River serves as highway for birds

WINONA -- The biggest migration of birds in North America is peaking down the Mississippi River Valley, as waterfowl arrive here from Canadian and Alaskan breeding grounds.

In the backwaters, you can see hundreds or thousands of white tundra swans gabbling, feeding, and resting, and rafts of canvasback ducks.

The migration began during the heat of August with warblers, then sparrows and early waterfowl, followed by raptors. Now comes the last of the waterfowl.

Backdoor pay raise?

State lawmakers have received nearly $3.4 million in compensation on top of their annual salaries in just the first eight months of this year.

While salaries for lawmakers have remained frozen at $31,140.90 for a decade, legislators have found other ways to boost their take-home pay. They have boosted their daily allowances, known as per diem, by $40 in the Senate and $21 in the House during the last 10 years. Hamline University Professor David Schultz, an expert in government ethics, said this amounts to a backdoor salary increase.

"They have basically come up with a sort of subterfuge, kind of a hidden way of supplementing their income, which is basically by using the per diem," he said.

Instant runoff and Rochester reality

If Rochester had instant runoff voting, as was used for the first time in the Minneapolis mayoral and city council races last Tuesday, would Ardell Brede been elected mayor in 2002?

As some push for the voter-ranking method to be adopted here, It's a tantalizing question to consider: Would our local political leadership class be different today, if voters had had the option of ranking candidates in order of preference rather than simply picking one.

A review of the mayoral races in Rochester over the last three decades shows that the victor usually wins, if not by a landslide, then by a large margin. Instant runoff voting wouldn't have made any difference.

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