27 Jun 2024

PK’s Place — Minnesota United’s privately operated, publicly accessible all-abilities playground — is 1st addition of United Village

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Night after night, children from St. Paul’s Midway neighborhood have spent the past week exploring the vertical tower, swings, sensory panels and other key aspects of PK’s Place — a privately operated, publicly accessible playground, which may be the most elaborate playground in the city.

Constructed along Pascal Street immediately adjacent to the Allianz Field soccer stadium’s eastern wall, the all-abilities playground features 25 structures, many of which are designed with accessibility for the disabled in mind. Gently sloping ramps within the vertical tower are wide enough to allow a wheelchair user access nearly to the top, and a separate wheelchair-accessible swing is one of the first structures kids encounter toward the playground’s entrance.

PK’s Place — named for Penalty Kick, Minnesota United’s loon mascot — was donated as a gift from the William W. and Nadine M. McGuire Family Foundation, which also funded the creation of Gold Medal Park in Minneapolis.

St. Paul’s newest playground, PK’s Place, sits next to Allianz Field on Wednesday, June 26, 2024. (John Autey / Pioneer Press)

Officially a private park, the playground will be managed much like a public parkland, but overseen by the development team led by Bill McGuire, owner of Minnesota United. For the city, that’s potentially a cost savings in terms of litter pick-up, security and maintenance alone, as well as amenities such as a future water fountain and lighting.

“The water fountain is not installed yet, and the lights are not installed yet, but it’s fully operational,” said Mike Hahm, the city’s former Parks and Rec director, who is now a consultant to the team and spokesman on development surrounding Allianz Field. “It’s a pretty great example of how partnerships can come together to provide great public spaces. The public didn’t have to pay for it.”

During a presentation to the city’s Housing and Redevelopment Authority on Wednesday, St. Paul City Council member Anika Bowie asked how the P.O.P.S. — or “privately owned public space” — arrangement will work in terms of private rentals and special events, as well as public hours.

“It is the developer’s responsibility to establish those rules,” Hahm said. “It will be open regular hours. Those spaces are generally not reserved for private uses.”

Hotel, office, restaurant to come

The all-abilities playground, designed by Landscape Structures and Flagship Recreation, is one of the most inclusive in the city. The same designers created playgrounds at the new Assembly Union Park at Highland Bridge and St. Paul-Gillette Children’s Hospital.

It’s also the first major addition to the United Village development — the former home of the Midway Shopping Center — since the 19,000-seat stadium opened in April 2019, and city officials and neighborhood residents hope it’s a sign of positive things to come.

The 34-acre Snelling-Midway “super block” was identified in 2015 as the preferred location for the Major League Soccer stadium, with residents and city officials soon shown concept plans for housing, hotel rooms, offices and possibly a movie theater. None have been built yet.

Sill, McGuire and his development team say a hotel, office building and at least one of two restaurant pavilions could be well under construction along University Avenue by this time next year. City staff have offered conditional site plan approval for all three projects, though specific restaurant partners or office tenants have yet to be announced, and the team has yet to confirm whether it will move its offices from Golden Valley to the site.

Up first is the installation in late July of a giant loon sculpture, some 35 feet high, with a wing span 90 feet across. The loon will anchor a sculpture garden at the southeast corner of University and Snelling avenues.

While the $250 million professional soccer stadium has been a major draw for fans and has hosted some international events, it’s been slower to host musical acts and community programming. Most of the funding for the publicly-owned stadium has been private, but a term sheet approved in December for future development around the site includes up to $17 million in tax increment financing, or TIF, a type of city-driven tax incentive where property tax revenue generated on site can also be used on site.

Some of those TIF dollars will be used to boost housing efforts nearby.

“Whatever gets built on this site generates TIF increment for affordable housing along University Avenue,” explained Council President Mitra Jalali.

Also rolled into development plans is a special assessment agreement, which has yet to be finalized. A public hearing on the special assessments, which will be used to fund on-site improvements, will be held this summer.

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27 Jun 2024

Other voices: Monstrous COVID-19 frauds leave taxpayers holding the bag

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On his Instagram page, Hadi Isbaih of suburban Palos Heights, Ill., lists some of the services his Bridgeview company provided, including tax preparation, bookkeeping and translation for immigration documents. He neglected to mention one other: COVID-19 relief fraud.

