 Peg
Pinard
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On
Manipulation...
by
Peg Pinard
County
residents are painfully aware of some of the very large, challenging
issues facing them. Declining water
availability — and all of its associated
impacts — is just one of those problems.
While
there are many strong opinions on different sides of this and other
issues, there is general agreement that city hall and county government
discussions must be open and honest, and solutions must be based
primarily on the wishes of city and county residents. Here in our
county, there are many hard working city and county government
employees working on behalf of our citizens to help resolve the
problems we face.
As
the former Mayor of San Luis Obispo, and a County Supervisor for eight
years, I am proud of the many good things government has done on behalf
of the residents it represents, but I have also witnessed a growing
problem that is rarely talked about. That problem is with local
governments "crossing the line" and reaching beyond their defined role.
It often seems that this "line is crossed" with the best of
rationalizations. Increasingly, some government
employees — be they administrators,
planners, engineers, etc., — have come to
view themselves as the designated "experts" on given issues.
This
leads to the belief that "they know best" what the outcomes should be.
That, in turn, leads to bending and tweaking the normal wheels of
government to achieve the end that staff believes to be best for the
residents they work for. In my experience, when this happens it does a
disservice to all of us, and it often does not result in the best
solutions to problems.
To
quote California state law: "The people of this State do not yield
their sovereignty to the agencies which serve them. … The
people insist on remaining informed so that they may retain control
over the instruments they have created." (The Brown Act)
When
residents are left out of the process, or any staff, board, or council
begins to justify "tweaking" the process or withholding the information
residents receive, then something is very wrong and something very
basic to our democratic process is lost. I believe that being aware of
this increasing problem can at least give residents a chance to
understand what is happening, and work toward correcting it. Here are a
few examples I have experienced.
When
I first became a county supervisor I was met with one of the boldest
attempts to manipulate public opinion that I had ever seen. The county
was beginning the process of building a pipeline to use our water
entitlement at Lake Nacimiento. Buried in one of the staff reports was
a reference to a contract for a ‘consultant'. Upon
investigating this contract, there turned out to be a provision for the
consultant to be paid to analyze different local reporters' biases so
that the county could pitch the story in such a way so as to garner the
reporters' support and influence them to write a favorable story.
Amazing!
There
was nothing subtle about that provision - other than it was not named
"How local government can manipulate the media and the public it is
supposed to serve". At the time, once this very-buried provision of the
contract was revealed, the Tribune severely criticized the tactic. But,
rather than stop this kind of activity to clearly state that government
had "crossed the line" on acceptable behavior, some public agencies'
tactics have become a lot more subtle - though no less manipulative.
The
county government did it again when it proposed a new bureaucracy to be
called the "Mosquito Vector Control District". For years, the function
of monitoring and abating mosquitos and other pests was under the
Agriculture Dept. It was the most fiscally responsible and cost
efficient way of monitoring pests throughout the county. The
agriculture department had all the equipment, vehicles and personnel to
make every monitoring trip throughout the county maximally efficient as
they tested locations for different pests throughout the county at the
same time. The Agricultural Department had a web site where they even
showed pictures of pests they were on the lookout for…and
the mosquito was right there amidst all the others.
Then,
as incidences from other parts of the nation of mosquito-born West Nile
Virus were appearing on the news, the opportunity arose for the county
to use the public's increasing fear to create a new county bureaucracy.
The county proposed setting up a whole, new, separate bureaucracy that
would be separately funded by a new, special assessment on people's
property taxes. Fear is one of the most powerful tools for getting
residents to vote for the outcome desired the outcome deemed by local
agencies.
At
the time, we were able to deal with handling any increase in mosquitos
by simply increasing the Ag. Dept's budget to buy more mosquito eating
fish, larval ‘dunks,' etc. - whatever the department
determined it needed. Since all the infrastructure (buildings,
computers, cars, etc.), personnel (including legal and accounting as
well as drivers, biologists, etc.), and equipment (cars, trucks,
chemicals, lab supplies, etc) were already paid for as part of the
agricultural department, this was the most responsible way to use tax
payer money. To start up another bureaucracy would require an
additional, approximately $1 million in start-up costs, even before one
dime was spent on actual mosquito abatement!
So,
what was the actual "manipulation" by the local agency to get residents
to agree to fund a new bureaucracy? Well, first of all, county
government started issuing numerous press releases about the dangers of
West Nile Virus - beginning every story with huge pictures of a biting
mosquito. That visual portrayal was meant to shock and create fear in
county residents. Who wouldn't be afraid of that?
Then
the county started stating that they didn't have the resources to deal
with this terrible menace unless there was a new "vector control"
bureaucracy. That simply wasn't true. We had been dealing with it, as
described, in a most fiscally responsible and efficient manner. On the
county ag. department's web page, there was a listing (and a
normal-sized image) of most of the pests that the county was dealing
with. One of those pictures was, of course, the mosquito. Once the
county made the decision to promote a separately-funded, vector control
district, the picture of the mosquito, as a regular part of the
agriculture department's doing business, was immediately removed! Gone!
Then,
with taxpayer funding, a "consultant", with expertise in getting voters
to support the county's new proposal, was hired.
With
the consultant's help, the County's bureaucracy figured out:
1) that if the
county put the new
property tax assessment issue to a vote in a special election they
could better control the outcome. The cost of running a special
election was a huge and an absolutely unnecessary cost to the
taxpayers. Any issue needing the public's vote could simply have been
included with the next election.
2) The county
also decided that the
consultant who had planned this strategy, the one who was getting paid
to ‘deliver' taxpayer approval of this new property tax,
should also be the one to run the election! In organizing the election
and sending out the ballots, the county board of supervisors by-passed
using our already-paid for, and independent county clerk (a department
specifically committed to fair and open elections).
3) Unlike in a
normal county election,
where ‘pro' and ‘con' statements regarding proposed
measures are enclosed with the ballot, in this election voters were not
to be given any ballot arguments AGAINST the tax were not allowed to be
included..
4) In a normal
election, the outcome is
also based on ‘one man, one vote'. However, the county's paid
strategist calculated that the election results could be "tweaked" if
it was a "weighted" vote, that is, based on how much property one owns.
The more land one owned, the greater the value of the vote. Since the
county itself was one of the largest landowners in the county, they
calculated that the county's vote would tip the scales in favor of the
direction they wanted. Then, the board of supervisors actually
pre-voted its ‘yes' vote for all the property the county
owned.
You
might be wondering what county government had to gain from all these
shenanigans. Well, if the costs for any county program can be shifted
to another funding source - in this case a new, separate property tax
assessment - then county property owners would pay more. Property
owners would still be paying their regular county property taxes only
now they would pay additional taxes through this special assessment.
This tactic of separating functions and then requiring new funding
sources, be they taxes or fees to support them, is, I believe, one of
the main drivers for the rising costs of government.
Fortunately,
in the case of this county's vote for a new vector control bureaucracy,
voters saw through the consultant-driven strategy and voted the measure
down.
But
the practice of public agencies using taxpayers' money to pay for
expensive consultant advice and polls to "manipulate" an otherwise
unsuspecting public, did not end with this vote.
If
you want to see a very good analysis of exactly how tax-payer-funded
polls are being used right now by one local government to "manipulate"
the public, I invite you take a look at a current, well researched
article written by Richard Schmidt at NoOnG.
For
full disclosure I want to let you know that I also co-wrote the ballot
argument against SLO's proposed new sales tax (Measure G) which will be
on the city's ballot this November.
There
are other cities and agencies asking for tax increases this November so
it is really important that citizens truly examine the information
being presented to them.
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