LETTER: Stop painting Egan as a martyr

Lately, I've read a slurry of letters that attempt to diminish the severity of Mayor Dennis Egan’s ethical breech of conduct in accepting a lobbying position with the Minnesota Industrial Sand Council. The writers make inflated references to lynch mobs, freedom, shame, and disrespect. The most absurd is that he took his new position to simply “feed his family.”

Such exaggerated versions of Egan’s victimhood and innocence and Egan’s own exploitation of his political position for personal gain is the real shame here. Red Wing citizens reacted no differently than the rest of an appalled Minnesota at the news that our mayor took a job lobbying on behalf of a mining council whose mission directly conflicts with city ordinances.

Opposing opinions in government are inevitable. The problem is that Egan was being paid to turn opinion into policy at a state level while simultaneously representing and being paid by a community with an opposing viewpoint.

News media from around the state took note of the situation with more contempt for it than our own local paper whose editorial board criticized public sentiment and posed questions that showed shocking ignorance to the basic terminology of fracking versus frac sand mining.

Southeast Minnesota is smack in the midst of deciding whether to open Pandora’s sandbox. Politicians and lobbyists like Mr. Egan keep saying everything is fine. We should all calm down. We won’t be another Wisconsin.

For years people in suits with slick hair and white teeth have been telling us that environmental damage is good for us. That it is, in fact, patriotic. Let go and let us, they say. We now have undrinkable water, inedible fish and fine particle air pollution to show for the letting go.

I’m glad to live in a community whose citizens chose to speak up in defense of our political and environmental integrity. It is our right and duty to question a public figure who doesn't walk his talk. Dennis Egan and those attempting to martyr him seem to have a basic misunderstanding of right versus wrong. Fortunately, the public doesn't.

Michelle Meyer

Red Wing

Tags: opinion, letter