Supervisor’s Voting Record Should Be Taken in Context

Your article “Developer Gifts Force Wieder to Sit Out 69 Votes” (Sept. 30) is a distortion of both my attendance record and my record of abstaining from board votes.

Let’s set the record straight.

While I have served on the Board of Supervisors for 12 years, the article arbitrarily dissected only the last 21 months of my tenure. During the past two years, I have missed the board’s twice-weekly meetings to go to Washington and Sacramento to fight for funds to rebuild the Huntington Beach Pier, testify against aerial malathion spraying and meet with the Army Corps of Engineers regarding restoration of the Bolsa Chica wetlands.

In addition to serving on the Board of Supervisors, I represent my constituents in the 2nd District and all the residents of Orange County on the County Supervisors Assn. of California, the Bolsa Chica Planning Coalition, the Southern California Assn. of Governments, the Southern California Air Quality Management District, California’s Air Resources Board and the Southern California Water Committee, which I founded and now serve as chair emeritus. Unfortunately, some of these commitments occasionally conflict with the Board of Supervisors’ Tuesday and Wednesday morning meetings.

Your readers should have been given some important information if you are going to play the “numbers game.”

Your article was correct that I have abstained from voting 69 times in the past two years. But what you failed to mention is that these are 69 votes out of more than 7,600. That’s less than 1% of the votes I cast during that period, and most were simply routine-consent agenda items.

I am proud of my “scrupulous attention to declaring potential conflicts,” as noted in your article.

I am also proud of my accomplishments as a member of the Board of Supervisors. A DNA-testing crime lab, freeway call boxes, Beach Boulevard improvements, hazardous waste roundups and Bolsa Chica Linear Park are just a few of the improvements brought to Orange County during my tenure.

HARRIETT M. WIEDER, Supervisor, 2nd District