Today marked the second day of the National League of Cities conference. It started with an address this morning by a former congressman from Ohio named John Kasich. He was fantastic. He was inspiring. He was the best speaker I’ve heard in a long time.
If you don’t remember John Kasich, it’s OK. He was a Republican congressman from Ohio for 18 years. He was a budget hawk’s budget hawk, which often put him at odds with members of both parties whose purpose in Washington DC is merely to bring federal dollars back to their home districts. Kasich didn’t go for that then. He still decries it today.
He lamented the poisonous partisanship in today’s DC political environment. He also lamented that this environment is starting to leak down to the state and local levels, and that, in Kasich’s opinion, is not something we ought to look forward to. He reminded everyone the the fundamental values of honesty, integrity, faith and character do not slow us down in our rush to accomplish our goals in life – they are what make our progress possible in the first place.
I also had my first congressional meeting today. I met with a legislative assistant to Minnesota 2nd District Congressman John Kline named Ben Lange. I met with Mr. Lange today to talk about WAFTA. WAFTA (Western Area Fire Training Association) is an organization of eleven cities in Hennepin and Carver counties that own a site in Carver County just north of St. Bonafacious that is home to a former fire department training center. Eden Prairie is a member of WAFTA. The site is no longer used for fire training, but it is polluted and needs to be cleaned up so that it can be turned back into a productive piece of land.
There are several parties that share culpability for the pollution at the site. The WAFTA cities have some culpability. So do a couple of major Minnesota private utilities that trained there. The Defense Department, which developed the site as a NIKE missle site, also has culpability for a unique pollution signature that it left at the site before it became WAFTA.
It’s important to bring the federal government into this clean-up effort because if we don’t, it’s very possible that the cities could be left holding the bag on over $1,000,000 in clean-up costs. I’d like to avoid Eden Prairie’s 1/11th of that cost, if I can.
That’s it for today. There a busy day tomorrow that starts with an early morning address from Illinios Senator Barrack Obama.
