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Wednesday, February 10, 2021

Anoka County Board meets - Matt Look on record asserting he did nothing wrong (whether he'd do anything differently is a separate question), an ethics code was discussed, input from outside the board is reported, meeting adjoined.

 Strib local content: Report closing:

Meisner said she will host a town hall in March or April to discuss best practices and a code of ethics. The meeting will be held virtually and feature David Schultz, professor of political science and ethics at Hamline University, with an opportunity for the public to comment.

Sen. Jim Abeler, R-Anoka, tweeted Feb. 5 that he supports Meisner's efforts: "Every public board ought to have a Code of Ethics, including the Anoka County Board."

Kim Hyatt • 612-673-4751

Before that in the Strib item, detail of meeting events is presented, including:

Look addressed his colleagues and a small group of constituents with a written statement denouncing the harassment allegations, first detailed in the Star Tribune, as his two accusers sat nearby.

"I harassed no one. Neither of the two ladies in either Star Tribune articles were harassed," he said. "I will not be resigning because I've done nothing wrong."

Danylle Peardon and Rachel Keller have both publicly accused Look of harassment and reported the alleged harassment to police, saying the commissioner contacted them directly after they got into arguments with him on Facebook.

"When I place personal posts on Facebook in a personal capacity, people are free to agree or disagree or they can choose to scroll past," Look said. "People have intentionally misled you … with falsified information in an effort to exaggerate a nonissue for the purposes of creating division within our community."

Commissioner Mandy Meisner is pushing for the board to consider adopting a code of ethics in response to the allegations, similar to what Ramsey, Dakota and Stearns counties have for their boards.

"We've got a lot of personnel and staff policies in place that [deal] with ethics and conduct," Meisner said. "However, we as county commissioners don't need to uphold those and so that to me is an area that … we should be stepping up."

Commissioners discussed her proposal for about 15 minutes Tuesday before the meeting ended at 3 p.m. Meisner provided copies of the codes of ethics from the three other counties in hope that the board could continue the discussion at their next work session.

Look said the board can further discuss ethics, while keeping in mind "we still have a First Amendment right to freedom of speech and I intend to enjoy this conversation."

[...]  In text messages Look exchanged with his colleagues, obtained through a public-records request, Look referred to Peardon multiple times as a "libtard."

At Tuesday's meeting, Keller said people online have been calling her a "liberal nutjob," but she wore a hot pink "Women for Trump" face mask to prove that isn't the case.

"It has nothing to do with that. He's supposed to be nonpartisan," Keller said, adding that Look is "using politics to get what he wants."

[italics added]. "Libtard" must be some form of slang, judged to be pejorative from context, but in any event, an ethics code might discourage slang, particularly if "hate speech."

As to what hate speech might be, good luck on creating a terse code if getting into the "hate speech" thicket. How any legitimate ethics code might have mattered in the Look vs. harassment contenders teapot tempest, readers should guess.

At the amounts the commissioners get paid, and with pressing governing decisions at each meeting, posturing a conduct code might waste time otherwise spent elsewhere.

If Blame is to be had, blame Facebook. For existing. For its disregard of user privacy. For making a generally unappealing and disagreeable person, Zuckerberg, rich beyond value. For being the communication vehicle through which discord was instigated/propagated. Something can be said for having to stand on a soapbox in earlier days to prognosticate.

IN CLOSING: The reported "contacted them directly" is vague. If there was any face-to-face contact prior to this reported meeting is unclear. All reporting by Strib has indicated there was online texting, only (as well as Facebook posting). What "direct contact" implies is open to interpretation, but nothing read online suggests Look showed up on anybody's doorstep; so take that as likely fact he did not, and deescalate from there.

How direct is texting? One can text a group, or an individual only, but "texting only" should properly be distinguished from any face-to-face match.

UPDATE: Would the usage, "Trump nutjob" be a fair usage, or hate speech? Or simply redundant? It does in a sense repeat itself.