Part 3
In your email to Art you end it as engagingly as Art’s email engaged you. You sneeringly asked him if his lawsuit against the School Board was still on. That’s a good reporter’s question but you didn’t ask it as a reporter would. It was a cheap shot back at a guy you don’t like who had just poured out his understandable anger at you.
I think I’ve already told Jana the answer to your question. Since you’ve asked the question I’ll answer it. To all intents and purposes the only thing remaining to be done is having the judge rule as to whether Art will be reimbursed for the sixty thousand bucks he spent defending himself from a witch hunt. Once the judge rules it’s over. That won’t happen until the Board’s kabuki dance over the changes to our Ethics Policy are acted on. Unlike the Trib I’m personally offended that the Board punished Art over such a lame accusation of abuse of power in their attempt to subvert democracy. It’s hard for me to disagree with Art. From your first request that he step down to spare the city the tawdry year that followed the Tribune’s editorials made it look like it was wearing the school board majority’s heart on its sleeve.
Art is unyielding. No one in my life ever made me as mad as Art did back in the Let Duluth Vote days, not even Keith Dixon. But I’ve never doubted Art’s integrity. I was so mad at him that I sent him an angry email saying I hoped he would get elected to the school board because I knew he was in for the worst year of his life. I was wrong. It’s been six miserable years. Like Gary Glass before him he’s been told nothing. I find that astonishing. I find it even more astonishing that the Trib no longer has the capacity to see that Art has been kept in the dark. Art doesn’t exactly help his cause when he gets frustrated about being denied public data. That was Keith Dixon’s shtick but it continues unchallenged today. I agree with Judge Davis who made it plain that our nation was made great by stubborn people who went against the grain. That describes Art to a T.
continued >