The 42-year-old Isbaih, convicted on June 10, is among at least 3,500 defendants charged in federal court with stealing funds intended for pandemic relief. Every day, it seems, a new case is being brought or a new conviction announced. And, shockingly, the estimates about just how much was stolen keep rising.

Pandemic fraud is shaping up to be the biggest financial scam in U.S. history. Of the $5 trillion in relief that former President Donald Trump and President Joe Biden authorized, hundreds of billions are believed to have been ripped off. The pandemic’s first year was especially bad, with an estimated 20% of every dollar paid out going to criminals.

The Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) and Economic Injury Disaster Loans (EIDL), both aimed at helping small businesses, were among the favorites for fraudsters. Unemployment insurance, disaster food stamps and the government Medicare and Medicaid programs also lost a fortune in bogus payouts.

In Illinois, the accused include everyone from state police and dozens of other state employees to postal workers and opportunists like Isbaih. Across the country, prosecutors have taken down violent criminals and gang members who got into the pandemic-fraud act. They busted a Minnesota ring accused of stealing $250 million in relief funds earmarked for feeding needy children.

CityMD, a Walgreens-affiliated urgent-care retail chain, just settled allegations that it took millions in improper reimbursements for virus testing.

Federal and state lawmakers are acting to extend the statute of limitations for pandemic crimes so cases can be brought for years to come. Asked what he would tell those who believe they’ve gotten away with stealing relief funds, a federal prosecutor in Florida replied, “No one has gotten away with it. They just haven’t been arrested yet.”

The tough talk is good to hear, but unfortunately most of the stolen money is gone forever. Even after winning thousands of convictions, the Justice Department as of April had only recovered about $1.4 billion, a large sum to be sure but a fraction of the amount taken. The government knows who got the money — it’s a matter of public record, after all. But prosecuting all the criminals would take decades.

If you wonder how it could be so easy to steal so much, consider the charges brought against Isbaih. It didn’t take a master criminal to cheat these programs.

His Flash Tax Service advertised on billboards and social media, pulling in hundreds of customers who paid for his help submitting phony applications to the PPP and EIDL programs, according to Isbaih’s indictment.

When copies of tax returns showing business income, expenses and number of employees were needed, it was no big deal for Flash Tax to cook up fakes, resulting in millions of dollars going from the government to its customers. Flash Tax charged several hundred dollars upfront for its service, plus an additional kickback after the government money came through, according to the indictment.

It should have been simple for the Small Business Administration to work with the Internal Revenue Service and Treasury Department to verify the applications. But the CARES Act approved in the early days of the pandemic discouraged the SBA from taking obvious steps. As a result, even incarcerated prisoners were able to make successful applications. In Illinois, some inmates have been accused of using PPP loans to bond themselves out of jail on their felony cases. Unbelievable.

Congress lowered the usual guardrails in early 2020 because the economy had shut down, people needed money fast and a more bureaucratic approach would have slowed disbursements. It’s obvious today that even rudimentary checks taking hardly any time would have saved taxpayers billions. Instead, it was like a bank opening its vault and asking customers to leave an IOU as they helped themselves. And inflation for everyone was one of the consequences.

One of the main lessons is that allowing people to “self-certify” their eligibility for big pots of government money invites catastrophe. Fraud controls, including those for detecting identity theft, need to be built into government spending programs. As big banks have learned, artificial intelligence and data analytics can automate vetting processes to make the first lines of defense almost instantaneous. Federal and state governments have restored guardrails that came down in 2020, but they surely need to make better use of today’s technology for fraud prevention.

Know anyone who ripped off Uncle Sam during the pandemic? Plenty of people who stole relief funds bragged about it, including some of those who’ve been prosecuted. Some citizens have reported the crooks by calling the DOJ’s disaster-fraud hotline at 866-720-5721 or filing an online complaint form.

It’s sickening to consider how, in the midst of a crisis that was killing more than 1 million Americans and disrupting countless livelihoods, so many of our fellow citizens seized an opportunity to exploit relief efforts for personal gain.

