A Gaggle Of Scandals

Scandals here are de rigeur, and it remains to be seen whether the new Council and Manager can do anything to stop them.

• Planning CAO/SMP Debacle --Virtually this entire blog has been devoted to the CAO/SMP mess. Shireene Hale has been at the center of the ongoing CAO nightmare the entire time. No matter what the GMHB ruling, the Trojan Heron doesn't see much improvement happening to the CAO process unless Hale's involvement is summarily halted. Hale has demonstrated repeatedly that her primary interest, as a planner, is to stop everything. She has displayed outright contempt for public participation too. Colin Maycock is nominally in charge of the SMP, and while he's no Shireene Hale, he has been referred to by Stephanie Buffum as being "on our Team." That does not bode well.

• Public Works and Stormwater -- Speaking of Shireene Hale, her husband, Ed, is in charge of the County Stormwater Program. The County Stormwater Program has been an open sore for years. We could talk about the (non) applicability of the stormwater manual to our rural circumstances, or the murky logic behind the justification for our stormwater utility and fees, but the ire of many citizens is most easily aroused when discussion turns to the Eastsound Stormwater Facility (i.e., the Eastsound mosquito hatchery) or other Public Works stormwater projects ... all typically overbuilt, poorly designed, ugly, grant-funded, and largely useless. Ed Hale appears to have been the mastermind of all of it.

• Public Works Road Projects -- Nearly every new road construction project undertaken by the County in the last few years has been a treatise on mismanagement. For instance, the Lopez Fisherman Bay Road improvement project cost millions of dollars, was way over-budget, required the cutting down of beautiful old trees, necessitated hideous wetland mitigation (Lopez's version of the Eastsound mosquito hatchery), nearly doubled the width of the road ... and at the end of all of the "improving," the speed limit was lowered by ten miles per hour by vote of the County Council that authorized the expensive improvements in the first place.  On Orcas right now, the Mt. Baker Road improvement project is a daily banquet of blunders ... almost severing a high voltage power line, having a road height two feet higher than planned as a result of using LiDAR instead of an actual survey, and having to undertake "unforeseen" wetland mitigation. When finished, Mt. Baker Road will look more like an airport runway than a country lane. And Mt. Baker Road is just a warm up for the Spring Point Bridge project on the west end of Orcas. Responsibility for this maddening empire-building seems to rest squarely on the shoulders of Rachel Dietzman, County Engineer. In the eyes of many, Dietzman is arrogant, incompetent, adversarial, and hell-bent on suburbanizing and highway-izing every charming country road in the county. She also has a penchant for cutting residents off from utility access. Dietzman, whose husband is also on the infamous Marine Resources Committee (MRC), is another one that has to go.

• Conservation District Power Play -- The goal of the Machine during the last election was to take over the County Council while Ron Zee consolidated power at the Conservation District, which is a separate district of State government. The elections didn't turn out as the Machine had planned, but Boss Zee has moved forward with transforming the Conservation District into the pubicly-funded Kaaba of the Friendly Machine, with all the grant corruption that goes along with it. Zee's idea is to take grants away from the County and funnel them through the Conservation District instead. Zee is moving forward with transferring responsibilities for the Salmon Lead Entity, the LIO/AAOG, the Marine Resources Committee, and parts of the Agricultural Resources Committee. Already, the Conservation District has moved into new larger digs, hired Linda Lyshall, designated an office for Barbara Rosenkotter, raised the specter of appointing Kyle Loring as an associate (unelected) Board member, and made big plans for itself ... unilaterally ... without informing the County that it's taking money, programs, and people away from them.

And there are other scandals, such as staff who lie to Council ... unmitigated conflicts of interest ... and threats of retaliation to employees who attempt to make things better.

We'll be elaborating on each of these areas in the coming days.

Iceberg Government

Who runs this County? Is it the people we elect? Sometimes it's hard to tell.

Many of the posts on this blog present evidence of how this County operates. We've shown emails of public officials and contractors conspiring to avoid public participation. We've seen State officials tell whopping lies. We have accounts from former citizen-committee members about being led around by the nose by staff and consultants.  We've watched consultants dodge questions and ignore evidence contradictory to their recommendations. We continue to hear double-talk, such as the State contending it has no authority over the CAOs yet the Council uses them as a scare tactic. Latest case in point, we currently hear some existing Council members saying that they have to pass the CAOs otherwise the State will slap a building moratorium on us.

A building moratorium? For what? As a penalty for all the horrible pollution here?

Threats. Sometimes our government seems to be nothing more than a network of bullies insisting that the public be ignored. Along those lines, the latest veiled threat from the Friends came out in the past few days. You can read Kyle Loring's buzzword-laden diatribe here, which combines several environmental themes shotgun style in an effort to strike a chord with the public on something ... anything. Having trouble getting traction on your CAO position?  Mix in a little coal outrage and re-launch.

Let's look at one of Loring's CAO comments:

San Juan County is on the verge of adopting one of the weakest critical areas ordinances in the Puget Sound region. The ordinance’s buffers are designed to allow 40 percent of all local pollution into our streams, lakes, and seas.

This is akin to saying we have the weakest air pollution laws in the region because 100% of our air is allowed to flow unfiltered into our lungs and homes. It's like saying that we have the weakest food laws in the region because we are allowed to eat 100% of the produce from our gardens. We have some of the weakest standards for public responsibility in the region because we let our grant-funded local environmental non-profits baldly misinform and conspire against us.

When our local smoking-gunners can't rely on authenticated facts or sound logic, they rely on their network to back them up. That brings us to "iceberg government," which is the term I've coined for the unseen people and organizations who really wield power here. They drown out and "out-consensus" the views that conflict with their bureaucratic self-interests. They freeze out the public good.

