Still Crying Over Spilt Milk

The other day somebody forwarded me an email newsletter from the Citizens for Responsible Whatever, complaining about the Montgomery County Ethics Commission clearing Dana Beyer of all charges earlier this year. Dana, as you might know, is a transgender woman who has been hounded by that group and especially by their president, Ruth Jacobs.

The group filed a complaint in early 2009 against Beyer, claiming she had used her official position as a County Council aide to interfere with their petition signature efforts, and other similar things. There was a long investigation, a hearing, Dana was cleared, it's old news, I don't know why Jacobs bothered to send out this email rehashing it. BTW, I was a witness in the hearing and gave testimony about events that were reported on this blog HERE, I am not an indifferent reporter.

Apparently the CRW wants to open the whole thing up again, I don't know why. OK, I know why, it's because they lost. It's time to let it go, Ruth.

They apparently forwarded the newsletter to The Gazette, as well:

A Montgomery County group asked the county’s Ethics Commission to reconsider its dismissal of a complaint against a former councilwoman’s aide, saying it ignored key evidence in the case.

The commission, however, declined to take up the issue, the president of Maryland Citizens for a Responsible Government, Ruth Jacobs, said in a prepared statement Tuesday.

The Gaithersburg-based group filed the complaint against Dana Beyer, a former candidate for state delegate and senior policy adviser to former County Council member Duchy Trachtenberg.

The commission began its review of the issue in October, and eventually dismissed the complaint.

In it, the group claims that Beyer interfered with its efforts to gather petition signatures to place a question repealing the county’s transgender protection law on the November 2008 ballot.

Jacobs said the commission did not review some evidence in the case, including a video, recordings of calls to police and testimony from some key witnesses. County group continues to pursue ethics complaint against council aide

In the CRW newsletter, Ruth Jacobs described Dana Beyer's gender transition in unflattering terms and concluded, "Yet the Ethics Commission rejected key testimony of our witnesses simply because they used pronouns which reflected Beyer's own gender confusion."

If you know Dana Beyer you understand that she is not confused about her gender. Some may find it confusing that a person feels they have been misidentified at birth, and that someone would be motivated to change the gender that they present to the world, but Dana seems very clear about herself. Some of the testimony did intentionally use ugly terms to describe her, including incorrect pronouns, it was clear that witnesses were prejudiced against transgender people, but that isn't why the charges were dismissed.

The preponderance of evidence showed that Dana had not violated any laws or regulations, and that is why the charges were dropped.

Continuing with The Gazette story:

Beyer, who is transgendered and helped write the law, denied the claims and said she did not interfere with the county law.

Robert Cobb, the Ethics Commission’s executive director, said Tuesday that he would not discuss the issue, citing privacy laws that govern the commission’s work.

"The Ethics Commission isn’t in the business of telling you or the public or the press what correspondence it gets or what action it takes if that action is not intended to be public,” he said.

There is actually no story here. The Gazette is reporting that Ruth Jacobs sent out a mass email complaining about the outcome of an investigation that ended last March. I don't know what mileage the CRW is expecting to get from this, it is definitely looking like spilt milk at this point. Spilt and sour.