Sen. Dan Sparks has chosen to take politics to its lowest level. Rep. Peggy Bennett researched and met with many people to come up with a bill to help our local area from the Mayo loss of our hospital. She introduced her bill on March 1 in the House, where it has been heard in two committees, and then Sen. Carla Nelson introduced a companion bill in the Senate on March 15. Sen. Sparks made an exact copy of Rep. Bennett’s bill and introduced it in the Senate on March 26. He then took credit for introducing the bill to the Save Our Hospital group. This type of politics is down in the gutter. If you can’t meet and work with people to find solutions, then you shouldn’t be a senator. Sen. Sparks knew it wasn’t his hard work, and to copy someone else’s work and call it your own is a new low. In the Senate, it is etiquette to ask a bill author before cloning a bill. So, he has also broken Senate decorum in doing this — not to mention I think it’s just plain unethical. If you copied someone else’s work in your school classes, your teacher would flunk you. Sen. Sparks, who is now Senator Pretender, has been riding on the merits of other politicians, and it’s time for him to go.

Clayton Petersen

Albert Lea