Mr. Gary Nyberg, then President of Smiley Glotter Nyberg (SGN) Architects, a company that worked with the board of directors of Minnesota Independent School Districts, admitted in a Minnesota court hearing to offering Minnesota Twins-Atlanta Braves World Series tickets (1991) to West Tonka school official to gain his favor!
Copperhead and their clients have been falsely accused of twisting, distorting and taking statements out of context for years. This includes a piece written by then Lake Crystal ISD Superintendent Les Norman that has since been anonymously distributed by the Minnesota Association of School Administrators. We’ve advised MASA it was full of lies, twists and slander but they refused to take it down when we asked them too.
What this often means is that we reveal the nub (truth) of an emotions-driven hollow message the school board, administrators or other proponents are using in their campaign to not be true, or even to be the opposite of what they are saying. Or this can also mean we draw different conclusions from data and facts than what the proponents of the school proposal have drawn. Because we dare expose their false PR campaign all they can do is howl that we are liars, etc.
Five of our Minnesota clients joined together and successfully petitioned the U.S. District Court to declare unconstitutional an oppressive state law that allowed such accusers to drag my clients into an administrative court and falsely accuse them of lying (twisting, distorting and taking out of context). Prior to it being thrown out by the US 8th Circuit Court of Appeals this law was used as a club to oppressively silence taxpayer groups in Minnesota.
Prior to this federal court victory, the reality was that after enjoying an honorably fought victory at the polls the taxpayers would still find themselves drug into court by the sore losers, under false charges! It happened to one of Copperhead’s clients in Howard Lake, MN.
These losers filed 17 charges against the committee and their chairman, Victor Niska. It went to a lawful state of Minnesota Office of Administrative Hearings Court. On first review the presiding judge threw out 14 of the claims as having no merit and set aside 3 of them for oral hearing.
One of the three complaints subject to oral hearings included a charge against Mr. Niska for falsely claiming that the architect on the proposal in his community had previously offered him a bribe when he previously served as head custodian at the West Tonka, MN ISD. When first learning of the accusation Copperhead told Niska that we didn’t doubt his account but we could not use it in the campaign as he had no proof and it is too personal.
Niska didn’t listen to our advice and used it on his own accord.
The late Mr. Niska and his committee were later acquitted of all charges by the Office of Administrative Hearings. After hearing Niska’s other witness (the former West Tonka school Superintendent) testify that architect Gary Nyberg of SGN did offer him a World Series game ticket (and he went to the game) just before making a recommendation to their board as to what architect firm to hire for their project; the Office of Administrative Hearing Court left Niska’s accusation against Nyberg stand. (The former Superintendent then advocated to the school board to hire “the other firm” seeking the contract as he didn’t want to see their ISD work with an architect willing to bribe officials.)
The false accusers could provide no evidence of any lies, twists and distortions in 17 charges because they had none! (We still have the audio file of the proceedings, where his attorney is grilling the architect on the stand. ) See the attached file of the final court ruling Here. If nothing else do read the highlighted sentences on pages 2, 6 and 10.