More from the Star Trib.

Here is yet another great articale by the star tribune. Why can't the D.N.T. report like this?


DULUTH -- Duluth Mayor Herb Bergson, whose reputation and leadership ability were tarnished by a drunken-driving arrest last weekend, is compounding the damage by refusing to explain the incident, cloistering himself at home and missing important city meetings, officials and pundits said Tuesday.
"I'm not going to advocate his resignation," said City Council Member Jim Stauber, a conservative counterbalance to the liberal DFL-supported mayor. "We all make mistakes. But he's gotta come clean if he wants to regain public confidence."
Stauber said the mayor must either admit to a drinking problem and deal with it or come back to work and lead the city.
Stauber's comments, versions of which were echoing in blogs and coffee shops all over Duluth on Tuesday, came after a crucial City Council meeting Monday night from which Bergson, who was home nursing cuts and bruises, was absent.
The meeting dealt with what Council President Donny Ness called "the biggest issue to face Duluth in decades" -- the presentation of a task force's solutions to a projected $280 million debt on retiree health care, which officials say could bankrupt the city within years if not headed off by aggressive budgeting.
Bergson had consistently pushed the issue to the top of the city's agenda and was featured Sunday in a New York Times story on the nation's problem with retirees and health care.
Conversely, Minnesota newspapers Sunday were focused on his arrest in Wisconsin after he totaled a car Friday evening in a single-vehicle accident while traveling to Chicago on city business.
Duluthians are scratching their heads over the amount of alcohol involved -- Bergson's blood-alcohol content was measured at 0.161 percent, or twice Wisconsin's legal driving limit -- as well as the time of the accident, 6:25 p.m., and the fact that Bergson was headed to Chicago three days before a two-hour conference he was to attend.
They're also troubled by police reports that say Bergson -- a former police officer and mayor of Superior, Wis. -- asked others to refrain from calling the police and instead help him push his car free from a guardrail.
In a scathing editorial Tuesday, the Duluth News Tribune said the jail booking photo of Bergson's bleary and battered face was the "worst mug shot since Glenn Campbell['s]."
"If ever there was an illustration," the editorial said, "of just how far, and how quickly, needlessly foolish and irresponsible behavior can sink someone from the heights of achievement to the gutter of embarrassment, this was it."
While Bergson announced the arrest himself via e-mail, he refused to explain his behavior other than to call it an isolated, "tragic mistake" not indicative of a drinking problem.
He said in an e-mail Monday that he can't talk about specifics of the incident while the matter is pending in court, although he said he plans to plead no contest. He did not respond to e-mailed questions for this story.
Bergson's stance thus far won't easily wash with voters or colleagues in City Hall, said Prof. Craig Grau of the Political Science Department of the University of Minnesota Duluth.
"Maybe there isn't a drinking problem," Grau said. "But if that's true, he'll need to provide an alternative explanation that makes sense to people, and right now, these facts are hard for people to square."
Bergson announced through a spokesman Tuesday that he'll return to work Thursday and issue a statement. The News Tribune's editorial said that for his sake, the mayor better have a lot to say.
"Bergson can begin to undo, or at least put into some perspective, his troubles," the paper said, "by immediately coming clean on the details of the debacle before rumors and innuendo finish the job of burying him that he himself started on the road."
Larry Oakes • 1-218-727-7344