One Of These Is Not Like The Others

Like the old Sesame Street game, when we look at our Council members relative to the CAOs, one of them is not like the others. We saw more evidence of that yesterday when the Council had a discussion about their upcoming consistency hearings (November 27 and December 3). But before we get into that, I have to explain one of the deliberate misconceptions perpetuated by some CAO supporters.

As most readers of the Trojan Heron know by now, the State has no formal authority over the CAOs.  However, since San Juan County opted into full participation with the GMA back in 1990, our CAOs can be appealed to the Growth Management Hearings Board (GMHB). Anyone can bring a complaint before the GMHB, including the State, and it often does. The State also can take other actions to restrict the County's access to funding, at least as a theoretical possibility.

In this way, the State is able to claim that it has no role in the CAOs while simultaneously leveling threats at the County about the CAOs. There is often a gulf, however, between the demands of the State and the legal requirements of the CAOs. Therein lies much of the controversy about the CAOs. Do we follow what the law requires, or do we follow what the State says we have to do ... even when the State's threats do not appear to be consistent with the law or with the facts on the ground, insofar as the facts can be ascertained and demonstrated?

Broadly speaking, suffice to say that five of the councillors seem to be more concerned about the State's threats (or the threats of the Friends) than with the law and the facts. One councillor (Rich Peterson) is a hold out. He is more concerned about the law and facts (not to mention the citizens and the environment) rather than the threats. As a further obfuscation, some CAO supporters (e.g., Lovel Pratt) have frequently characterized their opponents as ignoring CAO law. That is exactly the opposite of the reality of the situation.

Peterson believes the current proposed CAOs have several fundamental and fatal legal flaws. He is unlikely to vote for the proposed CAOs without major changes. He has circulated to the Council a list of the minimum changes that he feels are necessary to gain his support.

That brings us to yesterday's Council meeting. The five pro-CAO councillors, especially since the election, are eager to pass the CAOs unanimously. Unanimous approval might convey some legal legitimacy upon the new CAOs that they wouldn't otherwise have. Probably more importantly, though, three of the existing councillors are likely to stand for election (Miller, Pratt, Stephens). After all the CAO criticism aimed at the councillors, unanimous approval of the CAOs might rehabilitate their electoral chances. During the consistency discussion yesterday, we saw the Council dealing with all these subtexts while at the same time not saying a word about them. The words we heard were about public notice and schedule, but every councillor was pondering whether the five could accept the demands of Peterson with enough time to fulfill the public notice and related administrative requirements of the law. We even saw Patty Miller deliver a rather desperate lecture to Peterson (see the discussion around the 6:39 video mark) about the information he needed to provide to the rest of the group in order to strike a deal.

Can they swallow Peterson's changes? Can they get the changes done in time for a 6-0 vote before their lame-duck terms expire, or do they press forward as is?

Only time will tell, but with respect to the CAOs, one councillor is definitely not like the others, and the Trojan Heron is very glad about that.

As a postscript, I would like to point out the paradox embodied in the argument that says we must listen to the State about the CAOs while at the same time we overwhelmingly voted for a State initiative that rejected federal law.

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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Omnishambles: Where Do We Stand?

The word "omnishambles" has been chosen as the 2012 word of the year by the Oxford University Press. It means "a situation that has been comprehensively mismanaged by a string of blunders and miscalculations." With a nod to GBS's adage that Great Britain and the US are two nations separated by a common language, I would like to point out that over here we know "omnishambles" as the "CAOs."

So, where do we stand on our omnishambles?

The final hearing of the CAOs is scheduled for November 27, according to a recent email from Shireene Hale (see below). Can final approval by our current Council be far off? If so, it would be 11th-hour approval by a Council configuration rejected by voters, half of whose members are lame ducks, two of whom where voted out of office, and three of whom are being sued for OPMA violations.

They haven't listened to us yet. Why would they start now?
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Hello,

The final hearing on San Juan County’s critical area regulations is scheduled for Tuesday, November 27 at 10:45 a.m. Copies of the hearing notices and the four ordinances are posted at:  http://www.sanjuanco.com/cao/documents.aspx

Kind Regards,
Shireene Hale