Star Tribune
Mayors of Waseca and Good Thunder plead guilty to misdemeanor charges, intend to continue running for re-election
Two mayors in south central Minnesota say they will continue running for re-election after both recently submitted guilty pleas to gross misdemeanor charges in separate cases.
Randy Zimmerman, 49, said Friday that he trusts voters in Waseca, 30 minutes east of Mankato, will support his re-election campaign after he pleaded guilty to perjury under oath. Zimmerman admitted to writing on a voter registration application in 2022 that his address was within Waseca, instead of his actual residence outside the city limits, as part of a plea on Oct. 4 that would dismiss two felony perjury charges.
“It’s going to be up to the voters; my situation has been an open book from the get-go,” Zimmerman said, adding that he is still building up his house in Waseca. Zimmerman had written in his childhood home in town, instead of the address that was on his driver’s license and other documents, according to court filings.
His challenger for mayor, Milton Madson, said he was running to hold Zimmerman and other public officials accountable. “It’s not right that he should be able to run as mayor, he just kinda got slapped on the wrist,” said Madson, 37.
Zimmerman is slated for sentencing Nov. 27.
Robert John Anderson, 68, the mayor of Good Thunder since 1992, also had a plea hearing Oct. 4 and pleaded guilty to a conflict-of-interest charge, a gross misdemeanor.
Anderson admitted to having a personal financial interest in a transaction on Aug. 25, 2020, after a city worker contacted his son for a street project, leading to the family trucking company receiving $1,723 to haul gravel.
Anderson broke the law but it wasn’t a “willful violation,” his lawyer, Thomas Hagen, said on Friday.
“There’s a fair amount of stuff we’ve digested over the years,” Kerfoot told the Star Tribune at the time of the sale. “It’ll take a while to pick all of it out of me.”
In recent years, he and Sue have spent summers in Minnesota and then traveled back to Missouri to be close to family for the rest of the year.
Visitors love to drop in and talk about Justine Kerfoot or Bruce Kerfoot or the years they spent working at the lodge, Fredrikson said. He’s found that Bruce’s energy seemingly matched that of his mother, who died in 2001 when she was 94.
“He was one of those people that was able to get stuff done more easily or better than other people,” Fredrikson said. “Maybe because of who he was, or maybe because the stars align for this kind of person.”
In a social media post, Kerfoot’s family said they had peace knowing he and his mother “were paddling together to their shore lunch spot.”
Mark Hennessy knew Kerfoot for 40 years, but has had a closer view for the past three years. He said without Kerfoot, the Chik-Wauk Museum and Nature Center, located near the end of the Gunflint Trail, wouldn’t exist. Whenever there was a work project, the executive director said, Kerfoot would show up.
A teenage motorcyclist was killed in a collision with an SUV at a Burnsville intersection, officials said Friday.
The crash occurred shortly after 7:30 p.m. Thursday at Burnsville Parkway and Interstate 35W, police said.
The motorcyclist was identified by the Hennepin County Medical Examiner’s Office as Peter Vsevolod Genis, 17, of Burnsville.
An SUV driver was turning left from westbound Burnsville Parkway to northbound 35W when Genis went through a red light while heading east and struck the SUV.
The SUV driver and a woman with him, both from Burnsville, were not hurt.
The other vehicle was a Mercedes SUV. The driver was a 30-year-old male from Burnsville, with a 29-year-old female passenger from Burnsville. Neither of them was injured.
Star Tribune
Boeing will lay off 10% of its employees as a strike by factory workers cripples airplane production
Boeing plans to lay off about 10% of its workers in the coming months as it continues to lose money and tries to deal with a strike that is crippling production of the company’s best-selling airline planes.
New CEO Kelly Ortberg told staff in a memo Friday that the job cuts will include executives, managers and employees.
The company had already imposed rolling temporary furloughs, but Ortberg said those will be suspended because of the impending layoffs.
The company will delay the rollout of a new plane, the 777X, to 2026 instead of 2025. It will also stop building the cargo version of its 767 jet in 2027 after finishing current orders.
Boeing has lost more than $25 billion since the start of 2019. Union machinists have been on strike since Sept. 14. Two days of talks this week failed to produce a deal.