As a summa graduate of Bowdoin, Loring might claim some familiarity with icebergs (Bowdoin alums are known as "polar bears"), and he might even claim some experience with environmental truth. Here's a clip from Bowdoin's Kent Island Research Station from 1998.

Kyle Loring ('98) conducted an experiment to test whether false eye-spots taped to the back of a hard hat truly deter Herring Gulls from dive-bombing. To my surprise, after exposing himself to daily systematic walks through the gull colony, he found no difference in the frequency of attacks or the number of direct hits with or without eye-spots -- it appears that we may have been fooling ourselves into thinking that the eye-spots conferred some protection. He did document, however, that most attacks come from behind (60%) or the side (35%) vs. the front.

Maybe his research gave Loring insight into how to conduct attacks regarding the CAOs (i.e., approach issues obliquely, from behind or from the side, not head on), but I prefer to think that it might offer a clue as to why Loring's arguments customarily lack cogency (too many blows to the head?).
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Smoking Gunners

Recently, the Trojan Heron has been more deeply investigating the many ways that our local government uses biased, un-transparent, and corrupt data against us. We, at the Trojan Heron, feel there is no more important issue in the County than the integrity of the technical data used for our public policy and other government actions. Simply put, there are people in our State and local government with an agenda and they control and manipulate data to advance that agenda. They are looking for the "smoking gun" to eco-frame all of us. They don't care about data quality, or integrity, or independence.  If data or a story can be used in any way to incriminate people, it must be used. The activities of the smoking gunners involves the CAOs, the stormwater program, grant-deliverables, and our citizen committees.

Despite what many of us may believe, too often the "political" divisions in this County are not really "left versus right" or "rich versus poor." Instead, we are divided between the "smoking gunners" who fabricate and believe any and all manner of eco-incriminating evidence (no matter how poor the quality), and the rest of us who feel that data should be evaluated and independently validated before it is believed.

The Trojan Heron is now going to focus on the smoking gunners and how they control and manipulate nearly every aspect of County data, and thereby control much of what the County does as a result.  The smoking gunners include Council members, County staff, and state officials.

The term "smoking gun" dates from 2010 when the County began to use that term to characterize the real motivation behind various County initiatives, but the smoking gunners have been with us for a lot longer than that. They are now entrenched everywhere, and we must root them out and get rid of them. They are working against the public and the public good.

From: Mary Knackstedt [mailto:maryk@co.san-juan.wa.us]
Sent: Friday, January 15, 2010 1:36 PM
To: Linda Lyshall; Vicki Heater; Barbara Rosenkotter; Kit Rawson [krawson@tulaliptribes-nsn.gov]; windrope amy [awindrope@yahoo.com]; Ed Hale; Brian Rader;susankey212@gmail.com; Patty Miller
Cc: Shireene Hale
Subject: EPA grant proposal for your review

Here's what I've done so far for the proposal with input and help from many of you. It's been a rapidly moving target over the past week, which has been hard to keep up with, but I think it's coming along though it has some rough patches.  Please look this over and provide comments by next tuesday or earlier if you can manage it.  Linda, please send it along to your friend at EPA.

Here's some pieces (some new) that need fleshing out, I'm sure you'll find more:

NEW--Vicki suggested a really great idea to focus team effort/coordinated technical assistance program (modeled after Kitsap Co) with landowners in the pilot areas receiving assistance from the CD and County (Brian for pollution prevention, especially business owners in Eastsound and construction sites) and the on-site septic system specialist from the health dept.  She also suggested pursuing long term sustainable funding through development of a Clean Water district. She is going to add this section.  I tried to do a quick scan to add this in a few sections, but need to go through the whole proposal methodically, especially the project plan and proposal sections after she completes this piece so that it fits.

Monitoring--I hesitate to ask for much funding for monitoring because EPA is very picky about funding monitoring and most of what we are doing is under development so still hazy.  I think we could mention the need to connect WQ monitoring with the shoreline development data and the shore form data that we'll have from FSJs during this time period and any connections to impacts to habitats and biota along with the nifty new tools coming from the state and PSNERP. So the emphasis in this proposal is on connecting the dots and using those insights to tell the story to landowners and decision makers locally. inform our project and also to share in a transboundary workshop.  Instead of asking for funds for monitoring equipment (which I think would weaken this proposal).  I've built in a monitoring coordinator into the budget and some of Ed's time which could free up funds for equipment from county funds.  Ed also suggested that we ask for funds to develop the QA for the stormwater monitoring program. Anyway, this part of the proposal needs work and I'd really appreciate your input to acheive the right balance and stay within the realm of feasibility.  Espcially if we want to use some of the PW utilities fees for match--I did not build that into the budget, yet cuz not sure how it would fit.

Budget--I've built in funding for county staff time on this and vacilate from angsting over it being too much and then too little and still trying to keep it under a million bucks and within our match. The budget needs input, detail and work.  Milene is looking it over, intending to charge indirect so that will add a fair amount. We need more detail for the sections dealing with the constructed wetland.  This is over half the money for the entire project so is important.

Partners--Eastsound Planning and Review Committee wants to partner.  Patty Miller emphasized the need to show the smoking gun, tell the story and involve stakeholders as we dev. the program in the pilot areas.The natural resources dept. of the Samish Tribe has done a lot of stormwater monitoring in Fidalgo Bay and would like to provide guidance for the project, also it looks like we are going to be a partner on the Green Shores proposal so I added that.

Emerging threats  I just got some information about low spawning in local herring pops which are not being seen in other areas of PS which I haven't had the chance to read yet, but may help build the case in the emerging threats section.

Too long!  The page limit for the proposal is 12 pages.  So we're already too long.  There are repetitive, long winded sections, so please let me know where to cut since we need to add other more essential information.

Haven't done the logic model yet.