Commentary by Andy Caldwell

I often characterize land-use politics in Santa Barbara County as a blood sport.

Last week, I served to expose the personal, vile attacks upon county Supervisors Joe Centeno and Brooks Firestone. These attacks were perpetrated by a couple of individuals who have sought to smear the good reputation of these men with entirely false allegations of corruption and conflict of interest.

Today, I want to give you a broader overview of the work of some organizations that are likewise seeking to change the social, economic and political fabric of the entire North County.

What are the organizations I am talking about? There are several and they are all unique to this county. Their names are PUEBLO, Santa Barbara County Action Network (SBCAN), Santa Ynez Valley Alliance, Environmental Defense Center, Central Coast Environmental Health Project, Pacific Pride, Santa Maria Peace Coalition, Women in Black, COAST and the Women's Environmental Watch (WE Watch).

These local groups work hand-in-hand with some local chapters of the Democratic and Green parties, Mexican American Political Association (MAPA), as well as the League of Women Voters.

These organizations are primarily political in nature. They describe themselves as progressive, whereas a more apt description would either be liberal or socialist. They all have another thing in common, and that is they all hail in origin from the South County with respect to their political bent and a primary source of their operating funds.

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To clue you in on what is going on here, I need to direct you to an organization in the South County called the Fund for Santa Barbara. The Fund is an organization that seeks to financially support the creation and sustenance of political organizations that seek to change society. They call what they do progressive politics.

If you go to the Fund's Web site on the Internet at www.fundforsantabarbara.org you will discover that for the past several years this organization has been funding the infiltration of the North County via its financial support of all the local groups I named above. You will discover that these organizations have been paid to come to the North County in order to organize, agitate and politic.

If you go to the Fund's Web site and look under the heading “Granting History,” here is a sampling of what you will find:

Santa Ynez Valley Alliance, $4,800 to “fund a staff person to support Santa Ynez Valley to have a voice in local environmental, development and housing issues.”

Sounds harmless enough, unless you know that the president of this organization moved to the Valley from Goleta and she is going to be challenging Brooks Firestone in the next election cycle.

PUEBLO - $10,000 for three years to fund a field organizer to build the leadership, power and influence of low-income residents of the Santa Maria Valley. Sounds altruistic, except for the fact that PUEBLO walked precincts for Hilda Zarcharias, and one of the things they are working for is the issuance of driver's licenses to illegal aliens. PUEBLO also received $3,000 to provide logistical support for the May 1 demonstrations in Santa Barbara that coincided with protests across the nation of legislation proposed to control illegal immigration.

SBCAN received $5,000 to create a roundtable of progressive organizations advocating on local policy in Santa Maria. They also received $5,000 to develop leadership and organizing skills among community members.

So what is SBCAN up to? One of the major projects SBCAN is involved with has to do with the approval and update of the county's Uniform Rules. Mind you, the Uniform Rules are simply an interpretive guideline of state law in determining allowable uses on lands that have been voluntarily conserved by ranchers and farmers in exchange for modest tax breaks. It does not change allowable uses per local zoning ordinances.

These so-called progressives have sought to portray the update as a stealth green light to convert much of the county's ranch lands to non-ag uses, despite the fact that the prohibition of such development is the exact goal of the Uniform Rules. Furthermore, they have lobbied and pressured the county of Santa Barbara to study more than 100 projects in the county, most of which have nothing to do with the conservation program that is the subject of the Uniform Rules update, as part of the update. It is nothing more than obfuscation and disinformation that is hurting our farmers and ranchers - but hey, that is what they call progressive politics.

By the way, as a followup to a previous column, I personally invited Debra Brasket, executive director of SBCAN and fellow Times columnist, to debate me anywhere, anytime on this topic of the Uniform Rules. She declined. Big surprise!

Andy Caldwell is executive director of COLAB and a 39-year resident of the Central Coast. His column appears every Thursday. You may reach him at 929-3148, or on the web at www.colabsbc.org.

March 15, 2007