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For a couple weeks I'd been hearing rumors of a directive ... or something ... to the Star Tribune editorial page from Chris Harte, the ex-Knight Ridder executive, (way back in the early '90s), and as far as anyone knows the only Avista member with any actual newspaper experience. At first hearing the information was ninth-hand, at best. But the story had Harte telling (those who remain) on the paper's edit page staff to go easy on calling for gas tax increases in the aftermath of the I-35W bridge collapse.

Really? Why would Chris Harte care enough to stick his nose into something like that? Isn't Par Ridder the publisher? (He is isn't he?) If anyone, wouldn't Ridder be the one to open the door to the dimly-lit offices of the Strib's Bartleby-like Op-Ed wretches and admonish them with something like, "Now, now you crazy Commie, hippie kids. Let's not get carried away with silly notions of throwing money at problems. We all know how ineffective and wasteful government is. I mean it's not like a big public company that's been laying off people left and right forking over $600,000 to an ace executive like me in return for my promise to stay in a job I left anyway barely six months later."

Eventually, with the departure of Steve Berg from the Strib just before Labor Day, I found someone with a first-hand connection to the story. And what do you know, the rumors appear to have been pretty much true.

According to Berg, Harte did NOT order the editorial staff to reverse its long-standing support of a gas tax increase, (there hasn't been one in 19 years). "It wasn't like that," says Berg. "Rather it was suggested heavily that we be careful to include other options in what we wrote."

Uh, huh. So Harte strolls in one day not long after the bridge goes down and says ...

"This was all by long-distance phone."

What? He wasn't even in town?

"If he was I didn't see him. But we got this by phone. I think he called from Maine or Texas."

I told Berg the first question(s) that crossed my mind when I heard the story was, "Who got to Harte that fast, and why did he listen?" I mean, as everyone knows all too well, Avista Capital Partners has demonstrated almost zero interest in ingratiating itself as a member of the Twin Cities community. It isn't known if Harte keeps even an apartment here. But the rest of the visible members of the "partnership" are East Coasters. Why would they give two cents ... or 10 cents ... if the Minnesota State Legislature hiked the gas tax?

"He never spelled out why," says Berg, who incidentally has agreed to write for Joel Kramer's MinnPost.com. "A cynical speculation could be as simple as he was concerned about the cost of running the [delivery] trucks." The delivery trucks. The cost could add up, never mind that gas prices are spiking up and down 30-40 cents a gallon depending how close we are to a holiday weekend. Eventually though, with an extra dime or quarter here and there you'd be talking real money. Maybe even enough to imperil Avista's end-of-the-year bonuses.

Berg, who handled transportation issues for the Strib's edit page, doubts Harte or anyone else at Avista, "has actually sat down and studied the state budget." He suspects rather, "They're really interested in tone, in us being less like a knee-jerk liberal editorial page," never mind all those pesky years Berg and his pals had spent actually reading the state budget and following the local politicking -- in person, not by long-distance phone conversation.

In fairness to Avista, Bergs adds, McClatchy was just as concerned with not "antagonizing local readers" with pro-tax editorials. "They were also urging us to be more nuanced in what we wrote."

"Nuanced" could be construed as corporate code for "mushier", or in the context of adequate infra-structure funding, less informed in terms of how far the state has fallen behind, and more, shall we say, pandering, to the usual noisy critics whose cynical small government crusade is doing to public schools, police and fire funding, what has already been done to highways and bridges.

But back to the, "Who?"

I remain intensely skeptical that Chris Harte, vacationing in Maine or managing his portfolio in Texas suddenly got a bee up his silk boxers and speed dialed the edit board to urge nuance on their tax editorials. And yes, I love a good conspiracy. You know where powerful, well-connected people talk to each other privately, like peers. So I'm thinking somebody -- someone here -- contacted Harte first, urging him to urge his paper to dial back on ... yadda yadda. But who? Who would have the most to gain from the Star Tribune "nuancing" down from gas tax, to "a range of other options"?

And I'm sorry. I don't even have ninth-hand as to who that might be.