Conflicts of interest. Transparency. Trust. Honesty. Accountability.
These are words that have been around for a long time, sometimes in the private sector, sometimes in the public sector, sometimes in our personal relationships.
Certainly they seem to be heard more often these days. And not just in Washington, or Sacramento, or in social media. But in our own backyards.
It’s easy to get caught up in the intricacies of some of these arguments, to get lost in the weeds.
Just at the point where things seem to be getting more fractured, more complicated, where it seems as though Humpty Dumpty may not ever be able to be put back together again, I suggest we go back to basics.
Let’s keep it simple. We might find even find some common ground in the process.
If something doesn’t make sense, it probably is the wrong approach.
If something doesn’t ring true, it probably isn’t.
If something sounds fishy, it probably is.
If people in positions of responsibility don’t want to talk about something and it appears that they are hiding something, they probably are.
Take the San Lorenzo Valley Water District, for example. Or more specifically, the five part-time directors elected by the people who live in the mountain communities served by the district. The five people entrusted not just with keeping hundreds of miles of pipes and pumps in good working order, but also with being good stewards of the millions of dollars paid by water consumers.
The directors hire a full-time professional manager, who hires and manages a staff of mostly full-time, highly trained employees to keep the system running smoothly.
The directors are the manager’s boss. The voters – most of them ratepayers – are the directors’ boss. The manager gets an annual performance review from the directors. He is expected to show up to work each day, and be on hand for emergencies.
The directors get one performance review every four years, at the ballot box. In those intervening years, no one really has the authority to tell them what to do.
If they make mistakes, they can be voted out of office, recalled, get their hands slapped by a grand jury, arrested if they commit crimes – or sued by individual citizens under the State of California’s Political Reform Act. This act allows individual citizens to go to court to prevent public officials from “self-dealing, conficts of interest or profiting from governmental decisions.”
Which is what happened in the case of real estate broker Terry Vierra, a longtime member of the SLV water board, and a well-known Boulder Creek realtor.
A judge ruled in December that Vierra participated in decisions that resulted in him and his wife getting a real estate commission in connection with the purchase of property by the water board. The very experienced judge ruled on the facts in the case, and he applied the law to those facts.
The water board decided it had an obligation to pay Vierra’s legal fees because he was simply doing his job. No one told him to put himself in a position to profit from the water board’s real estate deal, but when he did, the board leaped to his defense.
And then last week the board went one step further, and decided to finance Vierra’s appeals of the December decision. The public doesn’t really know why the water board directors – with the exception of new director Bill Smallman – continue to want to pay the board’s own lawyer to defend Vierra for violation of state conflict of interest laws. They aren’t talking. Vierra is not talking. The lawyer, Marc Hines, is not talking.
Water board president Gene Ratcliffe – after the board voted unanimously not to talk about the case –decided, on her own I presume, to talk about it nonetheless, in a letter to this newspaper, printed above. If her explanation – that the board is somehow required to pay the legal bills, and that it needs to appeal the decision ad infinitum to somehow discourage citizens from filing such suits in the future – sets well with you, well, then her unilateral violation of the board’s own gag order on this case was time well-spent.
If, as it does with me, it just raises further questions, these are likely to go unanswered.
This board doesn’t appear interested in explaining itself. It continues to pay thousands of dollars in legal fees every month with no explanation, or public discussion.
Keeping it simple: That just doesn’t seem right, does it?
