Before the Gubernatorial vetoes, Annandale was in line for $2 million for broadband. Now of course everything is in question and in the mire of the unknown people are trying to figure out what happened and what should or should not have happened.

The Minneapolis Star Tribune reports that Annandale feels that their loss may have been politically motivated…

They lobbied for and received a $2 million earmark for broadband development in the House jobs and energy bill, only to see it go down in a veto by Gov. Mark Dayton.

City officials met with Dayton’s chief of staff, Jaime Tincher, to plead their case. In a notarized letter obtained by the Star Tribune, Mayor Dwight Gunnarson and City Administrator Kelly Hinnenkamp wrote that the governor’s staff said they did not like earmarks.

But at one point in the meeting, city officials said, Tincher’s tone changed. According to the letter, Tincher looked at Dan Dorman, a former House Republican-turned lobbyist who was working with Annandale, and said, “Don’t forget, your firm spent an awful lot of time beating up on Democrats.”

An awkward pause followed. Dorman later said he was taken aback and told Tincher, “I don’t know how to respond to that.”

After the meeting, Gunnarson said in the letter that he asked Dorman about the remark. Dorman told the mayor that he thought it was rooted in a bonding analysis his firm, Flaherty and Hood, prepared that showed the bonding proposal favored the metro area. Flaherty and Hood represents a number of outstate jurisdictions.

“I asked if the citizens of Annandale were being punished because of this,” Gunnarson said in the letter, and Dorman replied that he thought so.

On Tuesday, Tincher acknowledged that she made the comment, but in a statement said: “It is completely false to suggest that opposition to Annandale’s earmark was politically motivated.” She added: “Our administration believes in a competitive process to distribute this funding and that it is wrong to allow one community to jump in front of others, simply because they have secured favor with a particular lawmaker.”

In his veto letter, Dayton said the Annandale earmark undermined the competitive bidding process for state broadband funding and “sets a dangerous precedent.”