— The Chicago Tribune

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27 Jun 2024

St. Paul nurse, breast cancer survivor, recognized with portrait at HCMC

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Margaret Udo and her family gathered Wednesday morning in the second-floor lobby at Hennepin County Medical Center for her portrait to be unveiled.

Soon to be revealed at the downtown Minneapolis hospital was a painting in the style of Shuri, King T’Challa’s sister in Marvel’s “Black Panther” superhero comic books and movie, to honor Udo’s journey and survival of breast cancer.

In November 2022, the nurse, who lives in St. Paul, felt a lump in her breast, and two days before Christmas, Udo learned that she had triple negative breast cancer — the most aggressive form, according to an HCMC spokesperson. Earlier that year, Udo, who is from Nigeria, had accepted a position as a registered nurse in the hospital’s oncology department.

Registered nurse Margaret Udo, a breast cancer patient and survivor, looks at her Breast Cancer Superhero Portrait Project painting at Hennepin County Medical Center Clinic and Speciality Center in Minneapolis on Wednesday, June 26, 2024. Udo, a nurse with HCMC originally from Nigeria, was diagnosed with breast cancer in 2022. She chose her portrait to be done in the style of the superhero Shuri, a character from comics books published by Marvel Comics, which was painted by guest artist Geno Okok, a muralist/portrait painter who is also from Nigeria. (John Autey / Pioneer Press)

For six months, Udo pushed through immunotherapy and chemotherapy. Then in July 2023, she underwent a bilateral mastectomy. After that, she started radiation and continued with immunotherapy.

Although going through different cancer treatments caused a lot of physical challenges, Udo’s friends and family were always there to support her — they visited her home many frequently, brought meals and checked in regularly. One of her friends even came with Udo to each and every doctor appointment.

Portrait project

The Breast Cancer Superhero Portrait Project sponsored Udo’s painting.

Barbara Porwit, a St. Paul artist and the organizer of the project, said she believes it’s important for everyone to see themselves as superheroes and has had many people close to her be diagnosed with breast cancer. She was inspired to expand the project further.

Udo said she chose Shuri because she’s a fierce, intelligent warrior who depicts Black people as powerful. She also wanted to pay tribute to “Black Panther” actor Chadwick Boseman, who died of colon cancer in 2020.

‘Dignified beauty and quiet grace’

Nigerian-American artist Geno Okok painted the portrait of Udo. Although he couldn’t be at HCMC for the unveiling Wednesday, he wrote a statement that read: “Upon meeting Margaret, I was immediately struck by her dignified beauty and quiet grace. Learning about her life story, that grace goes deep through her whole spirit.”

The portrait includes a cross, representing Udo’s family and faith. The panther represents her courage. Udo’s foot on a rock symbolizes her crushing cancer. But most of all, Okok said, he wanted to capture her strength and beauty.

As the portrait was unveiled, Udo’s family gathered close. Her husband wrapped his arms around her, and when the cardboard covering came off, Udo’s face fell into her hands and cheers and claps filled the lobby. Udo said that all she could think was “wow.”

To her, the painting symbolizes her perseverance.

“No matter how long it takes, never give up,” Udo said.

Breast exams/mammograms

HCMC officials offered the following recommendations for detecting breast cancer early:

• Regular breast exams/mammograms are the No. 1 way to reduce the risk of dying of breast cancer.

• Only one or two mammograms in 1,000 lead to diagnosis of cancer, according to the American Cancer Society. If a cancerous lump is detected early and confined to the breast, the survival rate is more than 95%.

• Asymptomatic women 40 years and older should get a mammogram annually.

• HCMC offers advanced 3-D mammography services, proven to be more accurate. It can capture multiple images of the breast from several angles. Providers recommend 3-D mammography in cases where increased accuracy is needed.

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27 Jun 2024

Noah Feldman: It just got easier to be convicted of a crime

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Can the prosecution call a cop as an expert witness to testify in a drug-trafficking case that most drug couriers — not necessarily the one on trial — know they are carrying drugs? The Supreme Court has said yes, despite a clear federal rule that says an expert can’t testify as to the defendant’s state of mind. The decision is wrong, because it invites the jury to conflate abstract statistical probabilities with the specific circumstances of the individual case.

