Email exchanged with Matt Look re kicking Rhonda Sivarajah upstairs, wherever it is she resides.

An email was received suggesting the then vacant Anoka County Administrator position would best be filled by Cindy Cesare, the current head of the county's Human Services Department. It was titled, "Will you help those of us who think the appointment of Board Chair Rhonda Sivarajah as County Administrator will be a bad precedent and a bad result for the employees and residents of Anoka County?" Being of that opinion, I forwarded the suggestion to Look while expressing my feeling. In fairness, quoting and not paraphrasing, Matt replied:

I voted no, as I was and have always thought it necessary to have an internal process, given the fact than an elected official was interested in the position. I voted for, supported and was instrumental in bringing the board together on consensus to conduct an internal process. Everyone agreed on the process. The process was followed and completed. Rhonda was the top scoring candidate. I am not prepared to say that anyone of the three commissioners on the interview panel unethically scored one candidate over the other.

For me to disagree with the outcome of the process that we ALL agreed to would be highly disingenuous.

Additionally Eric, you know me well enough to know that I make the decisions I feel are right and not based on an easy re-election. The work I’ve done at this county speaks volumes, whether it is debt reduction, keeping taxes low, cash in lieu of bonding, catching up on all deferred maintenance on the 2.5 million square feet of county buildings, voluntary separation (saving 5 million annually), or the work on highway 10, securing to date $130 million dollars, the rail stop in Ramsey and the elevated need of rail grade separation throughout the county particularly highway 47/bnsf intersection around the fairgrounds.

The long and short is if someone wants to get hung up on an administrator appointment out of disagreement and vote for my future opponent....then so be it

"Rhonda was the top scoring candidate." Gee. What a surprise. If scoring involved any paper trail, someone caring about the question could file a data disclosure request with whomever has been designated by the county to receive and process such a request. The term "Scoring" suggests an objective process. where even baseball now has a tangible record, a video review capability.

The rationale for only an internal search never rang sound to me, but the power to so proceed seems to have been within the Board's discretion, in its representative capacity. Without any checking of county records, the presumption is the job went to Rhonda, as was the appearance of a likely outcome based upon initial effort among Board members.