# MN Public Tools

> MN Public Tools is independent public-records research on Minnesota local and state government by Dan Swenson, an attorney who serves on the Nowthen City Council. It covers Nowthen city records, Anoka County, ballot questions, the state budget, and Minnesota fraud cases. Every material claim links to a primary source. Figures are labeled "Source checked" (a person checked it against the source), "Official data" (taken directly from a named government source or an official PDF table without AI), or "AI-extracted" (check the source). Dan's signed analysis is labeled as analysis or opinion. Method at https://www.mnpublictools.com/about/method.

The site is organized by place, then by statewide issue. Last updated 2026-10-11.

## Local records

- [Nowthen](https://www.mnpublictools.com/nowthen): City · Anoka County. Meetings, budgets, property taxes, roads, city equipment, and ordinances.
- [Anoka County](https://www.mnpublictools.com/county): County. County budget and levy data, plus comparisons among the county’s cities.

## Ballot guides

- [Minnesota school funding amendment](https://www.mnpublictools.com/school-funding-amendment): Statewide ballot question · Nov. 3, 2026. Amendment 1 would raise what the permanent school fund pays every district each year. The ballot language, the 4.5% payout, and the dollars.
- [Elk River schools referendum](https://www.mnpublictools.com/elk-river-schools): Ballot question · Nov. 3, 2026. ISD 728’s Nov. 3 referendum. $350 million in bonds, a ten-year capital levy, tax impacts, and the projects.
- [Luverne utility ballot question](https://www.mnpublictools.com/luverne): Ballot question · Nov. 3, 2026. What changes, how the utility supports the city, rates, arguments, and the ballot language.

## Statewide

- [Minnesota state budget](https://www.mnpublictools.com/state-budget): Minnesota. Where general-fund money comes from and where it goes.
- [Minnesota fraud](https://www.mnpublictools.com/fraud): Minnesota. Cases, dollar figures, oversight, and public claims traced to the underlying record.

## Nowthen records and tools

- [Search Nowthen records](https://www.mnpublictools.com/search): Ask a question and get a source-cited answer from Nowthen meetings, packets, and minutes, or run an exact keyword search.
- [Nowthen meetings](https://www.mnpublictools.com/meetings): Nowthen, Minnesota city council and commission meetings on file, with the agendas, packets, and minutes behind each one.
- [Nowthen city budget](https://www.mnpublictools.com/money): Where Nowthen’s money comes from and what it pays for, year by year, with each budget line linked to the votes, claims, and budget pages behind it.
- [Nowthen 2025 payments, bids, and contracts ledger](https://www.mnpublictools.com/money/ledger): Every 2025 payment, bid, and contract in the Nowthen meeting record, grouped by what it bought, the equipment or street it touched, and the vote behind it.
- [Nowthen property tax, explained](https://www.mnpublictools.com/taxes): See what the average Nowthen home pays, who gets each part of the bill, how the city share compares with the budget, and how the city tax rate is set.
- [Nowthen property tax calculators](https://www.mnpublictools.com/taxes/tools): Three experiments on Nowthen’s 2026 budget. Grow the tax base, raise the levy, or cut it, and see the effect on the city rate and the average home.
- [Nowthen roads, history and funding](https://www.mnpublictools.com/roads): Every Nowthen road with its engineer pavement rating, what each Anoka County city spends on streets, and what it costs to keep roads from failing.
- [Nowthen city vehicles and equipment](https://www.mnpublictools.com/fleet): Every big machine Nowthen owns, what the records show about it, and what may need replacing, with its paper trail one click away.
- [Fleet Funder](https://www.mnpublictools.com/fleet/funder): Compare ways Nowthen could pay to replace its equipment, from cash to bonds, against a pre-funding benchmark. Every lifespan and price is editable.
- [Nowthen city code](https://www.mnpublictools.com/code): Nowthen’s city code by chapter and section, plus the ordinances the council has adopted, each linked to its source document.
- [When council votes split](https://www.mnpublictools.com/alignment): Most council votes are unanimous. This page leads with the motions where Nowthen council members disagreed, with the source record behind each one.

