After hours of circular discussions Tuesday, the state Senate ethics committee, charged with judging whether a GOP leader in the Senate mishandled his reporting of the affair between Amy Koch and Michael Brodkorb, remained "stuck in the mud" and deadlocked.

Tuesday evening, they even deadlocked for several hours on whether to adjourn before finally deciding to call it quits shortly before 10 p.m. The continued morass over the complaint against former Deputy Majority Leader Geoff Michel, R-Edina, means that the Senate will leave ethical questions hanging even as legislators leave the Capitol at the end of session and head into the fall elections.

"We're basically stuck. Is that fairly accurate?" GOP committee member Sen. Bill Ingebrigtsen, of Alexandria, asked earlier in the day after the four-member committee deadlocked in a party-line vote on the complaint.

The committee of two Republicans and two DFLers also hit an impasse last month on the DFL complaint, which alleges that Michel lied last year to the press, and therefore the public, in talking about when he discovered the affair between former Majority Leader Koch and Brodkorb, a Senate staffer who was fired after the affair became public. DFLer Sandy Pappas wants Michel to apologize publicly.

The two Republicans on the committee -- chair Sen. Michelle Fischbach, of Paynesville, and Ingebrigtsen -- voted that the complaint has no merit and that there is no reason to investigate further.

The committee's two DFLers -- Sen. Kathy Sheran, of Mankato, and Sen. John Harrington, of St. Paul -- voted the opposite.

Star Tribune
State Sen. Geoff Michel, center, spoke briefly after Tuesday’s Ethics Committee hearing, calling on the members to dismiss the complaint against him: “It’s not about ethics, it’s about politics.”

Sheran said the paralysis means "nothing gets done and a complaint remains open ... in perpetuity."

Harrington said the committee should have continued trying to hammer out a solution to clear the Senate's name. His was the lone vote against ending Tuesday night's meeting.

Although some senators are concerned about taking action against Brodkorb, who has threatened to sue over his dismissal, Harrington said that police and cities are able to deal with ethics issues in the name of public trust.

But Ingebrigtsen called the ethics inquiry a "fishing expedition" and suggested that he, like Michel, believes that the root of the complaint is political, not ethical.

Michel, who will not run for re-election, said he took the inconclusive end as a "victory," since the committee could not find a majority to agree that he did anything wrong.

But Sheran noted that a majority also could not agree that he did not violate standards.

Rachel E. Stassen-Berger Twitter: @rachelsb