County commissioner gets touchy over X-rated issues

FROM THE ELY TIMBERJAY


Wednesday, September 26, 2007 Volume 18, Issue 38

County commissioner gets touchy over X-rated issues
By Nancy Jo Tubbs

Note to County Commissioner Mike Forsman: Lose the sunglasses. A white, middle class, middle-aged ex-Marine with a well paid job and powerful political position doesn’t get to claim victimhood.

By now you may know that Forsman showed up at the St Louis County Commissioners’ meeting in Duluth on September 4 wearing sunglasses after independent investigators recommended that two commissioners, Dennis Fink and Steve Raukar, be censured for violating the county’s sexual harassment policy. With Forsman voting for Raukar and Fink, the commission decided 3-3 in each case, not to censure the commissioners.

The reason for Forsman’s sunglasses: “Because I’m not smart enough to know when a glance turns into a look and a look turns into an ogle,” he told the Duluth News Tribune.

Okay, the difference between looking and ogling may be in the eye of the beholder, but in the case of Commissioner Raukar, the charges included unwelcome late night and 1 a.m. phone calls of a graphic sexual nature asking to come to the hotel room of a female county employee. (Raukar said they were just invitations to come down to his room for a drink, for which he has apologized to his family, the commission and the employee.) Forsman would have to stop using the phone to more accurately protest the charges against his fellow commissioner.

Mike and I graduated from high school together and both attend Democratic caucus meetings. I think he’s a good Iron Range representative, and we’re often on the same side of the political barricades, but at times we disagree. After a congenial two-hour conversation this past week in Mike’s kitchen and after reading the investigative reports listing charges against commissioners Raukar and Fink (which you can see at northernmnnews.com), this is one of those disagreements.

Mike, take off the sunglasses, buddy. From here they just look like blinders. The reasons Mike gives for voting against the censure are statements of old fashioned sexism seasoned by paranoia: The women sometimes wore short skirts and revealing tops. They were out to sucker in a couple of nice guys, nail them with harassment charges and come out of the deal with better jobs. Mike strongly believes harassment shouldn’t be tolerated—the kind where the guy is groping his secretary or chasing her around the desk—but he considers Raukar’s and Fink’s transgressions “benign.” Ellen Quinn, then county public information officer, who charged Raukar, isn’t a timid “poster child for sexual harassment,” Mike says, since he noted Ellen didn’t mind telling or hearing a dirty joke in mixed company, was known to aggressively chew out a secretary, and seemed like Raukar’s friend.

I thought we’d finished back in the ‘70s with the goofy reasoning that a woman’s short skirt is a green light for men’s bad behavior. (At the risk of irritating the sisterhood, I do think that women can be kind to their co-workers of both genders by dressing modestly so as not to distract the menfolk.) But, it’s a far stretch to believe that a sane person would go through the misery of bringing sexual harassment charges in the hopes of landing a better job.

“Anyone who has gone forward and actually said the words out loud—sexual harassment— should get the Purple Heart,” JoAnn Burns wrote in Minnesota Women’s Press about her experience as a whistleblower. “It’s lonely. Be prepared for heartache. Be prepared for everything you have done in your life to be dredged up. The company will want to make it look like you have no credibility—the bill you forgot to pay in 1980 will become an issue.”

About 50 members of a new group, We are Watching, showed up September 4 to protest the commissioners’ non-censure vote. Quinn spoke to them and others in the chamber.

“Ask yourself why anyone would bring forth false or trumped-up charges,” she said. “To endure a year-long ordeal, being called a liar and worse in the media, having one’s name exposed in the press? Through no fault of my own, my life will never be the same.”

The listeners applauded.

Forsman said the crowd was made up of folks who are not his constituents—but rather members of the Blue-Green Alliance and the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees—who looked angry and intimidating.

“This reminds me of the mob mentality that lynched three black men in Duluth,” he said, playing the ultimate victim card. Enough, already, with the dramatizing!

When it came right down to a vote, a key factor for some was that the commissioners are elected officials to whom county employee policies don’t apply. The commission subsequently voted unanimously to develop a code of conduct and ethics that would cover commissioners and other elected officials, the county attorney, sheriff and auditor. Okay. Good vote, Mike.

In our discussion Mike outlined some guidelines he thinks should be in the policy. The behavior would actually need to be “unwelcome.” The victim needs to say “stop it.” And the charges need to be made within a certain time frame. That sounds fair.

Just remember the power differential. In a work relationship, the more powerful person is often unaware of his or her effect on workers down the chain-of-command. If you can have subordinates disciplined or fired, they’re liable to jump to comply even if your behavior or request is inappropriate, untimely or ridiculous. For the person down the ladder, it may seem very risky to question your behavior or say no to your request. Speaking truth to power isn’t easy.

County Administrator Dana Frey was asked by the commission to develop by October 10 a new policy that covers elected officials. The policy should fill in details about the many forms of sexual harassment and require harassment sensitivity workshops to ratchet up everybody’s understanding of appropriate boundaries.

Anyone who is a victim of sexual harassment needs to know that their employer will take their complaint seriously and won’t tolerate retaliation. Those who have done anything that could be considered sexual harassment need to understand that they could be disciplined— even lose their jobs.

It’s time to take off the blinders, toughen up and insist on policy that protects ourselves, the people we love and other members of our community.