Tolkkinen: Tapping into public money seems to come easier for swindlers than small Minnesota towns

RICHVILLE, MINN. - There are those, like the swindlers in the Feeding Our Future scam, who seem to have no trouble bilking us of millions of state-distributed federal taxpayer dollars.

Then there are those, like Leslie Lee, city clerk of Richville, population 76, who are stymied when trying to get any state grant. Lee wants to install a well in the city park so she and her husband don’t have to haul water in 5-gallon buckets from their home to water the trees. At 62, she finds the tree-watering task a bit much, but without it, the trees will die.

A climate change grant from the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency — different from federal money distributed by the state and allegedly misused by Feeding Our Future — could help, because trees absorb carbon and can alleviate the impacts of climate change.

But applying for the grant? Well, that’s another story altogether. On a recent morning, she poked around the state’s website for an application form. But even getting to an application form required something called a SWIFT account, which stands for Statewide Integrated Financial Tools. Lee used to have a SWIFT account for the city, but she hadn’t used it in a couple of years and didn’t have the account number.

No problem! The website had a toll-free helpline. She called it, and a pleasant-sounding gentleman answered. Alas, he could not answer her question. He gave her another number to call.

Have I mentioned that Leslie works only part time as city clerk in this Otter Tail County town between Perham and Battle Lake? Her real job is as a nurse’s aide at the Perham hospital. She took on the role of city clerk after the previous clerk left. Richville needed someone, and her husband was the mayor, and he begged her to apply. When she started, the position paid only $40 a month. (It’s now $150 a month.) It took months, and plenty of tears, to figure out the job.

Lee called the second number and a very nice woman answered. This state employee knew exactly what the problem was. If you haven’t used the SWIFT system in a while, it’ll boot you out, she said. She told Lee to expect an email shortly with an invitation to rejoin.

After a while, the email arrived. The link it contained brought Lee to a confusing website that didn’t seem to recognize that she was acting on behalf of a city, not a business. Gamely, she entered the city’s taxpayer identification number, only to be rejected. The website told her to call the same number she had already called.

Keep in mind that Lee, like part-time clerks in many small Minnesota towns, has little experience with grant writing. Small towns are often lucky to have a clerk, let alone a professional grant writer on staff, which may be why rural Minnesota communities receive only 8% of philanthropic funding despite being home to 23% of the state’s population, according to the Grand Rapids, Minn.-based Blandin Foundation.

Richville, with a $38,000 annual budget, needs things that it can’t afford. So Lee called the number again. Minutes passed while she waited on hold.

Finally the state worker answered. It was the same woman she had talked to earlier. Lee told her about the confusing webpage where the email link took her.

“I’m confused as to why it would have said that,” the state worker admitted.

There followed a conversation about cloud sign-ins and two-factor authentications and passwords, none of which made sense to Lee. Finally she gave up. It was the day before Christmas Eve, and she had Christmas shopping to finish.

When I said Lee has little experience with grant writing, that doesn’t mean she has none. As she got ready to leave, she pushed back her $77 office chair (a deal because it was used) from her $1,100 professional office desk, and left through a lockable door installed in a brand-new wall (a $4,000 project). These things were paid for with a grant from Blandin, which has made an effort since the pandemic to single out for grant aid towns with populations below 5,000.

After learning that Richville had no office for the clerk and that Lee was handling city business in her laundry room at home, Blandin agreed to pay for the wall and door at the local community center.

The process wasn’t entirely smooth. After trying for two days to attach files, Lee missed Blandin’s deadline. So she sent them a simple, heartfelt email explaining the situation. Not only did Blandin waive the deadline, but it also offered her more money than she’d asked for to cover office equipment.

Richville was one of 72 small Minnesota cities that received a total of $4 million in Blandin grant funding this year. The grants meant that the Red Lake Band of Ojibwe could help members cope with historical trauma. The city of Blackduck could restore its iconic duck statue. The city of Walnut Grove turned a downtown building into space for entrepreneurs.

And Richville has a city office.

Many of greater Minnesota’s small towns and townships are just like Richville, run by civic-minded residents who get paid peanuts but do what needs to be done anyway. It would be great if grant makers like the state of Minnesota and nonprofits could follow Blandin’s lead and make the grant process work for communities of all sizes. As a private foundation, Blandin clearly has more leeway than the state in granting leniency for applicant errors. But the state could simplify the application process and language to make it more accessible.

“It weeds out us little guys,” Lee said.

She’ll still forge ahead with the grant for Richville’s well. But clearly, something needs to be reformed in a state where the door seems like it’s wide open for thievery, at least when distributing federal funds, and barely a crack for cities in need.