Delilah Diaz, a U.S. citizen, was stopped in the car she was driving across the border into the U.S. from Mexico. The customs officer tried to roll down the rear window and discovered, hidden inside the rear door panel, 54 pounds of methamphetamine worth roughly $370,000. These were the facts of the case, and they were undisputed.

What was disputed in Diaz v. United States was whether Diaz knew the meth was there. (She claimed she didn’t.) To show Diaz knowingly smuggled the drugs, the government introduced an expert witness, a Homeland Security investigation agent. The agent testified that Mexican cartels “generally do not entrust large quantities of drugs to people who are unaware they are transporting them” because they don’t want to take that kind of a risk with lots of money on the line.

Federal rule of evidence 704(b) says that “in a criminal case, an expert witness must not state an opinion about whether the defendant did or did not have a mental state or condition that constitutes an element of the crime charged or of a defense.” The lower federal courts held that the agent’s testimony didn’t violate the rule because he wasn’t testifying about whether Diaz herself knew the drugs were there, but only about the general practice of cartels. The Supreme Court, in a 6-3 decision written by Justice Clarence Thomas, agreed.

The rule itself has a quirky history: Congress enacted it after a jury acquitted John Hinckley of the attempted murder of Ronald Reagan on grounds of insanity. Apparently, the worry was that juries would take experts too seriously when they said a defendant lacked the requisite mental capacity to commit a crime.

Interestingly, Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, a former federal trial judge, joined Thomas’s opinion. She wrote a separate concurrence to explain that it is important for defendants to be able to introduce expert testimony showing that a person with, say, a given mental condition is generally unable to form the mental state needed to commit a given crime. This approach suggests sensitivity to the anti-defendant impulses of the post-Hinckley rule.

Justice Neil Gorsuch dissented, joined by Justices Elena Kagan and Sonia Sotomayor. He framed his dissent as an exercise in textualism, the theory of statutory interpretation that says the words must be read to say what they mean. According to Gorsuch’s reading of the rule, the agent’s testimony was precisely “about” the defendant’s state of mind.

Readers of this column know I don’t have much patience with textualism. The majority opinion also had a plausible textual reading of the statute, namely that the testimony was about most drug couriers, not the defendant.

The better basis for the dissent is that allowing expert testimony about what most couriers know encourages the jury to infer on a probabilistic, statistical basis that the defendant is guilty — because after all, most couriers are. That sort of statistical generality is not an appropriate basis for proof beyond a reasonable doubt in a criminal case.

The whole point of requiring proof beyond a reasonable doubt is to demand the government establish that this particular defendant has committed the particular acts charged with the particular state of mind alleged.

Gorsuch’s dissent is at its best when he explains why the majority’s opinion is flawed: “Prosecutors can now put an expert on the stand — someone who apparently has the convenient ability to read minds — and let him hold forth on what ‘most’ people like the defendant think when they commit a legally proscribed act. Then, the government need do no more than urge the jury to find that the defendant is like ‘most’ people and convict.” Notably, Gorsuch was willing to discuss the consequences of the majority’s rule — a welcome deviation from a textualism that is supposed to care only about words, not purposes or effects.

It’s not like the majority’s rule is necessary to get convictions. In this case, there were other, specific, ways to try and prove Diaz’s guilt. For example, she claimed to be driving the car of a boyfriend whom she had met only a couple of times and whose phone number she did not have. Juries are well-suited to making determinations of credibility on assertions like these.

In life, it’s often appropriate and even necessary to rely on statistical generalizations, especially under conditions of uncertainty, where we don’t have all the facts. Civil cases fall into this category: juries are often asked to determine what is more likely than not to have happened.

Criminal cases are different. The law carves them out as a special domain of specific knowledge. We need that protection. Otherwise, juries might observe that most people arrested for a crime are guilty of something and conclude that they should convict any defendant before them.

Noah Feldman is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist. A professor of law at Harvard University, he is author, most recently, of “To Be a Jew Today: A New Guide to God, Israel, and the Jewish People.”

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