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The Blue Line Extension is still years away from completion, but Hennepin County has long been engaged in an effort to garner public support for the $3.2 billion light rail project.
A series of videos on the Blue Line Extension’s YouTube channel titled “Community Voices” features men and women offering personal accounts of how the project will benefit those who live along the proposed corridor.
Hennepin County says the participation of each person was “entirely voluntary” and “unpaid,” but 5 INVESTIGATES found several of those featured in the videos are also connected to organizations that received government contracts to do work for the Blue Line Extension.
The videos
One of the videos features Ange Hwang, who is identified on screen as “Ange H. – Nonprofit Director.”
“It’s really going to be the lifeblood for our community,” Hwang said in the video.
Hwang’s nonprofit, Asian Media Access Inc., is now on its fifth contract with Hennepin County to perform outreach on behalf of the Blue Line project.
The deals dating back to 2021 are worth $140,000 combined.
5 INVESTIGATES found them among more than 80 government contracts with a variety of groups and individuals to do outreach about the proposed light rail line that would connect Minneapolis, Robbinsdale, Crystal and Brooklyn Park.
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Dan Soler, Hennepin County director of transit and mobility, said those contracts are meant to provide critical facts and information to the community.
“It’s not being done to convince them it’s the right thing to do,” Soler said in a recent interview. “It’s to get their feedback.”
Hwang said the Community Voices video in which she appeared was part of her group’s “regular activities” and “not part of the Blue Line contract.”
“I am speaking as a representative from our Asian American community,” Hwang said.
Hennepin County says another video featuring Brett Buckner, identified as a “lifelong northside resident,” was recorded in June 2023.
But by the time that video was posted to the Blue Line’s YouTube Channel late last year, Buckner’s group OneMinnesota.org, had begun to receive contracts now worth more than $220,000 as part of the light rail project’s community engagement plan.
Hennepin County acknowledged that other Community Voices videos were recorded while some of the participants’ organizations were already under contract.
“The individuals appearing in the videos were doing so in their personal capacity as community members in the Blue Line Extension Corridor,” a county spokesperson told 5 INVESTIGATES. “Their participation was entirely voluntary, unpaid, and outside the scope of work associated with any organization or contract.”
5 INVESTIGATES is uncovering answers to new questions about community support for the multi-billion-dollar light rail project.
Calls for more transparency
Such a disclaimer should have been attached to the videos, according to State Rep. Kristin Robbins, R-Maple Grove.
The Republican recently announced her candidacy for governor in Minnesota and was already an outspoken critic of the Blue Line Extension project.
“If someone’s getting a contract to promote the light rail, but then their employees are being used as sort of man on the street, ‘Oh, this is how great the light rail is, and I think it’ll matter for our community.’ That should be disclosed,” Robbins said.
In a follow-up statement to 5 INVESTIGATES this week, the spokesperson for Hennepin County added that it “values authentic community voice and grassroots participation.”
“We have always sought to highlight voices that represent the Blue Line Extension Corridor,” the spokesperson added. “Especially those from communities that have been left out of conversations about major projects that impacted their lives in the past.”
“Trusted messenger”
KB Brown also had a contract with Hennepin County to engage his community about the Blue Line Extension, but the North Minneapolis business owner and nonprofit director does not appear in the Community Voices videos.
“It’s not my role to sway anyone either way,” Brown said. “It’s my job to make sure they get the correct information.”
Brown says his role of “trusted messenger” also requires transparency about what the county is paying him for and what it is not.
“When you’re doing community-led things, I think that’s part of what should be also pointed out to the public so that they don’t have that question,” Brown said. “Because that’s a valid question.”
