. That gave the GOP a temporary one seat majority. Republicans carried on with business as usual January 14th as Wolgamott and the others refused to attend the session, saying the GOP made an “illegitimate power grab.”
According to the filing, the “allegations are that the collective failure of the State Representatives to attend resulted in the lack of a quorum, and that thus, each of the State Representatives “has caused the House to be unable to transact business.”
Representative Wolgamott insisted he was working in his district meeting with voters and getting more work done here than he could have if he were in St. Paul.
Following the ruling, he issued a statement saying, “The judge’s decision is vindication of the hard work I do every day for my constituents. Now that this baseless and politically-motivated recall has been dismissed, we need to work together and pass bipartisan solutions to deliver results for Minnesotans.”
In her ruling Justice Natalie Hudson says “Each of the recall petitions is dismissed for failure to allege specific facts that, if proven, would constitute grounds for recall.”
A special election held March 11th brought the chamber back to a tie as Democrat David Gottfried won over Republican Paul Wickstrom. The originally agreed to power sharing agreement goes back into effect. It has each committee co-chaired by one represenative from each party, except for the committee regarding being a watchdog for potential fraud within state agencies. That will be chaired by a Republican.
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