## Minnesota fraud records

- [Minnesota fraud numbers](https://www.mnpublictools.com/fraud/numbers): The major Minnesota fraud dollar figures, from restitution to the $19 billion claim, with what each measures, who stated it, when, and the source.
- [The $19 billion claim, checked](https://www.mnpublictools.com/fraud/claim-check): The $19 billion figure from the 2026 State of the Union, checked against court records, audits, and agency reports, and how the number developed.
- [Fraud cases](https://www.mnpublictools.com/fraud/cases): Selected defendants in the Minnesota benefit and Medicaid fraud cases, with charges, pleas, verdicts, sentences, appeals, dockets, and court dates.
- [Fraud timeline](https://www.mnpublictools.com/fraud/timeline): A sourced timeline of Minnesota benefit and Medicaid fraud milestones from 2020 to 2026, from program launches and charges to verdicts and audits.
- [Fraud sources](https://www.mnpublictools.com/fraud/sources): Where every number in the fraud section comes from, with every source cited, how each figure is labeled, and how to request a correction.

## Signed analysis by Dan Swenson

- [In Luverne, lower electric rates may not save you money](https://www.mnpublictools.com/luverne/analysis): Dan Swenson, September 25, 2026, updated October 12, 2026. Cutting the utility transfers moves the cost onto a levy that leans harder on homes. The amendment also reserves a seat for the largest accounts and gives no way out of a deadlock.
- [Why Nowthen’s levy is rising, and what the city is paying for](https://www.mnpublictools.com/taxes/articles/city-spending-and-taxes): Dan Swenson, August 31, 2026, updated October 12, 2026. The city is catching up on debt, equipment, roads, and staffing after years of using reserves and delaying costs. These are the numbers behind the increase, including what recent spending bought and where staff found savings.
- [Low taxes, no development, good roads. Pick two.](https://www.mnpublictools.com/taxes/articles/pick-two-of-three): Dan Swenson, June 27, 2026, updated October 12, 2026. The survey came back with three loud, shared wishes. Don’t change Nowthen, fix the roads, and don’t raise taxes. You can have any two of those. You cannot have all three. The city’s own budget shows why.
- [What saying no to development actually costs](https://www.mnpublictools.com/taxes/articles/the-cost-of-saying-no): Dan Swenson, June 27, 2026, updated October 12, 2026. This is the math behind the idea you’ve heard, that development “grows the tax base.” It covers how the city tax rate is set, why even a lot of new residential development may not move the needle on the rate even with an expanded tax base, and what it costs every home in Nowthen to keep the city undeveloped, worked through a real commercial project proposed in recent Nowthen history.
- [Why I voted to buy a new plow truck](https://www.mnpublictools.com/fleet/new-plow-truck): Dan Swenson, June 20, 2026, updated October 12, 2026. The council voted 3 to 2 to order a new tandem dump truck and plow instead of rebuilding the city’s 26-year-old Sterling. Here are the real numbers, why a used truck was not the cheap shortcut it sounds like, and why salt, not mileage, retires a plow truck.

## Sources and citations

Source documents are linkable. City records cited on the site are served at https://www.mnpublictools.com/api/documents/<id>/file?redirect=1&page=N, which opens the original PDF at the cited page. Please cite the page on this site and the source document together.

- [Method](https://www.mnpublictools.com/about/method): How MN Public Tools ranks sources, separates recorded from calculated figures, labels provenance and analysis, uses AI, and corrects errors.
- [About](https://www.mnpublictools.com/about): Who builds MN Public Tools, why, how sources and numbers are labeled, how AI is used, and how errors are corrected.
- [Corrections log](https://www.mnpublictools.com/changes): A public log of factual corrections on MN Public Tools, plus the records most recently added.

## Optional

- [Full guide for language models](https://www.mnpublictools.com/llms-full.txt): Each section with its headline figures and sources, every signed article, and the corrections log.
- [Markdown versions of key pages](https://www.mnpublictools.com/md): Clean text of 20 key pages at /md/<path>, for example https://www.mnpublictools.com/md/taxes.
- [Sitemap index](https://www.mnpublictools.com/sitemap.xml)
- [Signed analysis feed (RSS)](https://www.mnpublictools.com/taxes/articles/feed.xml)
- [Corrections feed (RSS)](https://www.mnpublictools.com/changes/feed.xml)
- [Minnesota fraud updates feed (RSS)](https://www.mnpublictools.com/fraud/feed.xml)