During the March 16 county commissioners’ meeting there was an exchange between Commissioner Linda Tuttle and Freeborn County Nurse Lois Ahern about a recent hire. The person hired was City Councilor Ellen Kehr, who was being paid $22 an hour to oversee a state SHIP grant. The SHIP grant is a state grant that is costing Minnesotans nearly $50 million over two years to essentially tell people to quit smoking and lose weight.

When Tuttle asked Ahern if the job required some sort of health background or health education background, Ahern responded that the beauty of this SHIP grant was that you didn’t need a health education background but later added that it wouldn’t hurt to have one.

 After doing some searching on the Internet I found the minutes from the Port Authority’s Nov. 9 meeting where Kehr was the presiding officer. Then City Manager Victoria Simonsen said, “The city received exciting news, informing them that Freeborn County is part of a nine-county area who has been awarded a $2.7 million SHIP grant. Albert Lea hopes that, with county approval, they can use those dollars for the new Vitality Project. Lois Ahern has appointed the Vitality Team as the new SHIP board to oversee the grant funds. It is hoped that staff can be hired for the new center with these funds.”

I find it interesting that Councilwoman Kehr will apparently be working for a temporary employment agency. During the county meeting, Ahern said that it was so the county wouldn’t have to pay her unemployment when the grant ends, but if that were the case, they could have used her as an independent contractor and we wouldn’t have had to pay her unemployment when the grant ended. Of course, with her being an “employee” of the temporary agency, she also wouldn’t have a problem with the City Ordinance 2.06, which says an elected officer of the city may not hold another city office or be employed by the city in any capacity for pay; or be employed by the city for a period of one year after expiration of the officer’s term of office.

According to the Simonsen statement, it seems that Ahern appointed the “Vitality Team” to oversee this grant, so I did a little more searching for the names of the “Vitality Team” and it turns out that Ellen Kehr’s husband, Randy, is listed as one of the six people that currently makes up this “Vitality Team.” It seems they intend to eventually turn this into a job running the city’s Vitality Center, even though that money was intended to be used on all of Freeborn County, not just on the Vitality Center.

At a time when there are so many people out of work, I find it really offensive to see a self-serving local politician take inside information from a board meeting and parlay that into a good-paying job.

 
Chad T. Hayson

Albert Lea