By Andrew Christie, Chapter Director
In my Sept. 15 post on the process by which the Oceano Dunes State Vehicular Recreation Area received a permit to reduce the hazardous dust emissions it creates, I took note of a particularly interesting incident from the California Coastal Commission’s meeting in Cambria the day before:
Writing to the Coastal Commission on the letterhead of the SLO County Board of Supervisors, Supervisor Peschong wrote “we urge you to approve” the permit for the bad dust control program as submitted by State Parks – no doubt greatly surprising the other four supervisors he’s supposed to be governing the county with, and with whom he did not engage in any discussion of the matter before dashing off a letter to the Coastal Commission on their behalf.
Eric Greening and several other citizens took note, and showed up at the September 19 meeting of the Board of Supervisors to ask why Chairman Peschong had taken it upon himself to, as Eric put it, send a “letter to the Coastal Commission, written on County letterhead, and using the word ‘we’ in a way that seemed to convey that the Board had acted to approve State Parks initial (laughable) proposal, even though the letter was nothing more than Peschong's opinion and the Board had no hearing and took no action on how they would respond to the Coastal Commission staff report for this item.”
Supervisors Bruce Gibson and Adam Hill followed up with a discussion of Chairman Peschong’s “egregious fabrication of a non-existent Board position.” Peschong attempted a number of denials, all of which turned out to be false and which Gibson blew up by referring to the letter Peschong had actually written. As the canyon widened between what he wrote and what he claimed to have written, the chairman decided that declaring the matter closed and moving on was the best defense.
Throughout that exchange, board members Debbie Arnold and Lynn Compton sat by in silence. As the other two members of Chairman Peschong’s board majority, they thereby assented to the new normal: Henceforth, any time the Chairman wants to use the board’s letterhead and write in the plural when he has a yen to convey his personal opinion to a regulatory agency but make it appear as though his opinion is the position of the County’s governing body, with the implication that said letter is conveying the outcome of a vote by the board in a publicly noticed hearing, that will be okay by them.
Longtime Peschong watchers may recall his brief career as a pundit in The Tribune, when he was moved to attack the proposed Chumash Heritage National Marine Sanctuary by writing that the sanctuary would be unnecessary because it would merely duplicate “local, state and federal regulations already [that] protect our coastline and cultural heritage…. We have plenty of those without adding more.” In an act of uncanny prescience, as though sensing the need to give the lie to a statement that would be made by a future SLO County Supervisor 34 years hence, a 1981 report from the U.S. General Accounting Office contradicted that claim in advance, using its unambiguous findings for its title: Marine Sanctuaries Program Offers Environmental Protection and Benefits Other Laws Do Not.”
As this blog has noted, pundit Peschong also cited bogus reports by the cement industry that new pollution regulations would bankrupt the industry, and perpetuated the falsehood that a Santa Barbara County ballot initiative would shut down all existing oil production, not just problematic future high-intensity oil extraction projects, a deception promulgated to great effect in his successful efforts to defeat a ballot measure that would have banned fracking in that county.
In his Tribune column, Peschong’s sole attempt at a defense of this track record was to complain that he was the subject of “ridicule” by the Sierra Club, part of a general lament that the local political discourse has degraded to personal attacks (by liberal Democrats). No doubt, his supporters are revving up the tongue-clucks over the contentious atmosphere and lack of comity at the Board of Supervisors due to the incivility of Supervisors Gibson and Hill, who were so rude as to agree with local citizens pointing out that Chairman Peschong sent a letter to the Coastal Commission that constituted a gross misrepresentation of the Board’s position on a critical public health issue, and this is a problem.
Those who wish to question Supervisor Peschong further on this issue may exercise their still-existing democratic right to do so at 9 a.m. next Tuesday in the County Government Center at 1055 Monterey Street, SLO, and again on Wednesday at the same place and time when the board of the Air Pollution Control District, including Supervisor Peschong, convenes to talk about the ODSVRA dust permit.
Bearing in mind: As a rule of thumb, leopards don't change their spots.
As a second rule of thumb: Whenever a public figure or political faction responds to a critique of behavior by objecting to the tone, look at the actions.
As a third rule of thumb (acknowledging that we have run out of thumbs): When Supervisor Gibson told Supervisor Peschong “I believe you owe this board an explanation and an apology for this” and neither was forthcoming, that was the true barometer of the current state of our political discourse.